University of Virginia Library

II

Such, in brief, is the history of the building
of the first true University in this country. But
those who see the charming architectural pile
which, through Thomas Jefferson's genius, finally
rose in all its harmonious beauty, and who
know the wonderful intellectual success which
the university has attained, can get little idea
of the immense expenditure of labor and sacrifice
it cost, unless they know its full history.
That achievement was the result of a labor
little less than Herculean. For at least fifty
years Jefferson had the project in his brain; and
as we have seen, for at least twenty years he gave
to its fulfilment every energy which he possessed.
Every resource that he could summon was called

forth. Often he appeared on the point of defeat,
but he never despaired. His able and devoted
lieutenant, Joseph C. Cabell, happily had caught
the spirit which inspired him, and in season
and out of season, seconded his efforts. Yet
often he would have given up, but for Jefferson's
divine enthusiasm. In 1821, when Cabell,
broken and worn with his efforts to help Jefferson
carry through his project of a great university,
announced his decision to retire from the
Virginia Legislature and give up the struggle,
Jefferson wrote him a pathetic letter urging him
to hold on and declaring his resolution to "die in
the last ditch." "Health, time, labor," he demanded,
"on what in the single life which
Nature has given us can these be better bestowed
than on this immortal boon to our
country? The exertions and mortifications are
temporary; the benefits eternal. . . . If any
member of our College of Visitors could justifiably
withdraw from this sacred duty, it would
be myself, who `quadragentis stipendiis jamdudum
peractis,' have neither vigor of body nor
mind left to keep the field, but I will die in the
last ditch." It is gratifying to know that Cabell
did continue with him in these "holy labors,"
and the institution he had done so much to establish
was, in succession to Jefferson, Madison,
and Monroe, served by him as Rector until
1856.

So great was the opposition to Jefferson's far-reaching
plan that, as we have seen, it required
all his enthusiasm and persistence to carry it
through. But Jefferson, like most reformers,
looked to posterity for his reward. "I have been
sensible," he wrote his chief lieutenant Cabell,
"that while I was endeavoring to render our
country the greatest of all services, I was discharging
the odious duty of a physician pouring
medicine down the throat of a patient insensible
of needing it. I am so sure of the approbation
of posterity and the inestimable effects we shall
have produced in the elevation of our country
by what we have done, that I cannot repent of
the part I have borne in co-operation with my
colleagues."

It was this long struggle, ending finally in
supreme success in the establishment of a great
University, combined with academic taste in
such perfection that it is almost as though a
dream of ancient Greece had crystallized and
taken form upon that Virginia hill-top, which
justified Thomas Jefferson in his order to carve
on his tomb that he was the "Father of the
University of Virginia."

But it was not only "the shell" that the old

philosopher was undertaking to lay the foundation
of in a broad and lasting manner. His
conception was to breathe into this body a soul
worthy of this beautiful tenement. His design
was no less lofty than to make the institution
"the most eminent in the country" for scholarship
and intellectual work, and with this in view
he had long been preparing the way to secure
the most eminent professors to be found. For
that purpose he used his great prestige and sent
to Europe and there engaged Professors George
Long, Blatterman, Thomas Hewitt Key, Charles
Bonnycastle, Robley Dunglison, and John P.
Emmet. By this time it is probable that he
had been in correspondence with every body of
distinguished educators in Europe.[6]

On March 7, 1825, the university opened

with five professors and sixty-eight students, of
the average age of nineteen years. By the end
of the year there were seven professors and one
hundred and twenty-three students and the
university was under way.

The institution thus started on such broad
and lofty lines soon began to justify the hopes
of its parent and those who had labored so
faithfully with him. His high conception to
bring it a faculty and establish a standard which
should at once give it a place among the universities
was realized. And although it went
through the troublous period incident to the early
years of most institutions of learning, its fame
spread abroad.

From the first it took high rank. It was
promptly recognized as a real University. For
it was laid on broad foundations as a University,
not as a mere college. And as a University—not
large, and certainly not wealthy, for it is modest
in size and poor in means—it has since that time
held its course by virtue simply of its high ideals
and sound standards, making its impress on the
scholastic life of the nation, second to none in
its scope and work and equalled only by the
greatest. How it has fulfilled its mission is
known by all scholars, and, in some sort, by the
outside world; but is truly known only by its

sons who have been the beneficiaries of its nourishing
care and have caught, often unknown to
themselves, something of its illuminating spirit.

Students were drawn there from all over the
country, though mainly, as Jefferson had foretold,
from the South and West, and there is not
a State in that section which has not felt in
every profession the vivifying effects of its teachings.
Bench and Bar, Pulpit and Medical
Faculty have all been uplifted by the high standard
set in the University of Virginia. Here
Poe drew his inspiration for those immortal
works which have made him the first poet and
first story-writer of America. And here many
less noted, but not less worthy sons have found
the equipment with which they have served their
age and country.

From the first it began to fulfil its founder's
high ideal: "To form the statesmen, legislators,
and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual
happiness are so much to depend; to expound
the principles and structures of government,
the laws which regulate the intercourse of
nations, those formed municipally for our own
government, and a sound spirit of legislation,
which, banishing all unnecessary restraint on
individual action, shall leave us free to do whatever
does not violate the individual rights of

another; to harmonize and promote the interests
of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce,
and by well-informed views of public
economy to give a free scope to the public industry;
to develop the reasoning faculties of our
youth, enlarge their minds, cultivate their
morals, and instil into them the principles of
virtue and order; to enlighten them with mathematical
and physical sciences which advance
the arts and administer to the health, the subsistence,
and the comforts of human life; and
generally to form them to habits of reflection
and correct action, rendering them examples of
virtue to others and of happiness within themselves."
Truly this was no mean ideal.

Now that the university was a reality, one of
the chief questions which occupied its founder
was the practical concern of governing such a
body of young men as would be thrown together.
The principle was dear to his heart, "That government
is best which governs least." Rejecting
the time-honored plan of rigid laws enforced by
proctors and masters, with a high faith in the
virtue of youth, Mr. Jefferson proposed to govern
the students by appealing to "their reason,
their hopes, and their generous feelings." And
therein lay one of the secrets of his success, and,
no less, of the success of the Institution.

The distinctive features of the University of
Virginia are the independence of its schools;
its elective system, by which every student may
attend the school of his choice; the conferring of
degrees in the individual schools; its allowing candidates
to stand examination for degrees without
reference to time of residence; the bestowal of degrees
only after the attainment of a high degree
of excellence shown in written examinations of
great strictness; the method of instruction by lectures
and oral examinations as well as by textbooks;
the requirement brought over by Long
and Key from Cambridge University, of written
examinations for all honors. But even more
distinctive, if possible, than these is the absence
of all sectarian influence and control; and finally,
that system of discipline which more than any
other one thing has distinguished the university,
known as the "Honor system." In the development
of the institution this principle has taken
a commanding place as the fruit and product
of the high conception in which the institution
was founded, and it has always been one of its
most admirable and distinctive teachings. It
is an appeal to the sense of honor, truth, and
manhood in youth. Founded upon the principle
of the recognition of honor among gentlemen,
it throws them frankly upon their honor,

and thus fosters and establishes it in them. It
is impossible to give too much importance to
this feature. It so permeates the life of the institution
that no student can enter its classic precincts
and not feel it sensibly. It stamps itself
on his mind with a force which can never be
forgotten, follows him through life and remains
one of the master forces of his whole career.
Its effects are discernible throughout the whole
South, and other institutions are following an
example so fruitful of good. This good also
the institution owes to Mr. Jefferson.

It should not be imagined that this system
reached its full maturity in a season. It is an
error to suppose that the Honor system can be
"adopted," or even founded, in a session. The
system had its roots deep in the essential virtues
of the gentle youth to whom Mr. Jefferson appealed;
yet its growth was slow. At first, freedom
was debauched and became license, and it
was not until a great tragedy flared its fierce light
into their eyes that the student body sobered to
a high conception of the nobleness of the trust
confided to them. The novelty of the situation
was such, when the Honor system was first introduced,
that the young men, habituated to a
system of espionage, began to take advantage
of the freedom allowed them and were soon at

such odds with the professors that the whole
faculty, brought together with so much pains
by Mr. Jefferson, resigned in a body. In this
exigency Mr. Jefferson was called in and the
faculty and students were requested to meet the
Board of Visitors. An account of the meeting was
written long afterward by one of the students
present on the occasion. The meeting took place
in one of the old lecture halls, and Mr. Jefferson
arose and addressed the students. He was,
however, so affected by the apparent failure of
one of his most cherished ideas that he burst
into tears. Instantly the whole body of students,
who had been guilty of the acts which occasioned
the trouble, arose and, rushing forward, made a
full confession of the part they had taken. The
ringleaders were expelled, among them being a
near relative of Mr. Jefferson, on whom he
poured the vials of his wrath and visited the extreme
penalty. The others were forgiven. Even
then, however, the trouble was not wholly eradicated.
The students were at first unable to
realize the high ideal set for them. And a number
of petty rules caused, until remedied, much
friction. A military company formed by the
students began to interfere so much with scholastic
duties that the arms were taken from them.
This gave rise to so much discontent that annually
the disbandment was commemorated by a
celebration which was accompanied by much
boisterousness. Finally, in 1842, when the conduct
of certain of the students reached the point
of carousal, one of the professors seized two of
the students, who wore masks, and one of them
shot him. This tragic act put an end forever to
the unseemly license which had sprung from Mr.
Jefferson's lofty conception, and since that time
the institution he founded has approached more
and more, as its traditions have become established,
his noble ideal.

Its original eight schools have increased until
now it has twenty-three, of which its law
school has three classes and its medical school
six.

Its one hundred and twenty-three students
have increased steadily until it has eight hundred
on its rolls, representing thirty-six States
and several foreign countries. But it is not by
the number of its students that its usefulness is
to be measured. Its true gauge is the work it is
doing, the high standard of its scholarship, and,
above all, its high aim to make men.

"Every great college," said Hamilton W.
Mabie, in a thoughtful and charming paper on
the University of Virginia, "has a background
which must be taken into account in any endeavor

to understand its history or to enter
into its spirit. A college is a visible embodiment
of certain invisible influences, which are
as much a part of its educational equipment as
its libraries, laboratories, teachers, and course
of study. These constitute its larger and deeper,
if less obvious life; the life which searches, inspires,
and often recreates the spirit of the sensitive
student." And he observes, as the writer
thinks truly, that "of no institution of the higher
learning is this truer than of the University of
Virginia—an institution of original organization
and methods, with traditions and convictions
which give it a place by itself in the educational
history of the country."

On the outbreak of the Civil War, of the sons
of the university, about twenty-three hundred
entered the army; and not less than three hundred
and fifty fell in battle. Of the students
who were then at the university almost the entire
body enlisted. It was estimated that even
twenty years ago over one thousand alumni had
engaged in educational work, and in 1896 over
two hundred of her sons were professors in universities
and colleges—a noble tribute, not only
to her scholarship, but to that earnestness which
is so distinguishing a characteristic of the university
life.

Thus, it happens that the University of Virginia,
with its limited number of students, has in
the past possibly excelled in scholastic results any
other similar institution in the country. She has
had a larger representation in Congress than any
other; she has a larger representation on the bench;
and she has had a larger representation in the medical
departments of both the army and navy. All
this result has been accomplished on an income
less than that of many second-rate colleges.[7]

Through the years, notwithstanding her want
of means, this university, which sprang in her
beauty from Jefferson's teeming brain, has continued
to perform the work which he laid out
for her and to follow the course which he marked
down for her to follow, with her eye single to
two great principles—the highest standard of
scholarship and the highest standard of honor.
Through all discouragements and in the face
of all difficulties, she has been true to his ideal,
which has been happily expressed in the motto
chosen for her by a later rector, Mr. Armistead
C. Gordon, "Ye shall know the truth and the
truth shall make you free."

Lying on the sunny slopes of the Albemarle
hills, with her classical arcades stretching away
southward, bathed in the Virginia sunshine, she
has from the first taught her sons the nobility of
truth and hereby has pointed them to freedom.
Neither professor nor student can long breathe
that atmosphere and remain untrue.

Always cramped in her resources, often
strained to the utmost to carry on her work; she
has yet carried it on through the self-denial of
her professors. And there has been this compensation,
that, as has been well said by Hamilton
W. Mabie: "Simplicity is still the note of
student-life in Virginia, and simplicity is always
a note of the highest culture."

It is the most Republican institution the writer
has ever known. Here, in this age of money-loving,
money-getting, and money-spending,
money counts for nothing. Here Jew and Gentile,
gentle and simple, rich and poor, stand on
the same platform: that "all men are created
equal." The only aristocracy is one of intellect,
manliness, and loftiness of purpose. And
the wealth of Crœsus could not save a man a
moment if he fell below the high standard set
for gentlemen. This is why there is that in
the life of the University of Virginia which
stamps its impress on the life of her sons in a

way which can never be wholly erased. It is
not Scholarship; it is not even always the ability
to appreciate Scholarship; but it is that which
comes from having in youth had a glimpse of
the Truth and having had her breathe the breath
of freedom into the nostrils that is never again
wholly lost. More than the knowledge acquired,
far more than the material advantage
derived, one alumnus wishes to record that the
greatest benefit he secured from his life at the
University of Virginia was some appreciation of
her ideals.

Times and conditions even in scholastic life
have changed since Thomas Jefferson, on the
tentative election of William Wirt to the presidency
of the university, wrote with his own hand
on the page of her records a protest against instituting
such an office. Owing to these changes,
after much thought, those charged with the responsibility
have deemed it for the best interests
of the institution to establish this office.

The great need at present is the means to
carry on the work of the institution. A disastrous
fire a few years ago destroyed its valuable
library, and to rebuild it was necessary to mortgage
heavily its property. "To widen its sphere
of usefulness and to meet properly the educational
demands of the age, a considerable sum

is required." It has long outgrown the narrow
limits within which it is confined by its meagre
income.[8]

The same local prejudices which so long
operated to prevent its establishment have prevailed,
and what it has accomplished has been
with hopelessly meagre resources. Its best
work has been done by men who have made
great sacrifices to do it.

Meanwhile, however cramped her resources,
she is performing a great work—upholding the
standard of high scholarship and right living.

Looking back with pride to her noble past

and looking forward with confidence to her
future, her friends may well adopt as their own
the brave words of Jefferson, uttered during
one of the most trying periods in the struggle
to establish her, "It is from posterity we are to
expect remuneration for the sacrifices we are
making for their service, and I fear not the appeal."