 | The Old Dominion |  |
I
NO stranger story of self-sacrifice and devotion
to a high ideal in the face of trials
which to a lesser genius might have appeared insurmountable,
and of disappointments which
to less courage must have proved fatal, has ever
been written than that which recounts the devotion
of the last twenty years of the life of
Thomas Jefferson to the establishment of a
great University.
Any proper account of the University of Virginia
must take into consideration the story of
its establishment and the history of its work,
since it realized the ideal of its great founder,
Thomas Jefferson.
After a life devoted largely to public service,
in which had been crowded almost as many
lot, and in which he reaped as much of the reward
of high office and public appreciation as
almost any man has ever had, when Thomas
Jefferson had reached the highest point in the
continuous climb from which all the kingdoms
of the world and the needs of them fell within
his ken, he saw one great need of the American
People—Enlightenment—and addressed himself
to it.
His far-reaching mind recognized that what
was needed to carry through the plan which the
fathers had formed for the good of the Nation
was a comprehensive system of Education. He
had a vast and varied experience which extended
over this country and Europe, and he
was as familiar with the great classical institutions
of the Old World as he was with his alma
mater, William and Mary College.
His principle was: "True knowledge and
Freedom are indissolubly linked together."
It appeared to him quite clearly that what
the people stood most in need of was a system
of education that should cover the whole field of
human knowledge and embrace within the range
of its benefactions every class.
With a breadth of scope which ranged far beyond
that of most of his contemporaries, he
he foresaw destined for his country. It was
this comprehensive sweep of intellect that made
him seize the opportunity to secure the vast territory
of Louisiana, which Napoleon, with a view
to raising a rival power to England in the Western
Hemisphere, offered him. Stickler for
strict adherence to the Constitution as he was,
when this supreme chance came, with all its
possibilities for the future, he did not hesitate to
seize it. That the Constitution contained no explicit
provision for such an emergency did not
stagger him. But he met the situation by asking
for an amendment approving and ratifying
his action. Thus it is, that we celebrated recently
the addition to our national domain of a
territory which not only contains a dozen States,
but gave this country control of the great West
and enabled this nation to realize Napoleon's
design and dominate this continent.
With this same spaciousness of design Jefferson
proceeded to build his Institution of The
Higher Learning. He would make it a University
in fact as well as in title. With a vision far
in advance of most of his friends, he contemplated
a "system of general instruction, which
would reach every description of our citizens
from the richest to the poorest," on which this
he declared in 1818, "as it was the earliest, so it
will be the latest of all the public concerns in
which I shall permit myself to take an interest."
His aim was to make his system broad enough
for all. Only two years before his university was
established he wrote his lieutenant, Joseph C.
Cabell, who ably seconded him in his efforts,
that were it necessary to give up either the primaries
or the universities he would abandon the
latter, "because it was better to have the whole
people respectably enlightened than to have a
few in a high state of science and the many in
ignorance."
As early as 1779 he introduced into the General
Assembly of the State of Virginia a bill for
the more gradual diffusion of knowledge; he
would bring the school-house within the reach
of every man's door. His bill provided not only
for the popular foundation of common schools,
but for the free training of all free children, male
and female, for three years in reading, writing,
and arithmetic. This proposed admission of
girls preceded by ten years, as Professor Herbert
A. Adams has pointed out, the admission of girls
to the common schools of Boston, thus placing
Jefferson as the pioneer in this field of female
education.
Next above the common school, according to
Jefferson's proposed plan, were to be the grammar
or classical schools—"free schools" in the
sense to which old Sir William Berkeley referred
when he hoped there would be "no free schools
in Virginia these three hundred years." Here
Latin, Greek, English, Geography, and higher
Mathematics were to be taught. Over all, according
to his first plan, the College of William
and Mary, his alma mater, was to have a general
control. Thus, the classical academies,
middle schools, or colleges, as Jefferson afterward
called them, would centre in the higher
education, as did the common schools.[1]
One of the motives which actuated him was,
undoubtedly, that he felt that the Virginian
theory of government was sounder than that
promulgated at the North. A reason which
influenced him was his objection to being what
he called "a beggar for the crumbs which fell
from the tables of the North." He offered as an
argument the fact that many young men from the
to him that one-half of the students of that institution
were Virginians. Education at that time,
even the higher education, was under the spell of
formalism. The principal colleges were subject
to some Church whose teachings influenced the
curriculum. It was Thomas Jefferson's idea to
do away with this subordination—to destroy this
cramping formalism and to emancipate the mind
from every form of Church domination. At that
time Princeton was a sectarian institution, as
William and Mary, while no longer one, was at
least under the influence of the Episcopal
Church. Jefferson, however, as he boldly declared,
had "sworn on the altar of the Most High
God hostility to every form of tyranny over the
human mind," and held that a great University
should belong to no Church and be dominated
by no sectarian Creed.
Undoubtedly, one of the basic principles on
which Jefferson proposed to establish his university
was the principle of enlightened freedom
—freedom of thought and freedom of action, as
far as might be consonant with the welfare of
the greatest number. And his love of freedom
extended to that higher form—the freedom of
the mind. It was his profound belief that if
this principle could be established as the foundation-stone
be a boon and a blessing to the entire country
and to all generations. With this steadily in
view, he undertook to found a university which
should avail itself of the experience of the Past,
and withal should not only subserve the ever-widening
influence of the Present, but should
lead in the development of the Future.
The first step would appear to have been the
founding of an academy in Virginia, modelled
on the French Academy, through the efforts of
a zealous young Frenchman, Quesney de Beaurepaire,
to whom the idea had been suggested by
John Page, of Rosewell, one of the scholarly Virginians.
It was this far-reaching scheme which
gave, at least, its character to the university, when
it had attained its full conception and completion
in Jefferson's mind; for the plan of the academy,
in part, was that of the later institution.[2]
But preceding this came the influence on the
youthful mind of Jefferson, while at William and
Mary, of his old Professor of Mathematics,
Emerson, that "an institution is the lengthened
shadow of one man," traces, step by step, the
painful way in which Jefferson toiled up the
laborious steep.
First came his own conception, and then came
its fertilizing through the French influence which
at one time brought him so much criticism, but
which proved so broadening in the end.
The plan, however, of linking his new university
to his old alma mater passed away as
Jefferson's idea expanded. William and Mary
College was by tradition closely associated with
an Established Church, and an Established
Church had become very unpopular in Virginia.
Indeed, the old Church had been disestablished
by churchmen, one of the leaders in the movement
being Jefferson himself. By the charter
of the old college a certain association with the
Episcopal Church still existed. And Jefferson did
not propose to have any such influence in his plan.
As early as 1794, Jefferson, working in the
Virginia Legislature to make provision for the
transfer to Virginia of the faculty of the College
of Geneva, who had expressed their willingness
to come. It was, however, too large a scheme
for Virginia; and then he undertook to connect
Washington with the project of bringing over
the faculty of the Swiss College, a daring project
which Washington overthrew with a few sentences
packed with that common sense which
was his characteristic. He showed the disadvantage
of transplanting an entire faculty rather
than the best men from a number of institutions,
and the importance of creating an American
spirit for the American institution, rather than
of taking over a foreign spirit.
As a part of this general plan Jefferson, in 1783,
organized the Albemarle Academy in his own
county, and here at once his breadth manifested
itself in his efforts to secure the services of some
learned Scotchman as principal.
By the beginning of the new century Jefferson
had got well along with his outline for a
university and in his correspondence with Dr.
Joseph Priestly he disclosed it and begged the
assistance of that eminent and exiled scholar.[3]
The project for an academy in Albemarle
County, though the academy was chartered by
the Legislature in 1803, "remained on paper
only," as Mr. Adams shows, until after Mr.
Jefferson's election to the Board of Trustees,
March 23, 1814. Says Mr. Adams, "From
that election dates the beginning of the development
process of the Albemarle Academy into
the University of Virginia." It is related that
the trustees of this academy were in session discussing
the possibility of making it a reality
when Mr. Jefferson happened to ride by. He
was called in and consulted. On which he declared
that though they had not been able to
make an academy succeed they might establish
a college. And before he left the room he had
subscribed $1,000 to the plan, and under his
inspiring example $8,000 had been subscribed.
Thus, this academy was merged into Central
Adams suggests, "lurked the idea of the centralization
of the higher education." With this
small step Thomas Jefferson began the first
university in the country. It was this great development,
founded upon only an idea which,
according to Mr. Adams, proves the extraordinary
ability of Thomas Jefferson.
In 1806, Mr. Joseph C. Cabell, a cultured
young Virginian, returned from abroad, and
he and Jefferson met, In 1807 Jefferson wrote
him not to waste his energies in trying to patch
up a failing and decaying institution, but to
employ them in founding a new university
worthy of the first State in the Union. At his
instance the scholarly young Virginian entered
the Virginia Assembly, and from this time, as
Jefferson's able lieutenant, devoted his life to
building up the University of Virginia.
On the 14th of February, 1816, the efforts
of Jefferson and his lieutenant were crowned
with success to the extent of getting from the
Legislature an act to merge the Albemarle
Academy into Central College. Under this act
the Governor of the Commonwealth was to be
the patron, or president, with power to appoint
a board of six visitors to govern the institution,
and this is substantially the form of government
present time. The story runs that the spot
first selected by Jefferson for his institution was
owned by a man who was so hostile to him politically
that he refused to sell to him at any
price, and the present site of the university was
then selected.
The first Board of Visitors to the new college
were Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James
Monroe, Joseph C. Cabell, David Watson, and
J. H. Cocke. The plan for the new college
was drawn by Jefferson and the corner-stone
was laid October 6, 1817, in the presence of
James Monroe, then President of the United
States, and of Thomas Jefferson and James
Madison, ex-Presidents. Thus, three Presidents
of the United States presided at its birth. The
only endowment for the institution was the
money which had been received from the sale
of the two glebes of the two parishes of St. Ann
and Fredericksville, in Albemarle County, the
small subscription already mentioned, and the
devotion of Thomas Jefferson and his friends
to the idea of higher education. But devotion
to a high ideal is a priceless endowment.
Ten days after the charter of Central College
was created Mercer's bill was passed within
two hours of being introduced, calling for a
should embrace in it a university to be called
the University of Virginia, and such additional
colleges and schools as should diffuse education
throughout the commonwealth. The feeling in
favor of the higher education was beginning to
crystallize.
The first meeting of the Board of Visitors of
the new Central College took place on May 5,
1817. On this board, as stated, were Mr. Jefferson,
Mr. Madison, and Mr. Monroe.
As the plan, however, unfolded itself by which
the Central College was to be elevated into a
real university, a new difficulty arose in the
claims of the western district of the State to
have the university established beyond the Blue
Ridge in the Valley of Virginia, Staunton and
Lexington each claiming the honor of becoming
its seat.
By this time the spirit in which Jefferson
labored had spread widely. Governor Nicholas
as president of Central College, inspired with
Jefferson's broad idea, had addressed to a number
of men throughout the country a letter asking
their views upon the subject of a great university.
Among those whom he consulted were
Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, at that time
Secretary of State, Dr. Thomas Cooper, of
of William and Mary College, and Dr. Timothy
Dwight, President of Yale.
It was in Mr. Jefferson's reply, which set
forth his views with that breadth which characterized
all his views whenever they related to
the subject of education, that he expressed his
opinion as to the proper construction of a college
building, outlining the "village form" rather
than one immense building. This broad plan he
afterward carried out when he built the university,
and to it we owe what is possibly the most
beautiful range of academic structures in the
country, the first that was laid out from the
beginning in one harmonious whole.
For years the struggle went on. Opposition,
beaten in one session, again and again
revived and ranged itself around the desire to
have the institution, if established at all, placed
beyond the mountains; but finally, Jefferson's
persistence and Cabell's diplomacy prevailed.
On the 21st of February, 1819, the bill was
finally passed by the Legislature, in which were
provisions relating to a system of primary
schools. Provision was made for the establishment
of the University of Virginia with an
annual appropriation of $15,000. And this small
sum was the annual appropriation made for the
of this bill that the commission of eminent
men, appointed thereunder to decide where
the university should be placed, met on August
1, 1818, at Mountain Top, in Rockfish Gap,
through which the main road to the West winds
over the Blue Ridge. Staunton, Lexington, and
Central College, at Charlottesville, were rivals
for the honor. Mr. Jefferson, who was unanimously
chosen president of the Board, testified
at once his superiority of intellect by being able
to show the superior claims of the position of
Central College, at Charlottesville. This he
did by producing a long list of octogenarians
living in that region and by presenting maps,
which he had prepared in advance, proving that,
of all the claimants, Central College was nearest
the centre of the State.
The same arguments which are now urged
in favor of urban institutions as against rural
institutions were advanced on this occasion, but
Mr. Jefferson, being warmly seconded by Mr.
Madison, the vote was carried overwhelmingly
in favor of the place which was finally selected.
Thus, the University of Virginia is seated on
the sunny slopes of Albemarle, facing the little
mountain on which Thomas Jefferson had
perched his home, from which, later on, he used
rising day by day.
The fight, however, was only getting under
way, and the contest was more bitter at the next
session of the Legislature than ever before.
Some idea of the tension of feeling may be
gleaned from the fact that when the bill came
up, Cabell, as he wrote Jefferson afterward, left
the House of Delegates "to avoid the shock of
feeling" which he "would have been compelled
to sustain." "The scene," when Staunton
withdrew her claims, he declares, "was truly
affecting. A great part of the house was in
tears." However this was, on the 25th of January,
1819, the bill was passed, chartering, on
Mr. Jefferson's lines, the University of Virginia,
to be established on the site of that Central College
which he had labored so long to establish,
and, although it was over six years before the
University of Virginia was opened, and these
six years were to be filled with more strenuous
labor than the six years that had already passed,
it was true, as Cabell wrote, that they had
"gotten possession of the ground" and it would
"never be taken from them."
As soon as this victory had been gained,
Jefferson began to plan at once how to build
his university and how to render it worthy of
to guide his action in the selection of his professors
was, "Detur digniori," and he set to
work not only to secure the best professors
possible in this country, but planned to send
Mr. Cabell to Europe to secure a corps of professors
there—a mission which was actually
performed later by Mr. F. W. Gilmer.[4]
Jefferson's first estimate of what would be
needed for the buildings, exclusive of the library,
was $162,364, and every dollar counted, for
every dollar had to be fought for. But his broad
plans soon outstripped his estimate and staggered
even faithful coadjutors, like Cabell, who
wrote to him and implored him to keep within
bounds and avoid extravagance. Jefferson,
however, was building for Posterity. The great
object of his aim from the beginning was, he
declared, to make the establishment the most
eminent in the United States in order to draw
to it the youth of every State. "If we cannot
trial." And when he had completed his work
he had largely overstepped his estimates.[5]
Happy it was for Virginia and the South, if
not for the whole country, that Jefferson's plans
were so spacious. Not only his beloved creation,
but every great college throughout the
land has profited by the noble example he set
them, not merely in the forms of architecture,
but in the higher forms of his academic organization
and the spirit of scholarship which he
infused into its life.
Indeed, as paradoxical as it may appear, it
seems an unquestionable fact that the upbuilding
of every new educational institution tends
to strengthen rather than to weaken all other
similar institutions within the range of its influence.
The spirit of enlightenment is the atmosphere
in which educational institutions have
their being.
The very plan on which Jefferson had projected
Eschewing all recent forms of architecture, he
had from the first, as if to link his conception
to the historic forms of the Old World, chosen
for his academic buildings the pure classical
models of ancient Greece and Rome. At the
top of a fine quadrangle, open to the south, he
placed a beautiful structure, modelled after that
noblest of the relics of ancient Rome, the Pantheon.
On either hand, stretching to the southward,
lie long lines of buildings connected by
long colonnades, broken at intervals by the façades
of the professors' houses and modelled
on such examples of ancient architecture as the
baths of Diocletian and Caracalla, the Temple
of Fortuna Virilis, and the Theatre of Marcellus;
while on the slopes below and parallel
to the colonnades on the lawn extend similar
ranges of pavilions and colonnades. These
colonnades are the cloistered rooms of the
students, while the houses are the residences of
the professors. They are taken, as their designer
states, from Palladio's great work on Architecture.
The whole system forms possibly the most
beautiful architectural achievement yet produced
in this country. Back of these houses,
enclosed by curious serpentine walls of the thickness
of a single brick, lie gardens some of which
tangles he has ever seen. If the Higher Philosophy
has a soul which demands a fitting abode
this abode would be here. If any pile of buildings
in the world is fitted by its beauty to be the
abode of the Higher Philosophy, it is this.
The final battle was fought when, with a view
to defeating Jefferson's plans, the effort was
made to move William and Mary College to
Richmond; but the battle was won. Before its
decision, however, Jefferson had to yield to some
extent to the religious sentiment, which, crystallizing
on the fact that Dr. Cooper, a Unitarian,
had been selected as the first professor, made
the success of his plan doubtful. He wrote suggesting
that religious denominations might establish
their own theological seminaries just
outside the limits of the university, and thus
receive the benefits of association with the institution.
This, said Cabell, contributed to win
him votes and carry the day. However this may
be, though for long the Church looked with cold
eyes on the institution which stood for Freedom
of thought in every field, the religious life
is as marked at the institution which Jefferson
founded as at any secular institution in the land.
Jefferson, himself, provided rooms for religious
exercises and arranged for the services
of first one denomination, and then another,
has been in attendance, his term being
limited to two years. Among these have been
such eminent men as the late Rt. Rev. Thomas
U. Dudley, Rev. Dr. John S. Lindsay, and the
Rev. Dr. John A. Broaddus. The attendance
of the students, while not compulsory either at
chapel or at church, is, perhaps, quite equal to
that in any institution where such attendance is
compulsory.
Jefferson's great scheme for introducing common departments
into Virginia in connection with the higher education failed because
of insufficient legislation, which left the matter to the vote
of the people of each district. It was not until 1796 that a law
was passed which made it at all possible. And it was not until
twenty years later that a general provision was made by the State
for elementary education.
How the conception grew in the founder's mind until it reached
its full ripeness would in itself repay the academic student. The
late Prof. Herbert B. Adams has given the account in his remarkable
sketch of Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia.
"If circumstances," says Professor Adams, "had favored
this project [of an academy] it is probable that the University of
Virginia would never have been founded." There would have
been no need of it. The Academy of the United States, founded
at Richmond, would have become the centre of higher education,
not only for Virginia, but for the whole South and possibly for a
large part of the North.
Jefferson's proposition for the modification of the current curriculum
of William and Mary College in 1776 represents, says
Dr. Adams, "the first current of modern ideas" which began in
1779, at length, "to flow into American academic life."
He further induced M. Dupont de Nemours, who visited him,
to write a treatise on national education in the United States, particularly
on a university of the higher learning in Virginia; a treatise
which, relating to a broad system, beginning with the primary
schools and embracing the intermediate schools, concluded with
a grand university of four schools which should make that
city the educational as well as the political centre of the United
States.
"This treatise," says Professor Adams, "probably gave both
sanction and emphasis to Jefferson's idea of a great State university,"
and to it he, with Professor Minor, attributed a considerable
share of Jefferson's idea of separate schools, to which, as the
first establishment of a true university system in the country, much
of the prestige of the University of Virginia is due.
The first Board of Visitors was composed of Thomas Jefferson,
Gen. James Breckenridge, Gen. Robert B. Taylor, John H.
Cocke, and Joseph C. Cabell, and their first session was held on
March 29, 1819, from which meeting dates the real beginning of
the University of Virginia. It was decided that all the funds
which they had secured—less than $60,000—should be devoted
first to buildings, and Dr. Thomas Cooper of Philadelphia, was
elected Professor of Chemistry, Mineralogy, Natural Philosophy
and Professor of Law.
Yet, even so, the cost of that beautiful pile is curiously small
compared with the results that have flowed from it. The proctor's
report for 1877 shows that up to 1832 the expenditure had been
only $320,728.29, while up to 1875 this with the additions, aggregated
but $548,172.65. Yet so strong was the opposition even to
this moderate outlay that Jefferson was charged by some writer
in the press with having deliberately deluded the people as to the
cost of the buildings—a charge which he warmly resented and repudiated.
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