University of Virginia Library

III
From the War of 1861–1865
to the Burning of the Rotunda

1861–1895

1. THE WAR

THE WAR began during the university session of
1860–1861. By that time the Faculty had increased
to thirteen Professors, with five Instructors or
Demonstrators; and in that session there were 604
students enrolled. None of the eight members of the original
Faculty remained at the University. By contrast this
Faculty was, in background and training, a more homeogeneous
group. Two of the thirteen had been born abroad,
and three had studied in English and German Universities.
But the large majority were Southern, and seven had been
students at the University of Virginia. There was a still
greater sectional preponderance in the student body. Of
the 604, there were 339 who came from Virginia homes;
and a dozen other Southern States were represented. From
north of the Potomac there were ten students from the District
of Columbia, thirty from Maryland, two from Delaware,
two from Pennsylvania, and one from Massachusetts.
There were no foreign students, but four had made the
long journey from California. Politically this academic
community was composed in large part of Southern sympathizers.

Within this sectional loyalty there were, however, differences
of opinion. The chief difference was in the attitude
towards secession. The two Professors of Law, John B.
Minor and James P. Holcombe, were recognized as the
leading spokesmen for the opposed points of view. Professor
Minor deplored the act of secession, and the majority
of the Faculty were in accord with his moderate position.
Professor Holcombe, however, gave voice to a more drastic
attitude, and many of the students were inclined to follow
Holcombe. Yet in the heated arguments in the debating
societies and in articles contributed by students to the literary
magazine, there was, up to this session, no lack of appeal
for the preservation of the Union. But the events connected
with the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861 ended the
period of debate. From that moment there was a united
and extraordinary response on the part of the University of
Virginia—its faculty, its students, and its alumni—in consummate
and unqualified service in the cause of the Confederacy.

The expression “from that moment” is not merely
rhetorical. Four days after the fall of Fort Sumter, the State
of Virginia seceded. On that same day two companies of
students, which had been drilling on the university
grounds, received orders from Richmond, and were given
leave by the Faculty, to proceed to Harper's Ferry and
there take possession of a Federal arsenal. The arsenal, however,
had been destroyed ere the contingent from Charlottesville
arrived, and these young soldiers were sent back
within a week. But one can well imagine that there were
difficulties in their adjustment thereafter to classroom routines.
This was within the session of 1860–1861. Immediately
after the final exercises in July, a third company left
for a short campaign in West Virginia. But that company,
like the other two, was thereafter disbanded in order that
the students could join with forces from their own home

localities. From that time the University's participation in
the war was not in separate units but penetrated into all
the military and administrative functions of the Confederate
Government. The story has been nobly told in volume
three of the official history of the University of Virginia by
the late Philip Alexander Bruce. Poignant accounts of many
of those who gave their lives are recorded in a memorial
volume by John Lipscomb Johnson; and two tablets on the
southern wall of the restored Rotunda silently preserve the
names of nearly five hundred members of the University
who made the supreme sacrifice for the Southern cause.

At the University the ending of the period of prosperity
was abrupt. For the session of 1861–1862 there were only
sixty-six students enrolled; and for the next three sessions
the totals were forty-six, fifty, and fifty-five. These were
mainly youths too young for military enlistment and,
toward the close of the war, veterans whose wounds had
left them incapable of further active service. Such of the
Faculty as remained took on extra assignments because of
Professors absent on war duties; they were themselves busily
engaged in various wartime occupations; and they found it
increasingly difficult to subsist on decreased salaries which,
as time went on, were paid in well-nigh worthless paper
script. It has been estimated that in the last wartime session
the average annual faculty salary was equivalent to $31.95
in gold. But whenever the proposition emerged that the
doors of the University be closed, the Faculty firmly arrayed
itself in opposition. In the summer of 1862 the military
authorities commandeered some of the university buildings
for hospital purposes for the wounded in the campaign in
the Shenandoah Valley. Beginning with the engagement at
Port Republic early in June, the wounded poured in until
there were some 1,400 being cared for in crowded buildings
and in tents. Notwithstanding the danger of having their
motives misunderstood, both Faculty and Visitors protested

against the prolongation of this arrangement. It was realized
that continuance by even the slenderest thread was preferable
to closing of the University. In an atmosphere of
anxiety, of daily emergencies, and widespread bereavements,
there persisted the hope of future service.

As time went on, the buildings began to suffer from lack
of repair. But they were still intact. It was not until the
beginning of 1865 that the lines of actual fighting neared
Charlottesville. In March of that year they swept down over
Albemarle County from the Blue Ridge hills to the northwest.
But the small Confederate force was then in rapid
retreat; and when the Northern soldiers, under Generals
Sheridan and Custer, pursued them into and past Charlottesville,
a stalwart trio, composed of the Rector, the
Chairman of the Faculty, and Professor Minor, met the
invaders with a flag of truce and requested a guard for the
university grounds. The request was courteously granted;
and by constant vigilance for the next few hours, the
dangers of looting and destruction were averted. By another
month the articles of surrender had been signed at Appomattox.
Though the University of Virginia was located
at the center of a State which during those years of armed
conflict had been strewn with battlefield devastation, its
buildings were still standing, and within them thin classes
were still receiving instruction from a weary but resolute
Faculty.

What of the Library during these destructive years?
Well, one is reminded of the frequently quoted reply of
Sherlock Holmes to the Police Inspector in Conan Doyle's
story of the “Silver Blaze.” The Inspector inquired of
Holmes:

There are two accounts of the University. of Virginia during
the war years by members of the Faculty who were eyewitnesses
throughout. One is the journal of Socrates Maupin,
Professor of Chemistry, who kept a record of the
events that occurred in connection with his office as Chairman
of the Faculty; the other is composed of the reminiscences
contributed by Francis Henry Smith, Professor of
Natural Philosophy, to the massive work on the University
which was issued in two volumes in 1904. In neither is
there a single mention of the Library. At least one pleasant
inference may be drawn from this silence. The Library was
actually in operation, though with shortened hours of
opening, all through the war sessions. But in a time when
difficulties were rife, the Library presented no problems
that had to be met and recorded. When Thomas Holcombe
departed at the end of 1861, supervision of the Library was
added to the responsibilities already being borne by the
Proctor, Robert Riddick Prentis. Perhaps it is not so much
curious as it is creditable that during his period as Acting
Librarian, 1861 to 1865, there was no barking of the dog.

The question might naturally arise as to why the
appointee was not William Wertenbaker. Wertenbaker
could hardly have been overlooked since he was Secretary
of the Faculty, and there is no indication that he was absent
from the meeting at which action was taken. But the
appointment of a Librarian was a function of the Visitors,
and in naming Holcombe four years before, the Visitors
had been separating the posts of Librarian and Secretary of
the Faculty. Therefore, in taking upon itself the emergency
action of designating Proctor Prentis “to take charge of the
Library until the return of Mr. Holcombe,” the Faculty
was less open to the accusation of usurping or contravening
the authority of the Visitors than it would have been had
it taken the more obvious course of placing Secretary Wertenbaker
back in the library post. No further action was

apparently taken by either the Visitors or the Faculty;
though in September 1862 the Board of Visitors did authorize
its Executive Committee to employ a Librarian for the
next year “whenever in their judgment it may be proper.”
The circumstances, financial and otherwise, being what
they were, the Executive Committee seems to have decided
not to disturb the existing condition.

As for the administrative duties in the Library, they
were of course greatly reduced. Work on the new catalogue
ceased; and as early as May 1861 appropriations for the
purchase of books were suspended. In that summer, the
Board of Visitors experimented with the opening of a
special School of Military Science, and the Faculty voted
that the Library should, for the benefit of students of that
School, be kept open two hours daily during what would
normally have been a vacation period. But nothing much
came of that experiment. As a result of the annual inspection
of the Library in July 1863, the Library Committee of
the Board of Visitors reported that “The Library has every
appearance of being kept with neatness, system & care, & is,
we think, in good condition.” As for the Rotunda itself, the
committee reported that there was a serious leak in the
dome. It was recommended for the following session (1863–
1864) that there be a return to the original schedule of
having all books borrowed or brought back within one
stated hour each week. Toward the end of that session the
forward-looking Faculty recommended to the Visitors that
omitted library appropriations should later be made up.
They also indicated their awareness of present dangers by
asking the Visitors for discretionary authority to remove
the books to places that should appear more safe should
“incursions of the enemy” seem imminent. There was no
attempt, however, to carry out such a plan during the
excitement of General Sheridan's invasion of March 1865.

It is true that toward the end there was a voiced criticism

of lax administration of the Library. This came from
William Wertenbaker who had continued as Secretary of
the Faculty, with such supplementary duties as he could
accomplish. It was a complaint which revealed his dominant
and laudable concern for the books which had so many
years been guarded by him. He had observed that during
the heat of the summer, when the University was not in
session, it had been permitted that the library room be
kept open. That room, protected by thick walls and rising
to the curved dome, was perceptibly cooler than the
neighboring buildings. To it the ladies of the Professors'
families were wont to come for relaxation and companionship;
and some of the war victims, who had taken refuge in
the vicinity, found there an asylum during daylight hours.
To Wertenbaker this meant the danger of misplaced and
mutilated and missing books. The picture, however, also
affords an appealing suggestion of service to a war weary
community. What we do not know is the intangible effect
of that storehouse of the wisdom of the past on the spirits
of these frequenters, anxious and despairing over the present.
There may be some shadow of excuse for the arrangement
permitted by the Acting Librarian, busy elsewhere
over his proctorial and other duties. He may have chosen
the better part.

Before we pass on to the continuing struggle for the
maintenance of the University of Virginia and its Library
during the years of adjustment and reconstruction, there
should be mention of a proposal made to the Faculty by
George Frederick Holmes at a meeting on 1 March 1861,
on the eve of the outbreak of the war. This was a preamble
and set of six resolutions, ponderous in language and displaying
the encylopaedic knowledge of the Professor of
History and General Literature. Beginning with Thucydides,
it recounted the value, proved through the ages, of
the contemporary collecting of historical papers. It called

for a systematic effort to assemble for a special collection,
which Professor Holmes chose to name “The Memorials of
the American Disruption,” everything that should have a
bearing on “the great political dissilience of the formerly
United States of America,” this collection to be zealously
preserved “as a priceless and everlasting possession” and one
that “would afford the only trustworthy means of ascertaining
and appreciating the right, and of commemorating and
censuring the wrong, which may be involved in this mighty
political discussion.” This was a project which would
undoubtedly have received commendation from Thomas
Jefferson. It did meet with the approval of this 1861 Faculty
of the University of Virginia, and copies were posted widely
to Federal and State officials, both North and South. A
single acknowledgment was returned—from the Hon. Simon
Cameron, Secretary of War in President Lincoln's Cabinet;
but not one item was ever received in response to this plea.
The Holmes proposal thus died of inanition—and it was at
a Northern institution, the Boston Athenaeum, that a
surpassingly fine Confederate collection was gathered and
preserved. At the University of Virginia seventy years were
to pass before, in 1930, there was to be concentration on
systematic efforts to conserve and make available material
in the broad fields of human relationships.

2. RECONSTRUCTION

It was a new social situation in which the University of
Virginia had to operate in the period immediately following
the war. There had taken place a fundamental change in
the economy of the region served by the University. The
comfortable life of the plantation system had been destroyed
by the new labor conditions, the learned professions
now faced an environment inadequate to insure their support,
the discovery and development of hitherto untried

natural resources was an urgent need, and it seemed
indispensable that ways be found for the South to gain some
share in the expanding industrialism. Education for cultural
and political leadership continued to be a goal. But
the immediate concern was education that would enable
graduates to make a living. There was a dawning realization
that this meant a change of emphasis that would place
technical subjects and applied science more nearly on a par
with cultural courses.

For meeting this situation, the University had several
assets: a devoted and a courageous Faculty, an established
organization, and a favorable reputation throughout the
States that had composed the Confederacy. On the other
hand, its treasury was exhausted and its source of income
from the State was in a condition akin to liquidation, its
buildings were in disrepair, many of the student-producing
secondary schools had been closed, and most of the Southern
families were sorely impoverished.

The resolute Faculty lost no time. For the first year or
two its members took over the financial initiative that had
hitherto been exerted by the Board of Visitors. The Professors
borrowed money on their individual credit in order to
have the buildings and equipment put in shape for the
session of 1865–1866. Leniency was shown to veterans of
the armed forces in the immediate payment of tuition fees.
These prompt actions gained encouraging results in enrollment.
During the 1864–1865 session there had been only
fifty-five students. For 1865–1866 there was an enrollment
of 258, and for 1866–1867 the number rose to 490. No small
part of the reward for the Faculty was the earnest and
responsive attitudes of those postwar students.

As soon as opportunity permitted, new “Schools” were
added to the curriculum. In 1867 there were established a
School of Applied Mathematics, the first step towards a
Department of Engineering, and a School of Chemical

Technology and Agricultural Science. In 1869 the cooperation
of a newly founded Miller Fund made possible the
opening of a separate School of Agriculture. Ten years
later, in 1879, there began a School of Geology; and in 1881
a School of Astronomy was organized in connection with a
donation from Leander J. McCormick which led the way
to the building and equipment of an astronomical observatory.
But cultural subjects were still in the majority, and
in 1882 the School of History and General Literature was
divided into separate Schools of History and English Literature.

This expansion of subjects naturally required support
from the library collections, and for a time the Library was
but poorly equipped to meet the demands. The collection
established by Jefferson had contained some material in all
the known fields of learning. But that was in 1825. The
additions up to 1861 had been mainly in fields in which
instruction was then being given. Pleas to the Board of
Visitors for library appropriations to restore the complete
lack during 1861–1865 brought $2,000 for 1866–1867. But
this tapered down to $200 for 1872–1873, when the influence
of the depression of 1873 was beginning to be felt.
The first years of the postwar period of the University
Library were like the first years after the founding, since
both were seriously handicapped by lack of funds.

Another similarity lies in the fact that in both cases
William Wertenbaker was the Librarian. The office of
Proctor had been “suspended” by the Board of Visitors,
meeting in an apprehensive mood on 6 July 1865. At that
same meeting salaries of $150 for a Librarian and $50 for
a Secretary of the Faculty were named, and the Faculty
was authorized to make the appointments. The 1857
separation of the two offices seems tacitly to have been
withdrawn. The energy displayed by the Faculty during
these critical days is revealed in this library matter. For,

The Rotunda in the 1870's

The Rotunda Annex

having evidently learned that the Visitors proposed to take
this action, the Faculty went ahead and named Wertenbaker
for both offices two days before the enabling act by
the Board of Visitors!

So Wertenbaker, back at his original salary as Librarian,
once more picked up the reins. He was able to report by
June 1866 that never before had he witnessed such earnest
and intelligent use of the Library by the students. By that
date a more general spirit of hope pervaded the University,
and the Board of Visitors advanced Wertenbaker's salary
to $800. They now not only permitted him to hold additional
positions but even added to the list the secretaryship
of their own Board. However, when in 1871 he found it
advisable to resign the post of Secretary of the Board of
Visitors, his salary was dropped back to $700. Few if any
books had been added to the library collection during the
war, so that it now contained, as it had in 1861, something
over 30,000 volumes; and there was available the two
volume author list prepared by Holcombe. In view of his
congeries of duties, Wertenbaker was unable to undertake
the compilation of the proposed subject index. But whatever
difficulties in locating books his retirement at some
future time might cause, it was now fortunate that he could
so well qualify as a human catalogue.

Though the appropriations for book purchase were
scanty, the inflow of gifts was now resumed; and there were
some new types of donors. In 1868 a visitor from New York,
Abiel Abbot Low, who had made an inspection of the
Library, handed Wertenbaker a cheque for five hundred
dollars. Three years later he sent another cheque, of like
amount. In 1873 the British Government contributed 258
volumes of the publications of the Record Office in London;
and in 1874 the students in a university class in Moral
Philosophy raised among themselves the sum of one
hundred dollars to be used in purchasing reference works

in that subject. But it was a series of benefactions beginning
in 1876, from William Wilson Corcoran, the Washington
banker who established in the capitol city the Corcoran Art
Gallery, that came like refreshing showers to those financially
arid years at the University of Virginia.

The scope of the Corcoran donations may be indicated
by the fact that his name has been given to the three University
“Schools” of Geology, History, and Philosophy and
Psychology. The gift to the Library of $5,000, $1,000 to be
available for each of the five sessions from 1876 through
1881, was the smallest of the Corcoran donations, but it had
an extraordinary effect on the library activities of the Faculty
and the Faculty Library Committee. Lists of books
needed for the new and old courses were carefully prepared
and submitted to the whole Faculty and were passed upon
with discrimination. In the last of the five sessions some leeway
was permitted, and an attempt was made to fill in
standard sets in English literature. It will be recalled that
in Jefferson's original list the material from English authors
seemed somewhat scanty in comparison with that from the
Greek and Latin classical authors. In selecting the English
writers whose works were now to be acquired in full, this
Faculty—and it was a notably distinguished group—focused
its judgment on individuals. For example, Fielding, Richardson,
and Smollett were considered at a meeting in March
1881, and the Professors had their personal votes recorded
in the minutes of the meeting. All three novelists passed this
admissions test, but Fielding got in by only one vote!

Wertenbaker had amply proved himself to be a durable
Librarian. But the years had been creeping up on him; and
the accession of new books, purchased on the Corcoran
fund, had added to his routine responsibilities. Hence it
seemed advisable to Visitors and Faculty that he should
have an assistant, and Frederick W. Page, who had been
a student in the 1940's, was appointed to the new position

in 1876. This proved a happy choice; and three years later,
when the aged Librarian was stricken with illness, Page
was able to carry on. In 1881 Page was elected Librarian;
and as an appropriate recognition of his long services,
Wertenbaker was continued as Librarian Emeritus, with
full salary, until his death in 1882.

At this stage in the history of the University of Virginia
there was injected an unpleasant, but fortunately isolated,
chapter of political control. Out of a bitter struggle over
methods of handling the state debts, there arose a so-called
Readjuster Party which for a short time gained supremacy
in Virginia. An entirely new Board of Visitors was appointed
in May 1882, and administrative officers who opposed the
Readjusters, among whom was Librarian Page, were
removed at the end of that session. Page did receive rather
fulsome praise for his conduct of his office—but the vote of
the Visitors was unanimous for a new incumbent of the
post, William Aylett Winston. Winston, who had been a
student during the session of 1850–1851 and later a clerk in
the Virginia Legislature, was likewise appointed Secretary
of the Faculty and Secretary of the Board of Visitors, and his
salary was raised to $1,000—an unpalatable method of giving
prestige to the librarianship by incorporating it in the
spoils system.

Apparently, however, the University of Virginia possessed
something of the Chinese power of assimilating a
conqueror. For the new Board and the new Librarian
settled down to conscientious performance of their duties;
and during the four years that they remained in office there
was continued growth with little outward sign of disturbance.
Gifts continued to be received by the Library; and in
that period there were several significant donations from
outside the State. In 1882 William M. Meigs of Philadelphia
contributed one hundred dollars with which to buy
books in American history; in 1883 there came a library

endowment bequest of $5,000 from Douglas H. Gordon of
Baltimore; in 1884 Arthur W. Austin of Dedham, Massachusetts,
an admirer of Thomas Jefferson, left a considerable
sum for general university uses and his private collection
of approximately 5,000 volumes for the Library; and in
1885 Judge William Archer Cocke of Sanford, Florida,
presented one of the original copies of the first constitution
of Virginia, adopted and printed in 1776. There were other
gifts during those years. But these are samples of a rare
book, of a general collection, of an endowment fund, and
of a sum available for immediate purchase.

As a result of the state elections of 1885 the Readjuster
Party went out of power, there came into being another
Board of Visitors, this, however, containing some members
with previous experience, and Winston was replaced as
Librarian—not by Frederick Page, who had meantime
become Deputy Clerk of Albemarle County, but by a
former student and war veteran, James Biscoe Baker. Baker
was also appointed Secretary of the Faculty, the salary
slipping back to $750. Two years later Page was selected
for a new office, Secretary to the Chairman of the Faculty.
In 1891 there was again a regrouping of offices, the
secretaryships of the Faculty and of its Chairman being
combined and given to Baker, who, crippled from the war,
was handicapped for the active duties of the Librarian; and
Page was asked to resume the librarianship. He then continued
in this office through the remainder of this postwar
period and on until 1903.

What had been with apprehension anticipated in Wertenbaker's
active years now came to pass; namely, the difficulty
without a catalogue, human or mechanical, of locating
books. The normal growth along with the Corcoran
purchases and the Austin gift brought in several thousand
new volumes, and the need became pressing for some sort of
a finding list. The Library Committee of the Board of

Visitors sensed this need in its annual tours of inspection.
But that Committee was inclined to insist that the cataloguing
be done by the Librarian without extra compensation.
The Library Committee of the Faculty, which was nearer
to the considerable daily use of the Library, was inclined to
press for a special undertaking supported by an additional
appropriation. By 1891 the Faculty Committee, no longer
insisting on its own capability, recommended that a member
of the Faculty visit other libraries in order to observe
acceptable methods of cataloguing. This recommendation
appears not to have been adopted. Nevertheless knowledge
of new methods was becoming current, and in 1893 there
emerged a suggestion in favor of a card catalogue. This
would of course involve the cataloguing of the whole collection
which had now reached a total of about 53,000
volumes—not a rapid growth from the 30,000 volumes of
1861, but resulting in a haystack large enough to conceal
a needle. During the session of 1894–1895 Miss Helen W.
Rice, an “educated librarian,” was imported from Massachusetts
to begin an author catalogue on cards, and under
the direction of the Faculty Library Committee the task
was well started. In June 1895 the Visitors had been persuaded
sufficiently to move them to appropriate $500 “to
continue the card catalogue”; and in August of that year
the minutes of the Board of Visitors offer a diverting
sidelight by the approval of the use of $15.65 to be drawn
from the regular library appropriation to enable Miss Rice's
successor, Mr. R. I. Park, to pay carfare to enable him to
study the systems in use in the Boston libraries. Thus this
period was concluding like the previous one with definite
progress in the cataloguing problem—and the new methods
were also an advance over the task previously set for
Thomas Holcombe.

Meantime the circulation services were expanding. The
student enrollment had not yet reached the total of 1856–

1857, and the hours of opening amounted to six a day on
weekdays, instead of the seven in the 1850's. But the location
on the main floor of a reference collection was started
in 1878, and in the following year there began experimentation
with the use of books reserved for collateral reading.
In 1880 plans were perfected for a summer course; and
Frederick Page had inaugurated in 1878 a form of correspondence
reference service.

This correspondence reference service was a step
towards extending the usefulness of the University Library.
The Board of Visitors was still opposed to any general
policy of lending books outside of the university community
—though its attitude had become somewhat relaxed in the
case of nearby residents, particularly if they happened to be
former members of the Board of Visitors! The Faculty was
disposed to be more liberal in this matter of the use of the
Library; and in such differences of opinion between these
two bodies, there is a still further similarity of these years
with the prewar period.

For one act of conservatism on the part of the Board of
Visitors we may well be thankful. The possession of the
Lee Papers continued to be a responsibility that caused
uneasiness. Occasional requests were received from persons
who wished to examine them, some with the intention of
using the material for publication; and there was a troublesome
realization that more effort should be expended in
making them accessible. In 1881 a member of the Faculty
suggested that they be sold to the Government of the
United States for deposit in the Library of Congress, and
that the money received be used for books to be designated
as the Richard Henry Lee Memorial. This proposition was
discussed at length. Finally by a majority vote the Faculty
recommended this procedure to the Board of Visitors. But
on the advice of their Library Committee the Visitors
promptly expressed disapproval, stating that they believed

these manuscripts “to be especially appropriate & valuable
to the archives of the University.”

Another source for differences of opinion was in evidence
through the greater part of this period—there are a
score or more of references in the minutes of the Board of
Visitors and of the Faculty. As between these two bodies,
the conservatism in this case was, so to speak, on the other
toe. For this was the lithesome theme of dancing in the
Rotunda.

When social events were resumed in the decade after
the war, a ball held on the evening of the final exercises
of each session came to be a popular event in the graduation
programme. As the years went on, student organizations
arranged for “germans” on the mornings of commencement
week. The conflict in opinion was to whether these
dances should be held in the library room. The Visitors
were inclined to favor them, and the Faculty and Librarian
Wertenbaker to be opposed. By 1890 the point at issue had
reached an acute stage. When agreement was reached, it
was in the nature of a compromise: that the Final Ball
could continue to be held in the Rotunda, but that other
dances were to be excluded from that building.

The records of these discussions maintain the usual
austere tone of the official minutes. But one suspects a
stray gleam or two in the eyes of these learned Professors
and judicial Visitors. The otherwise consistently firm stand
taken by the Faculty was in a single instance broken when
in April 1892 it was a group of young ladies that petitioned
for the use of the Library for a “german.” The Faculty did
not refer this to the Visitors, but promptly yielded, saving
its face only by the conditions “that the time be limited to
one o'clock, a.m., and that the expenses incurred be paid
by the parties using the room.” Can it possibly have any
bearing that 1892 was a leap year? It may also be noted that
the deft manner in which both sides used the same argument

is indicative of the continued admiration for Jefferson's
central building. The Visitors had argued that, since
“the Annual Ball is one of the chief items of attraction for
the session, it is peculiarly proper that the handsomest hall
at our command should be used for the occasion.” But on
the question of morning dances, the Faculty voiced opposition
because “by allowing such an employment of its most
elegant and attractive apartment, the University sacrifices
to the wishes of a few young people the advantage of
exhibiting to enlightened and cultivated visitors the most
interesting portion of the Institution.”

This chief structure of Jefferson's architectural plan for
the University of Virginia attained to an age of three score
and ten years with comparatively minor ailments. The leak
in the dome which was reported during the war of 1861–
1865 had resulted from a prewar device of giving force to
the water supply by attaching the tanks to the top of the
Rotunda. Faulty construction of the tanks led to considerable
damage to some of the stored library material; and
after several years of tinkering, the tanks were removed.
The pressing need for additional space for instructional
purposes in the prosperous 1850's had also resulted in an
ungainly addition, the Annex, erected just north of the
Rotunda and connected with it by a portico. This was a
structure which in its architectural effect would surely have
grieved the Founder. In fact, a grandson of Jefferson's,
Thomas Jefferson Randolph, who was at that time a member
of the Board of Visitors and was later to be its Rector,
criticized the Annex not only for its appearance but also
for the additional fire hazard which the new building
created. But this time there was no blending of practical
usefulness and severe economy with beauty of design. The
warning against the danger of fire was not ignored, however;
and in 1886 the concern caused by a conflagration in
the pavilion nearest the Rotunda on the west side resulted

in the purchase of some fire equipment which was stored in
a small building back of West Range.

The space gained by the Annex had been for classrooms,
laboratories, and an assembly hall, not, except incidentally,
for library purposes. But there was also increased need for
library space. Two tendencies that were emerging in 1861
had gained marked emphasis by 1895.

It has been noted that by 1861 there had been tentative
moves to transfer small groups of library material to locations
outside of the Rotunda. This tendency increased
during the postwar period. The student reading room for
which a home had been found in 1861 was put on a more
permanent basis in 1875. In 1869 a mathematics reading
room was started in connection with a classroom in the
Annex. In 1880 there is mention of a Professors' reading
club. These were reading rooms. But it was the need of
space in which to shelve the attractive Austin books that
seems to have weakened such objections as there may have
been to any scattering of the general library collection; and
by 1886 the Board of Visitors had gone on record as willing
to permit transfer of specified volumes to laboratories and
Professors' classrooms. The Board was even disposed to
weigh the Congressional Record in the balance and to find
it—well, wanting storage space. Consequently by 1895 there
were four separate library collections: the Astronomy
Library, established in 1886 in the Leander McCormick
Observatory; the Biology and Agriculture Library, transferred
in 1890 to the Biological Laboratory; the Chemistry
Library, separately located in 1885 in the Chemistry Laboratory
west of West Range; and the Law Library, moved
in 1894 to a room near the Law Department classrooms
in the Annex.

As for the doubt whether the Rotunda itself, however
much admired, would ultimately be adequate for the purposes
of a general library, though this was but a suspicion

in 1861, by 1895 it had reached a distressing certainty.
Space had been gained by the transfer of the four subject
collections, by the addition of new shelving, and by rearrangements
in the library room. But the possibility of such
measures of relief appeared to be limited. By June 1894
the Faculty was ready to cut the Gordian knot by recommending
first that there be an entirely new general library
building and second that there be a fund for library maintenance.
The amount proposed for the building fund was
$50,000, to be raised by a campaign among the Alumni;
and it was suggested that when the new building should be
completed, the present library room be transformed into
a memorial hall for the Alumni. As for the maintenance
fund, it was proposed that $30,000 be taken from the portion
of the Fayerweather Fund which had recently been
allocated to the University of Virginia and used for the
erection of new dormitories, the rentals from which should
annually be applied to the purchase of books and periodicals
for the Library.

With the surprising proposal that a fund be raised for
a new general library building the Board of Visitors found
itself in agreement; and a statement advocating such a fund
and signed by the Rector of the Board and the Chairman of
the Faculty was presented to the Society of the Alumni
during the final exercises of 1894. That statement, however,
made no mention of the maintenance fund or of the
future use of the present library room; and it transferred
the memorial idea to the proposed new building, which was
to be called the Alumni Memorial Library, in honor of
those who had fallen in the War of 1861–1865. The Alumni
Bulletin of the University of Virginia had started publication
in May of this year, and its second number, for July,
broadcast the text of the statement. There was some
response, the first contribution coming from the distinguished
alumnus, Thomas Nelson Page. But as had happened

before and was to happen again, the library project
fell afoul of a general financial depression. A condition of
suspended animation ensued; and though the Board of
Visitors at its meeting in June 1895 offered the further
proposal that there be appointed a supervising committee
of nine, three from the Visitors, three from the Faculty,
and three from the Alumni, which should choose an active
agent to solicit subscriptions on a commission basis, the
lack of enthusiastic response made it increasingly evident
that the time was not ripe for such a campaign.

3. THE ROTUNDA FIRE

Such was the situation at the end of October 1895. The
last Sunday of that month was clear and crisp, with a stiff
breeze blowing from the Blue Ridge in the northwest. That
was the direction from which the Northern soldiers had
come thirty years before. They were known enemies. But
of this breeze no hostile possibilities were suspected—and,
in any case, no anxious group of university defenders would
have ventured forth to stay the winds.

Mr. Jefferson's University Library, now grown from
8,000 to over 56,000 volumes, was for the most part in
the Rotunda. Jutting northward from that original circular
building was the Annex, a rectangular structure of three
stories and a basement, approximately one hundred by fifty
feet in dimensions, its plain exterior adorned with pillars
at each end, the pillars at the south end supporting an
extension of its roof line to the circular band beneath the
Rotunda dome. Four years before this date, the Chapel
west of the Annex had been completed. Between these two
buildings and reaching towards the road in front of the
university grounds was “the pond”—a small sheet of shallow
water.

This was the familiar scene which met the eyes of a
student, Mason Foshee, who was leisurely returning from

a late Sunday morning breakfast. But not familiar were
the whiffs of smoke curling out from the eaves at the
northern end of the Annex and whipped back by the
breeze. After a moment of uncomprehending wonderment,
Foshee called to two other students who were nearby, and
all three with shouts of “Fire!” dashed off to find old Henry
Martin, the janitor and bell ringer. Uncle Henry was soon
located, and he began the violent ringing of the college bell,
at that time suspended in the south portico of the Rotunda.
The students, their numbers rapidly increased, sped on to
the fire house behind West Range. Breaking open the door,
they manned the ropes and pulled the diminutive equipment
to the edge of the pond. There was no suction pump,
however; and the best that could be done was to attach the
hose to a fire plug north of the Annex, and to rely on the
meagre force which the hydrant stream would yield. It was
soon evident that the moment had passed for the fire to be
extinguished by such means, and the fast growing crowd
turned its efforts to the saving of the contents of the building.
Led by action rather than command, excited groups
rescued much detached equipment, particularly from the
lower parts of the Annex. One such group, with which was
Raleigh Minor, Professor of Law, carried to safety practically
the whole law library collection.

Meantime the flames, aided along the roof by the wind,
were sweeping towards the Rotunda. William Echols, who
in addition to being Adjunct Professor of Applied Mathematics
was in charge of buildings and grounds, had begun
a series of efforts to blast away with dynamite the connection
between the Annex and the Rotunda, efforts which marked
him as the outstanding hero of a day replete with daring
deeds. The pillars supporting the extension of the roof
between the two structures were shattered. But the roof
did not fall; and along it leaped the now raging fire into
the gallery circling above the general library room.

Within the Rotunda the rescue squads, a toiling medley
of professors, students, ladies clad in their Sunday best, and
citizens who had hurried away from the church services in
Charlottesville, were strenuously carrying out whatever
seemed movable. It was a pandemonium of shouted directions,
breaking glass, falling timbers, and stifling smoke,
the whole scene lighted horribly by spurts of yellow flame
from the gallery above. Yet in the seemingly utter confusion
there was evidence of ready skill linked with well-nigh superhuman
strength. Such was the removal from its base and
down the narrow circular stairway of the Alexander Galt
statue of Jefferson—seven feet high and of solid marble.
The portraits that had adorned the library room had been
laboriously carried out and left on the Lawn, to gaze blankly
at the sky or from queer angles at this strange outdoors.
Thousands of the books on the main floor, many of them
reference books, were borne in unwieldy armfuls and
dropped in disorderly piles on the grass. Some were pitched
out from the windows above, and caught in sheets stretched
below. But of what was in the gallery little could be saved.
From the very start the flames had outsped the efforts to
stay them or to salvage their prey; and now orders had to be
given forbidding further entrance into the Rotunda.

It had indeed become necessary to give attention to the
two wings that linked the Rotunda with the pavilions on
East and West Lawn—at that period there were no parallel
wings extending from the northern part of the Rotunda.
One of these southern wings, that reaching toward West
Lawn, also contained library material, the periodicals and
books of the students' reading room. The effort now was
to demolish these wings; and the pavilions beyond were
being covered with blankets drenched by a rapidly organized
bucket and pitcher brigade—when suddenly the hostile
wind turned friendly and veered, to blow from the southward.
Meanwhile telegrams had brought fire equipment

from Staunton and Lynchburg, and more was on its way
from Richmond. The weary fire fighters now had their
chance to turn the tide of battle—and by early afternoon
the conflagration was under control.

But it was a different scene from that which had been
leisurely viewed by Student Foshee a few hours before. The
Annex had been gutted, one wall had fallen, and the others
were visibly tottering. The dome of the Rotunda had
crashed in; and inside the circular walls was a smoking mass
from which fitful flames arose as from the crater of a
smouldering volcano. But the stout walls were firmly standing,
and on the lawn side the six tall pillars, which Jefferson
had viewed on his last visit to the University, were still
erect. Scattered among the piles of books heaped upon the
grass there were only a few hundred of the volumes which
Jefferson had originally chosen. But resting safely on
mattresses snatched by students from their beds was the
Jefferson statue, prone for the moment, but undamaged
save for a small crack in the formal drapery.

A few weeks before this October Sunday, Librarian Page
had written for the Alumni Bulletin the story of the founding
of the University Library and of its more recent history.
That day the news of the fire had not reached him until late
in its course. He hurried up the hill of the Rotunda, with
mounting dismay as he neared the appalling scene. When
he peered in at the familiar entrance, further attempts at
salvage had been forbidden. This home of his later years—
in the next month he would pass his sixty-ninth birthday—
where his orderly habits and his love of books had brought
him daily joy in service, was an inferno. What in his historical
article he had affectionately termed “Our Library”
was now a reality of the past. The present was a terrifying
nightmare. Death had been merciful to William Wertenbaker.
But to Frederick Page, here was stark tragedy.