University of Virginia Library

II. Three Foreign Schemes

Before the end of the eighteenth century, there were
three foreign schemes to usher higher education into
Virginia; but only two of them aroused Jefferson's interest;
and only one obtained his practical assistance. The
earliest, the project of Quesnay de Beaurepaire, which was
of a very ambitious and grandiose character, received a

douche of cold water from his pen. Jefferson, at this
time, was residing in Paris as Minister to the Court of
Versailles. Quesnay, before setting up a school in Richmond,
with rather mixed departments of study, had been
an officer in the American army under Lafayette's command.
He was the grandson of a man who had acquired
such fame in the medical profession as to be appointed
physician to Louis XV; and had also won a high repute
as a philosopher and an economist. Quesnay had inherited
a taste for science, but like so many young Frenchmen
of his own age of good social standing, and graceful
if not solid accomplishments, had been prompted by the
spirit of adventure to accompany the French contingent
to the United States, where, during several campaigns,
he seems to have served in the capacity of an engineer.
His health broke down before the close of the war; but
he recovered sufficiently to travel widely through the
different States. He was so much impressed by all that
he saw, that he determined later to found, on the cornerstone
of his Richmond school, a grand Academy of Arts
and Sciences; and he is reported to have spoken of the
project for the first time while visiting John Page at
Rosewell, on the York. Page was so much delighted
with the plan that he encouraged him to expect financial
aid, should he be able to engage the faculty indispensable
for carrying on the work of the Academy. Subscriptions
amounting to sixty thousand francs were soon received;
a site for the building was chosen in Richmond, which
had been selected as the place for the new seat of learning;
and the edifice was actually erected in the most fashionable
quarter of the town. The foundation stone was
laid in June, 1786, in the midst of a great multitude of
interested spectators. Six councillors were nominated
by the contributors to the building fund, and as they
were the most influential citizens of the community,—
one of them being John Harvie, the mayor,—the author
of the project had a right to look forward to local encouragement
and assistance in the future.

Quesnay, justly elated with the progress already made,
sailed for France to secure the patronage of influential
persons in Paris, and the countenance of the Royal Government.
He pushed his scheme in the most illustrious
circles of the French capital with energy and address;
visited the studios of artists, the closets of scientists, the
sâalons of leaders of fashion, and the reception-rooms of
public officials; and everywhere, his plans were received
with expressions of sympathy and promises of financial
support. Men standing at the summit in all the great
departments of contemporary life,—literature, science,
politics and society,—graciously permitted their names
to be entered in the already voluminous list of associates.
Lafayette, Beaumarchais, Montalembert, Houdon, Condorcet,
Lavoisier, Malesherbes, Vernet, La Rochefoucauld,
—statesmen, playwrights, warriors, sculptors,
chemists, painters, wits, the most brilliant names in
France,—were enrolled among the number.

But there was one person in that splendid city who
held back from the scheme with a discouraging lack of
enthusiasm, and that man was the very one, perhaps,
whose favorable influence, and whose active co-operation,
were the most important for its practical success. On
January 6, 1788, Jefferson wrote to Quesnay in the following
language: "I feared it (the plan) was too extensive
for the poverty of the country. You remove the
objection by observing it is to extend to several States.
Whether professors itinerant from one State to another
may succeed I am unable to say, having never known an
experiment of it. The fear that those professors might

be disappointed in their expectation, has determined me
not to intermeddle in the business at all. Knowing how
much people going to America overrate the resources of
living there, I have made a point never to encourage any
person to go there, that I may not partake of the censure
which may follow this disappointment. I beg you,
therefore, not to alter your plan in any part of it on
my account, but permit me to pursue mine of being absolutely
neutral."

What were the details of the plan on which Jefferson
commented so coldly and so distantly in these remarkable
words? The Richmond Academy of Sciences was intended
to be, in spirit at least, a trans-Atlantic rival of
the great French Academy. The central organization
was to be placed in the capital of Virginia, while there
were to be co-ordinate branches in the cities of Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and New York. The list of studies was
to embrace foreign languages, mathematics, physics, design,
architecture, painting, sculpture, astronomy, geography,
chemistry, botany, anatomy, and natural history.
There was to be a large faculty on the ground; and in
addition to the instruction to be given by them, the pupils
were to have the benefit of the learning of one hundred
and seventy-five non-resident associates, eminent in both
America and Europe for their acquirements in the provinces
of their respective pursuits. Experts in every
branch of natural science especially were to be dispatched
to Richmond from Paris, not only to teach these pupils,
but also to advise the corporations and stock companies
that were about to invest in the hitherto unexploited resources
of the country. In the extensive researches
which this would call for, the young men would assist,
and thus not only garner up valuable knowledge, but, by
turning in their wages, increase the sum already lying in

the treasury of the Academy. The scientific and literary
societies of both hemispheres were to be kept informed
of the work of the institution by correspondence,
and also through an annual publication. Specimens of
the flora and fauna of the North American continent
were to be collected and sent to Europe to adorn its different
museums and cabinets.

There was at least one feature of this scheme that
justified Jefferson in declining to enter without reserve
into the efforts to carry it out; it was probably rendered
impracticable, as he said, by the scale on which it was
projected. But why was it that he failed to offer a single
suggestion towards lopping off the worst of its faults
in order to reduce it to a shape that might make it workable?
It was very unlike him to look at such a scheme
with coldness, if there was any room whatever for hope
of success. Did he jump beyond its apparently bald infeasibility
and disapprove of it because it locked horns
with the plan of a university which he was undoubtedly
pondering over at this time, and which he had already
perhaps decided to build, if possible, in the shadow of
Monticello? Was the choice of Richmond, an hundred
miles away, as the site of the new Academy, the true reason
for an indifference which he had never before shown,
and was never again to show, about any university scheme
brought to his attention? The plan of transporting the
College of Geneva to Virginia, which arose a few years
later, was seemingly as impracticable in its character as
Quesnay's plan, and yet it secured Jefferson's earnest and
energetic support. There is no reason to doubt that he
expected this college to be re-established in visiting distance
of his own home at least. If he was really influenced
by personal reasons in both cases, it was due to
his perfectly correct impression that, if a university was

to be founded in Virginia, it would have more chance of
succeeding under his own direct patronage and supervision
than if left to the inadvertence and inexperience
of foreigners, settled an hundred miles from Monticello.

The scheme of a transplanted French Academy fell
through, not because it was impracticable, as it possibly
was, but because the hour was unfavorable for its success.
It did not pass beyond the selection of a course of
studies, and the nomination of Dr. Jean Rouvelle as the
instructor in natural history and chemistry; but there is
no reason to presume that it would not have been at least
organized had not the French Revolution, like a cyclone,
been coming up, with all the distracting influences that
went before its actual outburst. Socially and financially,
France was in no state to give such a scheme the continuous
support which it required, and naturally the scheme
itself, as well as its author, finally sank into oblivion.
But although it had never been put to the test of actual
working, it yet left a perceptible impression on Jeffer
son's views in spite of his refusal to encourage it. Of
all the plans for higher education canvassed in Virginia
before the incorporation of the State University, this
had the most affinity with the noble plan which he set in
operation in 1825. The scientific bias that so conspicuously
distinguished it was the one with which he was
most enthusiastically in sympathy; and it was also the one
that he was most anxious to give to his own seat of learning.
And in addition, he adopted for that institution the
system of separate schools which Quesnay had expected
to introduce at Richmond.

We have seen that Jefferson refused to countenance
Quesnay's projected academy because he was afraid lest
the foreign professors, disappointed in their venture,
should turn on him in censure, and yet, in 1794, eight

years later, he warmly encouraged the faculty of the
College of Geneva to remove that seat of learning to
Virginia. He did not seem to worry about the risk of
their criticism should the purposes for which alone they
wished to emigrate, fail. There was no difference in
spirit at least between the scheme of Quesnay and the
scheme of D'Ivernois. It is true that there was a turgidity
about Quesnay's that was absent from D'Ivernois's;
but this inflation would certainly have passed away
under the influence of the practical Americans who would
have co-operated with the Frenchman. The Genevans,
on the other hand, were handicapped by that form of
sectarianism which was most irksome to Jefferson's latitudinarian
sympathies: Calvinism; but he seems to have
been willing to wink at this drawback, as well as at the
professors' inability to lecture in any language but that
of their own country. It must, however, be borne in
mind that these men were an organized body of high reputation
in all scientific and literary spheres; and several
of them had been thrown with him personally during his
sojourn in Paris. It was this fact that led D'Ivernois,
when his faculty had become dissatisfied with their environment
in Switzerland, to consult him by letter as to
the wisdom of uprooting their famous college and replanting
it in the United States. Jefferson promptly submitted
this proposal to certain influential members of the
General Assembly, at the same time expressing the hope
that provision would be made out of the public treasury
to meet the expense of the transfer; but he was quickly
condemned to disappointment, for the reply was returned
that the State was not in the financial shape to take on
so burdensome a charge. It was asserted too that no
pupils would be found who could understand lectures in
the French tongue; and furthermore, that this scheme,
like Quesnay's, was out of all just proportion to the population
of the community to be served.

All these objections had very properly been considered
by Jefferson to be of great weight when he was discountenancing
the Richmond Academy, but he was now so
much in earnest that, when the Legislature failed to respond
to his wishes, he turned for aid to General Washington,
who, having been presented by that body with
stock in the Potomac and James River Companies, had
announced his intention of giving it all away for the
promotion of higher education. Jefferson pressed upon
him the point, that, as the Treasury of Virginia would
pay the dividends on this stock, this State should have the
preference in the selection of the site for the National
University which Washington had so long carried in
his thoughts. This site might be chosen in the vicinity
of the new Capital, if the influence of such a centre
should be decided to be essential to its dignity and success.
Washington at once disclosed that he was not in
sympathy with Jefferson's suggestion. He was convinced,
like the General Assembly, that the restriction
of the lectures to the French languages would destroy
the usefulness of the Genevan faculty in Virginia; and
moreover, as that faculty disapproved of the popular
freedom now enjoyed by the French, it was not probable
that they would find themselves in harmony with
their environment in the New World. But he was so
far impressed by Jefferson's appeal that he gave the
shares in the James River Company belonging to him
to the college at Lexington, with the understanding that
such of its students as should desire to obtain a more advanced
education should seek it in that National University
in the Capital which he intended endowing with
his shares in the Potomac Company.

When Jefferson reported to D'Ivernois his failure to
enlist support for his plan, either public or private, an
echo of regret vibrated in the tone of his letter: "I
should have seen with peculiar satisfaction," he wrote,
"the establishment of such a mass of science in my country,
and should probably have been tempted to approach
myself to it by procuring a residence in its neighborhood
at those seasons of the year when the operations of agriculture
are less active and interesting." So far as can be
discerned, the scheme of the Geneva College left no impression
on his plans for his own university beyond perhaps
satisfying him that foreign professors would not
object to a permanent appointment in Virginia; and it
was, no doubt, this conviction which, many years afterwards,
led him, through Mr. Gilmer, to invite certain
English scholars and scientists to occupy chairs in the
seat of learning which he had founded at Charlottesville.
But he was careful then to introduce no instructors from
the continent,—unless Dr. Blaettermann, who was residing
in England, can be taken to be such,—perhaps, because
he recalled the objections which had been urged,
in 1794, by the General Assembly and by Washington
in opposition to the College of Geneva.

An influence that bore more directly on Jefferson's desire
for a system of higher education in Virginia, had its
spring with Du Pont de Nemours, whom he had known
familiarly while the American minister in Paris. Du
Pont reached the United States in 1800, and during his
sojourn there, was an acceptable visitor at Monticello
on numerous occasions. This accomplished Frenchman,
who had already given much meditation to the subject
in France, drew up a treatise on popular education, which,
at this time, was deeply engaging the thoughts of some
of the most distinguished men in America. Instruction

in the highest courses, as well as in the primary and secondary,
was discussed in this memorable volume. These
advanced courses were to cover, besides other ground, all
the varied topics of professional and technical education.
The different institutions, representing every grade, from
common school to college, in which instruction was to be
given, were to be scattered here and there about the country
at large; but the apex of the whole system was to be
the National University in Washington. This grand
central institution was to consist of four distinct schools:
(1) medicine; (2) mines; (3) social science and legislation;
and (4) higher mathematics. These schools
were to assemble in one large building, but to remain
always entirely separate. There was to be erected, in
addition, an imposing national library, and also a vast
national museum, with apartments reserved for the sessions
of a National Philosophical Society. This plan of
Du Pont was, no doubt, suggested by the system which
already prevailed in Paris; but it was also modeled somewhat
on the scheme incorporated in the Bill of 1779 for
the diffusion of knowledge among the Virginian people.
It brought up to Jefferson ideas that he had already acquired
by his residence abroad rather than ideas newly imported,
which he had not turned over before in his reflections
on the subject of education in all its departments.

It was one of the most obvious peculiarities of all
Jefferson's schemes for the advancement of education
that he confined their practical, though not their theoretical,
scope to the inhabitants of his native State. The National
University of Washington and Du Pont made no
appeal to him, perhaps because he feared lest such a seat
of learning should nourish those principles of consolidation,
which, as we have seen, he detested so vehemently.

It was possibly one reason for his turning a cold face
towards Quesnay that the Richmond Academy was not
intended to stand alone, but to possess branches in at least
three of the States north of the Potomac. To a clearly
defined extent, this institution was to have a national
bearing, a characteristic that was absent from the scheme
of the Swiss college, which he received with such prompt
and unreserved encouragement.