University of Virginia Library

SECOND PERIOD

GERMINATION—ACADEMY AND COLLEGE

I. Jefferson's Preference for University Site

We have seen that, until the outset of his mission to
France, at least, Jefferson persisted in hoping that the
College of William and Mary could be lifted up to the
level of a real university, both in its standards of instruction
and in the number of its professorships; and that
down to this point in time, he used every means in his
power to bring about the transformation. The change
in its curriculum which he had suggested, was certainly a
long step towards the desired conversion; but the upshot,
as the years passed, was disappointing in spite of the fact
that the college was in the enjoyment of the subtle advantage
which springs only from age, and was also, in the
beginning, situated at the very centre of the political
and social framework of the Commonwealth. The enlargement
of its field of studies failed to secure for it
that popularity with the members of all social classes and
all religious denominations, with which alone it could
win the highest prosperity.

When did Jefferson abandon the expectation that it
would become a university to the extent that alone would
satisfy his exacting requirements? When did the
thought that he might be able to found an entirely new
university, in the neighborhood of Monticello, invade his
mind? Now, as has been pointed out, he had, from early
manhood, felt a keen aversion to sectarianism in all its

shapes and voices. He was, of his own personal knowledge,
aware that the College of William and Mary had
been, and probably still was, as saturated with the vapours
of Episcopalianism as Oxford itself. No influences
but his shrewd recognition of the sentimental value of
age in a seat of learning, the prestige of its situation at
first in the capital, and that affection for his alma mater
which still tarried in his breast, had, perhaps, impelled
him, even in the beginning, to plan for its elevation to
so high a point that it would satisfy the educational
wants of the whole State. But all these influences, powerful
as they once were, in making his attitude towards
the ancient college so favorable and so sanguine, must
have gradually weakened and fallen away as he perceived,
with ever increasing clearness, that popularity
with the old dissenting sects was not likely to be won
even by the proposed broadening of its curriculum; and
that the mere suppression of the theological school
would not suffice in itself to blot out the historic sense
of the unquestionable, though, perhaps, exaggerated,
wrongs which those sects had suffered in the past,
through the workings of the Episcopalian system. In
his own heart, he probably sympathized with their lingering
animosity, although he may have thought that they
were hardly justified by common patriotism in letting that
feeling deprive the new university of their support, without
which it could not hope to represent the whole community
in its attendance of students.[1]

So deep was the impression made on him by this hostility,
coupled with his own wide and discriminating observations
abroad, that, after his return from France, he
seems never to have seriously considered the College of
William and Mary in his plans for the establishment of
a great State institution. If that institution was not to
be the old college, still further remodeled and enlarged,
and with its seat unremoved from the ancient town of
Williamsburg, where was it to be placed? What other
locality was to become its site? Apparently, there was
never in his mind but one reply to this question: in the
vicinity of Charlottesville. If he was mortal enough to
be influenced by personal reasons in his selection of that
site, it was a form of selfishness that was fully redeemed
by the nobility of his aims. If there was one citizen of
the State, during those years when he was so persistently
nursing this "bantling," as he termed it, who was fully
equipped by broad philanthropy, liberal opinions, unfailing
love of knowledge, and an eager interest in education,
clarified by study and observation, to set up a
true university for his countrymen, that man was Thomas
Jefferson. The most signal stroke of good fortune for
this offspring of his spirit, throughout the first century
of its existence, was this: that its site was chosen so
close to his home at Monticello that he was able to
impress upon its structure, whether physical, moral, or
scholastic, the full force of his principles and his tastes.
While it may be acknowledged that it might, at a distance
from him, have caught his lofty tenets of political freedom
and religious tolerance, and his devotion to science
in all its departments, there is no likelihood whatever

that, without his dominating personality and his indefatigable
supervision, it would have presented to the eye
to-day perhaps the most beautiful group of college buildings,
the noblest academical setting, to be discovered on
the American Continent.

La Rochefoucauld, who was travelling in the United
States during the years from 1795 to 1797 inclusive, and
visited Monticello in the course of his tour, has recorded
the fact that there was then a rumor in circulation that
the General Assembly would soon establish a "new college
in a more central part of the State." It was at this
time that the bill of 1796, which, as already shown, only
nominally assured a moderate degree of public instruction,
was a subject of general conversation and debate.
Before two years had passed, the groundlessness of this
report had been proven; but Jefferson, in writing to Dr.
Priestley, expressed the hope that a new university,
planned on a "broad, liberal, and modern" scale, would
be erected "in the upper country, and, therefore, more
centrally for the State." He does not mince his words
in giving his reasons for wishing to turn his back on the
college in Williamsburg. "She is just well endowed
enough," he remarked to the same correspondent, "to
draw out the miserable existence to which a miserable
constitution has doomed her." He then repeats the practical
objection which was coming to have an ever-increasing
influence with him in his view of its site. "It is,
moreover, eccentric in its position, and exposed to all the
bilious diseases, as all the lower country is, and, therefore,
abandoned by the public care, as that part of the
country is, to a considerable degree, by its inhabitants."[2]

A few years afterwards, Jefferson, now President of
the United States, had an opportunity to express indirectly
an equally emphatic opinion in opposition to all
further efforts to develop the old college in preference to
founding a new university elsewhere. Joseph C. Cabell,
who was to be so honorably associated with him at a
later period in the establishment of such an institution,
had returned from Europe in May, 1806, after a tour
of the principal European countries, and having married
Miss Carter, a step-daughter of Judge St. George Tucker,
the first of that distinguished family to settle in Virginia,
had decided to make Williamsburg, where his wife had
resided, his permanent home. He was an alumnus of the
College, and through this connection and those domestic
bonds, soon became a warm partisan of a scheme having
its origin with De la Costa, a foreign savant, to erect
a museum of natural history in the former capital, and
to attach it to the professorship there which embraced
the various departments of that subject. The cost of
building and collecting was to be defrayed by private subscription.

Isaac A. Coles, of Albemarle, Cabell's intimate friend,
was, at this time, Jefferson's private secretary, and in that
capacity stationed in Washington. Cabell was but a recent
acquaintance of the President, and he, doubtless, for
that reason hesitated to approach him by direct correspondence,
although aware of Jefferson's interest in
science. Possibly, too, he may have had some reason
for questioning the President's fidelity to his alma mater,
for reports of his views as to the need of a new seat of
learning, to be founded in a more central situation, must
have come to his ears. Cabell wrote to Coles instead.
The letter itself was, perhaps, not shown to Jefferson, but
the subject of it was, by Coles's admission in his reply,

discussed between them. The President thought "the
attempt premature," by which cryptic expression he probably
meant that the museum should be reserved for the
institution which was yet to be established elsewhere.
He returned the same reply to De la Costa, when his
assistance was sought directly at a somewhat later date.
In the meanwhile, Coles had fully stated Jefferson's present
mental attitude towards the venerable college and
the hoped-for new university. "If I could bring myself,"
he wrote to Cabell, "to consider Williamsburg as
the permanent seat of science, as the spot where the
youth of our State, for centuries to come, would go to be
instructed in whatever might form them for usefulness,
my objection would, in great measure, cease. But the old
college is declining, and perhaps the sooner it falls entirely,
the better, if it might be the means of pointing out
to our legislative body the necessity of founding an institution
on an extended and liberal scale. Instead of wasting
your time in attempting to patch it up, a decaying
institution, direct your efforts to a higher and more valuable
object: found a new one."

Cabell, who had not yet been weaned from his alma
mater by close confidential intercourse with Jefferson, was
palpably nettled by the tone, and by the suggestions, of
his friend's letter. "If the great new university of which
you speak," he wrote in reply, "were in existence, or
could be expected to appear within the space of a few
years, then it would be prudent to defer the intended
museum and to connect the two objects. But knowing as
you do, the spirit of our Legislature, can you calculate
anything of the kind from them? I doubt very much
whether we do not evince more prudence in patching up
what we have than in reposing in indolence under the
expectation of what may never come. ... We ought to

make the most of it, as it is all we have, indulging at the
same time the hope that the Legislature will either remove
it to Richmond, or found a new one in the upper
country."[3]

One would hardly recognize in these partial and loyal
words, the presence of the man who was to be, after Jefferson
himself, the most influential instrument in the establishment
of the university at Charlottesville, which
was comparatively to throw the College of William and
Mary into the academic shade. They show, however,
that he would not be averse to the erection of that university
in another part of the State, should the sentiment
of the General Assembly declare in favor of it. So soon
as he should directly pass under the spell of Jefferson's
personality, and catch the full inspiration of his devotion
to his great scheme, Cabell was to become as earnest a
supporter of all his plans for his projected seat of learning
as Coles himself.

A few years after the date of these letters passing between
the two friends, Jefferson committed himself definitely,
over his own signature, to Charlottesville as the
site of the institution which he had so long carried in his
mind. Hitherto, in his correspondence at least, he seems
to have referred with politic vagueness to a site "in a
healthier and more central part of the State." But, in
1814, he mentions specifically his own vicinage as the
spot which might be chosen. "I have long had under
contemplation, and been collecting materials for a plan
of the University of Virginia," he wrote to Dr. Cooper,
"which should comprehend all the sciences useful to us,
and none others. ... This would probably absorb the
functions of William and Mary College, and transfer
them to a healthier position; perhaps to the neighborhood

of this place. The long and lingering decline of William
and Mary, the death of the last President (Bishop
Madison), its location and climate, force on us the wish
for a new institution more convenient to our country
generally, and better adapted to the present state of
science." When these words were written, Jefferson, unknown
to himself, was within a few months of the practical
inauguration of a scheme, started by others, but soon
adopted by himself, which was destined to expand, in
a comparatively short time, into the very institution
which he had been pondering over for so many years.
Before taking up the narrative of the very small acorn
which was to grow into so great a tree, it will be germane
to our subject, and conducive to a clearer understanding
of it, should we give a short description of the immediate
country in which the proposed university was now so soon
to be planted, a summary history of its settlement, and a
concise recital of the social influences which had governed
it down to the establishment of that seat of learning.

II. History of the University Region

The whole region that formed the background of
Charlottesville, from whatever point of the compass it
might be viewed, differed altogether from the environment
of the College of William and Mary.[4] Around
Williamsburg, one saw an almost perfectly level country
overgrown with a forest of varied species, broken in
many places by farms under cultivation or by abandoned
fields, and here and there deeply penetrated by winding
creeks that ran up into the land from the broad waters
of the York and James Rivers. The population that occupied

this region were descended from settlers who had
taken possession of it early in the seventeenth century,
while Williamsburg itself was the oldest town of historic
importance in the State, the former seat of government
and of colonial fashion, and retaining, even in its decay,
the glow of the culture and refinement which had distinguished
it from the beginning.

Unlike this old city, standing upon the wide, wooded
coastal plain, Charlottesville was placed in a deep valley
spreading from the rampart of the Southwest Mountains,
on one side, to the chain of the Blue Ridge, on the other.
Towards the south, and not far off, rose the repulsive wall
of the Ragged Mountains, while towards the north, the
land rolled away as far as the eye could reach. The entire
surface of the country, thus pent in on all sides but
one, was broken up picturesquely by long, high-shouldered
hills, isolated mounts, uneven plateaus, and deep, narrow
rocky gorges. Everywhere, it was liberally watered
by the romantic Rivanna and its brawling tributary
streams, flowing down between ridges that disputed the
way so successfully that the channels were forced to follow
abrupt and winding courses. The broad scene
taken in from some moderate height, that commanded the
whole without blending the details, was not surpassed
in Virginia for diversified beauty as the seasons, in procession,
laid a green or russet or white finger on the face
of the landscape below. There, on the western skirts of
the valley rose the Blue Mountains, as changeful in color
as the mountains of Greece; now as deeply azure as the
Bay of Naples itself; now so faint and ethereal in hue
as to be almost invisible; now as gray and massive as a
cliff of the purest granite; now bare and bleak at the side
and crowned with fields of shining snow at the top. In
the interval, lay the floor of the valley itself, with a few

country residences and farm-houses scattered about it
here and there, and open fields in fallow or in wheat,
and pleasant groves of primaeval trees. There, in the
shadow of the Southwest Mountains at sunrise and of the
Ragged Mountains at sunset, stood the little hamlet of
Charlottesville; and not far off flowed the Rivanna, showing
a narrow turbid glimpse of its surface as it turned to
pass onward to the James.

To the spectator, thus gazing around from one point of
the compass to the other, the rim of the sky appeared
to rest upon the massive shoulders of mountain caryatides,
with the vast field of the sky itself open to full view
as the troops of clouds glided across it, or the storms
brewed in its depths, or the last rays of the dying sun
flooded it with color. Sky and mountain and plain,—all
offered themselves to the eye in stupendous shapes, and
only the presence of a large sheet of water was wanting
to make a scene upon which nature had bestowed every
beautiful and impressive feature in her gift.

Behind this physical charm, that appealed to the eye,
there lurked the suggestion of what man had done for the
scene that appealed even more romantically to the historic
sense. The University of Virginia was incorporated in
1819, and its classical group of buildings, that carry the
mind back to the remote age of Greece and Rome, was
not finished in 1825, when its doors were opened.
Ninety years before the cornerstone of the first pavilion
was laid, and less than one hundred before the Rotunda
was completed, the region now embraced in Albemarle
county was a primaeval wilderness, unoccupied and unclaimed
by a single white settler whose name has survived.
The first patents to any parts of its virgin soil
were acquired in June, 1727. Only two were issued during
that year, and they were confined to the area of

ground lying on the eastern slopes of the Southwest
Mountains. Slowly, yard by yard, as it were, in the
course of many years, the settlements had been creeping
up the headwaters of the Pamunkey towards the northwest,
and the main stream of the James towards the west.
The third patent, obtained a few years later, embraced
land along the banks of the latter river. It was not until
1730 apparently that any part of the soil adjacent to the
Rivanna was appropriated. Only five patents were sued
out in 1730, and only three in the following year. It
was not until 1732 that the western base of the Southwest
Mountains was arrived at: the land that afterwards
formed the site of the little town of Milton,—which
became the port of entry for much of the material used
in the original construction of the University,—was
taken up during this year. This was the nearest point to
the present town of Charlottesville so far reached by the
settler. Among the four patents granted in 1733, one
was obtained that spread from the mouth of Moore's
Creek to a boundary line running beyond the modern
estate of Pen Park, the birthplace of Francis Walker Gilmer,
Jefferson's staunch coadjutor in the next century.
By 1734, the plateau of Pantops and Lego, overlooking
the valley of the Rivanna and visible from the present
Observatory Mountain, had been occupied by patentees;
and before the close of the year, Lewis Mountain, and
the land situated immediately towards the west, had been
acquired by Joseph Terrell and David Lewis.

Down to 1734, the patentees had, with barely an exception,
been prominent men residing in Eastern Virginia,
who were influenced alone by the prospect of speculative
profit in engrossing such large areas of unappropriated
soil, and who made no actual settlement beyond the small
degree required by law. This was complied with by

placing on the lands a few tenants or slaves, who were
not expected to snatch more than their own support out
of the new ground. Enterprising and independent yeomen
began to come in, in 1734, and now the real social
and economic development of the region took a start in
earnest. The swollen patent, however, continued to be
sued out by prominent gentlemen in Eastern Virginia,
only a very small proportion of whose number had any
intention of removing their homes to these back lands:
in 1735, for instance, the father of Patrick Henry was
a patentee; and in the same year, William Randolph
acquired the tract which included the modern estates of
Shadwell and Edgehill; Peter Jefferson, father of
Thomas, a tract of one thousand acres on the southern
bank of the Rivanna; and Abraham Lewis, the tract which
takes in the present site of the University.

Not until this year, did the engrossment of the soil
spread out as far as Buck Mountain Creek, which flows
into the Rivanna in the northwestern part of the present
county, and Ivy Creek which waters the middle portion.
Patents were now obtained to the lands lying around
Farmington and Ivy station. By 1737, the banks of
Mechums River had been reached. The area of ground
thus taken up, however, was not in the way of a solid
extension of boundaries; as we have seen, the site of the
University was not patented until after the present Birdwood
estate had been appropriated; and in harmony with
the same fact, it was not until 1737 that William Taylor
obtained, by patent, title to the lands situated on Moore's
Creek which are supposed to have contained the present
site of the town of Charlottesville. By this time, nearly
every division of the county had been patented in a
very dispersed manner,—to be extended gradually to
those intervening spaces which remained vacant because

holding out so much smaller inducements for preoccupation.
As late as 1796, a patent was granted for twentyfive
thousand acres of land in Albemarle that was still
in the possession of the State.

How little perceptible change had been worked in the
face of the county by 1737 is revealed in the situation of
Peter Jefferson, who removed to his estate on the
Rivanna in the course of that year: the entire region about
him is described as having been, at the time, a slumbering,
savage wilderness; nor did any substantial transformation
in its character take place before 1743, the year of
Thomas Jefferson's birth. If one had walked up from
Shadwell, during that year, to the top of a neighboring
height which commanded a view of the landscape as far
as the peaks of the Blue Ridge, he would have had unrolled
below him a region almost as untouched by the
white man, and quite as unmoulded to the permanent
uses of civilization, as it had been one hundred years before,
when it was only trodden by the feet of warring or
hunting Indians. How completely it was in the possession
of wild animals at the time of the first settlement is
apparent in the names which the pioneers bestowed on the
natural features of the valley. Many varieties of the
fourlegged denizens of the original forests are represented
in these names. So numerous were deer that it is
recorded of one of the earliest settlers on the eastern
slope of the great Ridge that he had only to step across
the threshold of his cabin in the morning to obtain with
his rifle all the venison that would be needed for his food;
and that there was no exaggeration in this statement is
proven by the frequency with which Buck mountains and
Buck creeks are entered on the face of the first maps;
and equally indicative of the like condition is the number
of Elk runs, Beaver and Bear creeks, Buffalo meadows

and mountains, within the same area of country. One
of the modern roads that crosses the Ridge followed,
when first laid down, a trail which herds of bison had
been tramping over during uncounted centuries. As late
as 1896, there were domiciled in Albemarle persons who
had conversed with a man whose father had watched a
long string of these animals wading the Roanoke River
at a ford situated less than two hundred miles from the
site of the University.[5] The Pigeon Tops of the present
day point to the haunts where the wild pigeons
gathered in flocks of hundreds of thousands, either to
roost or to feed on the acorns that had dropped to the
ground in the autumnal woods on the mountain sides.

There is no surviving proof of the existence of Indian
wigwams in Albemarle when the first settlement began,
but during Jefferson's boyhood, small bands of warriors
would sometimes pass through, and, in one instance at
least, revisited a mound standing on the banks of the
Rivanna, where their dead had been formerly buried.
A deed recorded in 1751, refers, in the definition of boundary
lines, to a spot where a pioneer had been scalped
by a lurking brave. It was not until 1744, seventy-five
years before the University was chartered, that the
county had filled up with people enough to justify the
General Assembly in organizing a court within its borders;
it was not until 1762 that Charlottesville,—named
for the queen of the monarch whom Jefferson was to arraign
in the Declaration of Independence,—was incorporated;
and down to 1820, it continued to be the only
post-office in all that region. In 1745, the number of
inhabitants within the boundaries of Albemarle was
thought to be about 4,250; by 1790, that number, as

counted in the first census, had swelled to 12,585; by
1810, to 18,268; and by 1820, when the University was
building, to 32,618.

III. Early Social Life

The social and economic history of the first settlement
of Albemarle county was an exact continuation of that
transit of population and civilization in Virginia which
had been noted from the foundation of Jamestown. Not
only was this original movement westward to the mountains
more halting, but it was less crude in spirit than the
flood which, in our own times, has carried the American
frontier across an entire continent. It was not a migration
of petty farmers and rough adventurers of all sorts.
Among the names of the early patentees of Albemarle, we
find numerous representatives of the oldest and most influential
families in the Colony: Carters, Randolphs,
Lewises, Nicholases, Meriwethers, Walkers, Henrys,
Carrs, Hopkinses, Terrells, Eppeses, and others of the
like social eminence. While spacious areas of ground
were, at first, taken up by these families with a nominal
residence only, as we have seen, nevertheless it was not
many years before their younger scions began to lay the
corner-stones of their homes in this forest wilderness.
At no stage of its growth was it a scattered community
of wild hunters and trappers alone; on the contrary,
from the second decade at least, it was a community
whose principal citizens had brought up from Eastern
Virginia all the subservience to law, refinement of manners,
and high civic spirit, that had distinguished the
plantation homes in the older shires during many generations.
The Meriwethers and Lewises, and the long
stream of gentle families who followed them, had possessed,

from their first settlement in Virginia, all the social
advantages which the Colony had to bestow; and
when they made their way up from the open country,
through the dark woods, and built their houses along the
slopes of the Southwest Mountains, and in the eastern
shadow of the Blue Ridge, they simply transferred to
those green and quiet sites all the points of view, all the
moral convictions, all the domestic habits, all the personal
demeanor, which had given such a distinct flavor to the
social life on the banks of the tidal rivers below. So
soon as the children of these first settlers had arrived
at maturity, and inherited the parental estates, there was
no substantial difference to be discerned between the
homes in which they dwelt and the original homes of their
fathers still standing in the counties lying towards the sea.

It would hardly be correct to accept Thomas Jefferson
as an average representative of this second generation
born in the valley of the Rivanna, for he stood high above
the multitude of his fellow Americans even in the oldest
communities; but in mere social culture and domestic refinement,
apart from native talents and acquired knowledge,
he was not one whit superior to the representatives
of those families who had patented the virgin lands contemporaneously
with his father.

If any one now living could have taken his stand on the
portico of Monticello, in 1825, on the day that the University
threw open its doors to students, and gazed down
upon the broad map of the country below towards the
west, south, north, and northeast, his eyes would have
caught sight of many residences that were already celebrated
in the social history of the State, not only for the
culture and refinement of their atmosphere, but for the
high distinction of many of the citizens who owned them.
First, would be discerned, on the banks of the Rivanna,

the site of Shadwell, the birthplace of Jefferson himself,
now marked by a group of sycamores, as the original
house had been consumed by fire. Beyond, on a height
that suggested its name, would be visible the walls of
Pantops erected in 1815, and occupied by James Leitch,
who married the granddaughter of Nicholas Lewis, one
of the original settlers. Close by was Lego, the home
of a second Lewis, whose wife was the daughter of the
explorer, Dr. Thomas Walker. Not far towards the
northeast stood Edgehill, the home of the Randolphs,
who had so named it in honor of the battle in which their
cavalier ancestor had fought so bravely yet so unavailingly.
Beyond Edgehill was to be seen Belmont, the
home of Dr. Charles Everett, a graduate of the University
of Pennsylvania, and the private secretary of President
Monroe; next, Cismont and Cloverfields, with
the graveyard in which the older members of the Meriwether
family were buried; Belvoir, the home of the
Nelsons, who had acquired it by a fortunate marriage;
Castle Hill, the home of the Walkers, and afterwards of
the Riveses, through a similar intermarriage; and Keswick,
the home of the Pages.

Looking in turn towards the west, north and south,
there rose, within the scope of the eye, the homes of the
Monroes, the Maurys, the Gilmers, the Coleses, the
Nicholases, the Barbours, the Madisons, the Lewises, the
Woodses, the Minors, the Terrells, the Carrs, and numerous
other families identified with that region, in
most instances, from the earliest years of the community.
Either then, or a short time after the University was
founded, there resided in houses in sight from the same
eminence, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration
of Independence, and third President of the United
States; James Madison, the Father of the Constitution

and fourth President; James Monroe, the fifth President
and author of the celebrated Doctrine which bears
his name; Andrew Stevenson, Speaker of the House of
Representatives and Minister to the Court of St. James;
Thomas Walker Gilmer, Governor of the State and Secretary
of the Navy; Edward Coles, Governor of Illinois;
William C. Nicholas, Governor of Virginia and United
States Senator; Thomas Mann Randolph, member of
Congress and Governor of Virginia; James Barbour,
Governor of the State, United States Senator, and Minister
to Great Britain; Philip P. Barbour, Speaker of the
House of Representatives and Justice of the Supreme
Court; George Rogers Clark, the conqueror of the
Northwest Territory; Meriwether Lewis, the explorer
of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers; William C. Rives,
United States Senator and twice Minister to the Court
of Versailles; Hugh Nelson, member of Congress and
Minister to Spain; William Short, Minister to the
Hague; and William F. Gordon, member of Congress
and author of the sub-treasury scheme. In this list of
distinguished citizens, there are to be found three Presidents
of the United States, seven Governors of Commonwealths,
seven envoys to foreign countries, two Speakers
of the Lower House of Congress, one Justice of the Supreme
Court, one Secretary of the Navy, two Secretaries
of State, one Secretary of War, three United States Senators,
one noted soldier, and an equally noted explorer.
In no commensurate area of the Republic, at that time,
could there have been descried so many men, either already
celebrated, or destined, within a few years, to win
fame in political life. A region of country that had been
occupied only one hundred years surpassed the oldest
parts of Virginia and the other States alike, in the acknowledged
eminence of its principal residents, on account
of their splendid public services.

The social life of the county was, at all seasons,
enlivened by constant personal intercourse between neighbors,
and at times by a succession of gaieties. Isaac
Coles, writing to Cabell from his home in Albemarle, in
1811, mentions that his hours were mainly "given up to
visits, Christmas dinners and Christmas balls!" Judge
Dabney Carr, describing a recent sojourn in the county
in 1821, remarks, by way of apology for failing to reply
to Cabell, "I was in such a constant round of company,
dining to-day here, and to-morrow there, that I could not
find a moment for a letter." "From a long and intimate
knowledge of Albemarle county," Gilmer wrote to
George Long, in 1824, "I assure you, I know no place in
America where there is a more liberal, intelligent, hospitable,
and agreeable society, nor where respectable
strangers could receive a kinder welcome." Jefferson,
who had passed so much of his life in the most polished
coteries of the Old and the New World, held a similar
view: "The society in Albemarle," he stated to a
European correspondent in March, 1815, "is much better
than is common in country situations. Perhaps, there
is not a better country society in the United States. But
do not imagine this a Parisian or an academical society.
It consists of plain, honest, and rational neighbors,—
some of them well informed, and men of reading, all
superintending their farms, hospitable and friendly, and
speaking nothing but English."

Charlottesville, situated on a gentle eminence that
sloped to the Rivanna, was a small collection of houses
built around the court-house square. It hardly possessed
the consequence of a village from the point of view of

population alone, but as the seat of justice, the site of several
general stores and the foremost lawyers' offices, and
the scene of popular assemblages when the court was in
session, or a political rally was holding, it formed the
central point in the civic life of the community. Apart
from the court-house itself, the two principal houses in the
little town were the Swann and the Old Stone taverns.
It was here that the promiscuous concourse of citizens
dined on court days; it was here that travellers, passing
through to the Valley or the West, stopped to bait their
horses or to spend a night; and it was here also that the
rather liberal taste for strong waters prevailing in those
times could always find indulgence. The lawyers probably
met some of their clients here; and here certainly
many important conferences of all kinds were held. The
most animated spot within the limits of the village outside
of the court-house square itself was, on court days at
least, the porch of the Old Stone tavern, for this ordinary
was kept by one of the most popular citizens of the
county, Triplett Estes, the condition of whose affairs, as
we shall soon see, threatened, at one time, to have some
connection with the origin of the University of Virginia.

Albemarle county, before the Revolution, was divided
between Fredericksville and St. Anne's parishes;
and of the two, Fredericksville, which had been extended
from Louisa county, was laid off first. St. Anne's was
formed in 1762 by drawing its eastern boundary line
along the Rivanna to a point opposite Charlottesville;
and thence the line ran through the town westward to
the Blue Ridge. The parish itself was situated south of
this line. The history of these parishes is pertinent to
our subject, for the clergymen who filled their pulpits
were, in several instances, well known teachers before and
after the Revolution, and the sales of the glebes, when the

Church was disestablished, created an important fund for
the promotion of public education. The glebe of Fredericksville,
which seems to have embraced four hundred
acres, was purchased for four hundred pounds in colonial
currency. On the other hand, the glebe of St. Anne's,
which lay not far from the Green Mountains, was, perhaps,
not so extensive or so profitable.

IV. Origin of Albemarle Academy

The most famous school situated nearest to Charlottesville
previous to the Revolution was the one conducted
by the Rev. James Maury, who had been the rector of
Fredericksville parish at the time that it took in also the
county of Louisa. Dying in 1770, he was succeeded by
his son, Matthew Maury, as the clergyman of Trinity
parish,—the new parish created in the first division of
Fredericksville,—and as the headmaster of his school.
It was here that Jefferson received his earliest tuition
after leaving home. This school enjoyed a high reputation
for thoroughness many years before Albemarle
Academy was incorporated, and was, no doubt, patronized,
before and after the Revolution, by many families
in Albemarle county, although more or less inconvenient
to them on account of its remoteness. Another clergyman,
Rev. Samuel Black, had established a school near
the foot of the Blue Ridge; and about 1760, James
Forbes was teaching in the neighborhood of Ivy.

But the need of a school in the immediate vicinity of
Charlottesville became so pressing by 1783, that the
first practical step was taken to establish an academy
there. There is no evidence that Jefferson suggested
this project, but there is proof that he felt so deep an
interest in it that he exacted of a friend in the county

the promise that he should be informed of its prospects
of success during his own absence in Annapolis; and he
also assured his neighbors of his willingness to give personal
aid by endeavoring to procure a tutor during his
travels in the North; and this promise he faithfully kept,
for while stopping in Princeton, he sought the advice of
Dr. Witherspoon, President of Princeton College; but no
tutor could be obtained there, as that institution had not
yet recovered from the confusion caused by the war. In
Philadelphia, a short time later, he renewed his search
by inquiring for an Irish instructor; but he was told that
the state of learning in Ireland was so low that few
natives of that country had sufficient accomplishments
for such employment; or if they should have, desired to
secure it. Jefferson, in his perplexity, now thought of a
Scotch tutor; but before resuming the hunt, he wrote back
to his correspondent in Albemarle that he would not go
on until he had heard that the plans for the academy
were fixed upon so firm a basis that he would be justified
in empowering some person in Scotland to engage there
a competent teacher. "It was from that country," he
said, "that a sober, attentive man would be most certainly
obtained." He was so soon called away by his
mission to France that he does not appear to have had a
chance for forwarding the design by further personal cooperation;
and afterwards, down to 1809, was so constantly
absent from home, owing to his official duties in
Washington, that he had not leisure to consider it further
in a practical way.

The purpose of establishing the school seems to have
slumbered for many years, but, in 1803, or on some day
just previous to it, the plan was revived, and so keen
was the interest now aroused, that, in the course of that
year, a charter was obtained and the school incorporated

as the Albemarle Academy. By this date, the population
of the county had substantially increased, and the
need of a good classical school must have been more urgent
than it had been twenty years earlier, when the
scheme was broached for the first time.

Did the new academy enter at once upon an existence
more solid than that of an academy on parchment? Apparently,
it did not. In 1802, an Act of the General Assembly
laid down the manner in which the money accruing
from the sale of the glebe lands in Fredericksville and
St. Anne's parishes was to be secured for any permissible
object: a majority of the freeholders and householders
of the county had only to submit a petition to the
overseers of the poor clearly defining their purpose. It
is possible that this Act was passed at the instance of persons
interested in the projected academy; but that the
fund was not appropriated is demonstrated by the fact
that, when, in 1814, the scheme was resuscitated by the
surviving trustees under the old charter, one of the first
steps taken was to apply to the General Assembly for
the possession of this fund,—an indication that it had not
yet been disposed of, for it would certainly have been
used had the original design been carried out in 1803.
About this time, there was a school at Milton on the
Rivanna conducted by William Ogilvie, an excellent classical
scholar of Scotch birth, who gave the earliest tuition
to the sons of many conspicuous families of Albemarle
and adjoining counties. In 1806, Professor Girardin determined
to resign his chair in the College of William and
Mary, and consulted Joseph C. Cabell, then in Williamsburg,
as to the most promising site for founding a large
school of his own. Cabell conferred with his brother,
Judge William H. Cabell: "Shall we place Girardin in
the academy at New Glasgow," he wrote, "or shall we

connect him with Ogilvie and establish them at Charlottesville?
I wish to do the latter."[6] Now, it is quite
improbable that Cabell, whose birthplace and original
home was at Warminster, on the James River, not very
many miles away, would have suggested Charlottesville
as a suitable place of settlement for two distinguished
teachers like Ogilvie and Girardin had he known that
they would have to meet and overcome the rivalry of an
academy already in operation, and backed by an influential
board of trustees and a large circle of wealthy
patrons.

Not until 1814 does the Albermarle Academy exhibit
the feeblest sign of practical life. When the project
was revived, only five of the first trustees, namely John
Harris, John Nicholas, John Kelly, Peter Carr, and
John Carr, took hold of it, for all the others had either
died, resigned, or emigrated to the West. The vacancies
in the list, the natural result of the lapse of a decade, had
not been filled as they arose; and this would certainly
have been done had the Academy, in reality, been under
way, since, in that case, it would have called for and received
the close supervision of a large and interested
Board. The original members had fallen off, it would
seem, because there were no duties to perform. Indeed,
the Academy so far had been merely a name.

What was the motive at the bottom of the resuscitation
of the charter? Quite probably the principal one
now, as during many years past, was that there was an immediate
need for the school; the subordinate one, perhaps,
was the desire to bolster up financially Triplett
Estes, the proprietor of the Old Stone tavern, the jovial
friend of all those citizens of the county who had eaten
of the dishes from his kitchen and drunk of the spirits

from his cellar. In a letter which George W. Randolph
wrote to Dr. James L. Cabell, in 1856, when the Stone
tavern was yet standing, he repeated the story of the
tentative purchase which had been told to him by Alexander
Garrett, one of the new trustees of the Academy
after its revival in 1814, and one, therefore, conversant
with all the details of this event at the time, though his
memory may have been weakened subsequently by age.
It was Mr. Garrett's impression, says Mr. Randolph,
that "the owners of the present Monticello House,—
with which the Stone tavern had been incorporated before
1856,—for the purpose of raising the value of
their property, and partly, no doubt, from public spirit,
undertook to establish an academy."[7] As the petition
which certain citizens of Albemarle, at a later day, addressed
to the General Assembly sought the right to collect
funds by lottery to buy this house for the expressed
purpose of profiting Triplett Estes, it seems unlikely, as
Mr. Randolph reports, that any of the trustees had a
personal interest in the property beyond a mortgage.
On the contrary, the concern shown by Estes and his
friends in the proposed sale would appear to demonstrate
that he alone was to be the beneficiary. The building
itself was ample security for any lien which may have
rested on it.

As the scheme of the Academy had been under consideration
during many years, and as the need for it was
greater now than ever, the five surviving members of the
old board probably saw in Estes's offer a very uncommon
chance of securing the right kind of structure for the
projected school in Charlottesville, where alone they
perhaps thought it should be placed, and where alone
an edifice large enough for its purpose was likely to be

found. If, in establishing the Academy, a popular citizen,
who happened to have the property wanted, could
also be assisted, the housing thus made attainable was not,
on that account, rendered less desirable or less satisfactory
to the trustees. Furthermore, those trustees were
aware that it would be necessary to turn to a lottery to
raise in part at least the fund which they would require.
That lottery was certain to be looked upon with more
favor in Albemarle and the adjacent counties if it were
associated in the minds of the citizens in general with
the expectation of succoring so worthy and so genial a
boniface as Estes.

So far as can be discovered, Jefferson had no part of
any kind in the consultations that led up to the first
meeting of the five trustees on March 25, 1814. He
went back to Monticello in 1809, and from that time became
a permanent resident of the county. There was an
interval of five years before the surviving members of
the old board reassembled. Why had he manifested no
interest in the charter of 1803, and, so far as we know,
why was he not previously approached by the trustees
with the view of enlisting his influential co-operation?
Apparently, during these years, he made no suggestion
with respect to the Academy; he gave no advice; nor did
he take any step whatever, either alone or along with
others, to revive the scheme. While his concern for the
advancement of education was never more lively than
during the immediate period that followed his return to
his home, it is quite possible that his long absences from
the county, and the dignity of the great offices he had
filled, had produced a certain aloofness in his intercourse
with his neighbors. There is little proof of any intimate
association on his part with the community around him.
He was not a public speaker, and so far as can be judged,

his attention was now absorbed by his correspondence,
his agricultural experiments, his domestic circle, and his
private visitors, who furnished him with the most cultivated
and distinguished society. Had he been in close
affiliation with the trustees of the Academy, either before
or after he became a member of its board, it is not probable
that, when the Academy was converted into Central
College in 1816, he would have omitted the entire number
from the governing body of the new institution, even
if he were anxious to increase the influence of that body
by placing on it only men known throughout Virginia.

Jefferson's participation in the memorable first meeting
of the surviving trustees at the Stone tavern was wholly
accidental and unexpected. It seems that, following his
habit after one o'clock in the day, he had left Monticello
for his afternoon ride, and had turned his horse's head
in the direction of Charlottesville. As he passed through
the village, he was seen from the Stone tavern by one of
the trustees, who, aware of his interest in education, and
justly thinking that his advice would be of substantial
service, suggested that he should be asked to dismount,
and take part in the discussion then going on in one of
the rooms in the inn. He cheerfully complied with the
invitation, got down from the saddle, and joined the
circle within. He first counseled them to fill at once all
the vacancies in the board; and this seems to have been
promptly done. His own name was inserted at the head
of the list, which ran as follows: Thomas Jefferson,
Jonathan B. Carr, Robert B. Streshley, James Leitch, Edmund
Anderson, Thomas Wells, Nicholas M. Lewis,
Frank Carr, John Winn, Alexander Garrett, Dabney
Minor, Samuel Carr, and Thomas Jameson. To this
list should be added the names of the surviving members
of the original board: John Harris, John Nicholas, John

Kelly, Peter Carr, and John Carr. Further additions to
the number were made in the course of the ensuing twelve
months.

What were the histories of the principal men who composed
the reformed board? Without exception, they
were drawn from the body of the substantial and responsible
citizens of the county, those "plain, honest,
rational, and well-informed neighbors" of Jefferson, to
whom he referred in the letter, already quoted, written
this very month of the same year. Frank Carr was, at
one time or another, a physician, teacher, editor, and
farmer, and in the latter character filled the useful office
of secretary of the Albemarle Agricultural Society. He
also sat on the bench of magistrates and served as
sheriff. Edmund Anderson was a brother-in-law of
Meriwether Lewis, the famous explorer of the Missouri
and Columbia Rivers. Nicholas M. Lewis was a greatgrandson
of Nicholas Meriwether, one of the earliest
landowners in Albemarle. His father had been a distinguished
officer in the War of the Revolution, surveyor,
sheriff, and magistrate, and the adviser of the family at
Monticello during Jefferson's numerous absences from his
roof. John Winn had laid by a competence in mercantile
pursuits in Charlottesville, and had afterwards purchased
the valuable estate of Belmont, which he occupied
as his home. Alexander Garrett, who was to become
the bursar of the University, was, at one time, the deputy
sheriff and deputy clerk of the county. Peter Carr was
a member of the bar, and had formerly been associated
with Jefferson as his private secretary. John Kelly, like
John Winn, was a successful merchant, was very alert in
the affairs of his church, and enjoyed such a high reputation
for integrity and good sense that he was frequently
appointed to act as the administrator of estates. John

Nicholas, who was sprung from one of the first settlers,
was a grandson of Colonel Fry, who, with Peter Jefferson,
drafted the celebrated map of Virginia that is designated
by their names. He owned a large area of land in
the neighborhood of the town, and for some years was
the clerk of the county in succession to his father. James
Leitch was, during a subsequent period, the proprietor
of the Pantops estate. Dabney Minor was a member
of a family that has always been actively and honorably
identified with every interest of the county. Samuel
Carr, whose pursuit was that of farmer, had sat on the
magistrates' bench and served as colonel of cavalry in
the War of 1812; and he also won political distinction as
a delegate and senator in the General Assembly. John
Carr was the first clerk of the circuit court of Albemarle,
and was also the clerk of the district court of Charlottesville.
Thomas Jameson, a descendant of one of the earliest
patentees of the lands on Moorman's River, was a
physician who practiced at the county seat and in its
vicinage. Streshley, Wells, and Harris, the three remaining
trustees, were all citizens of respectable position
in the community, well fitted by character and intelligence
for the performance of the highly responsible duties
which they had undertaken.

Merchants, lawyers, physicians, farmers, clerks of
court, magistrates, sheriffs, members of the General Assembly,
either then or yet to be,—such were the men
who sat on the board of trustees of Albemarle Academy.
With a few exceptions, they were sprung from
fathers or grandfathers who had come into the county
with the first immigration, and all were bound to its soil
by financial interests, ties of home and family, and the
associations of a life-time with kinsmen and friends. At
their head stood Jefferson, ready to give them the full

benefit of his long experience of men, and ripe wisdom in
the management of the most intricate public affairs.
There was not another among them who approached him
in personal distinction, or in knowledge of educational
principles; and all were willing to follow his serene and
farsighted leadership, now so essential to the success of
their plans.

V. Acts of Albemarle Academy Trustees

Adjourning on March 25, the trustees re-assembled
on April 5. The principal business transacted on that day
was the election of Peter Carr as President of the Board,
and of Frank Carr as Secretary, and the appointment
of a committee, with Jefferson as its chairman, to draw up
a code of general regulations for the government of
the Academy so soon as its doors should be thrown open
to students. A motion to choose at once the site for
its building was put off, in order, doubtless, to await the
report of the committee now selected to suggest the
means of obtaining the funds needed for the completion
and maintenance of the projected institution. Adjourning
over from April 15, because barely a majority of the
trustees were present,—Jefferson himself being one of
the absentees—they re-assembled on May 3. Again
Jefferson did not attend; but as fifteen trustees answered
to their names at roll-call, matters of the first importance
were straightway called up for consideration and debate.
The committee chosen to devise a plan for procuring
money recommended that a lottery should be used for
that purpose. The terms adopted for this lottery demonstrate
the seductive manner in which it was to be employed:
four thousand filled-in tickets were to be printed;
and as each was to be sold for five dollars, it was expected

that, by this means, the sum of $20,000 would be collected
for distribution as prizes. The largest of these
prizes was to amount to five thousand dollars; the next
largest to two thousand; and the third, fourth, and fifth,
to one thousand dollars each. The remaining ten thousand
dollars was to be divided into smaller sums for
prizes running all the way from one of five hundred dollars
to one thousand of five dollars respectively. The
profit was to be derived from twenty-six hundred and
eighty-five blank tickets, to be disposed of at the same
time as the prize tickets at five dollars a piece. The
drawing was to take place in Charlottesville eighteen
months after the sale of all the tickets had been completed;
or if the trustees should so determine, at an earlier
date.

The report of the committee on rules and regulations,
which bore throughout the scholastic and administrative
stamp of its chairman, Jefferson, stated that the Academy's
aim would be to provide higher instruction for
youths already thoroughly grounded in a course of reading,
writing, and arithmetic. It was to consist of such
studies, at first, as promised to be most useful; and as
the income of the institution should grow in volume, the
number of these studies was to be enlarged so as to embrace
other and wider fields of knowledge. A committee
of three was to be nominated yearly by the Board to
keep every branch of the tuition under observation; to
suggest what new departments should be added; to enforce
discipline among the students; to regulate the expenses;
and to overlook the entire domestic economy
of the Academy. Thomas M. Randolph, Jefferson's son-in-law,
was now a member of the Board, and he, Peter
Carr, and Jefferson, the three most conspicuous and influential
trustees, were selected as the committee to petition

the General Assembly for an appropriation, in support
of the Academy, out of the money that had arisen from
the sale of the glebe lands of St. Anne's and Fredericksville's
parishes. By an act passed February 13, 1811,
the county court of Albemarle had been authorized to
appoint a commissioner to invest the funds accruing from
this sale in the stock of the Bank of Virginia. It seems
that only the interest, at this time at least, could be used
for the establishment of a public school or schools in the
county, in harmony with the provisions of the Act of 1796
for the education of the people. But before either principal
or interest could be disposed of, the consent of the
freeholders had to be obtained, as required by the Act
of 1802, already referred to. It was important for the
trustees of the Academy to secure this acquiescence beforehand,
since it would fortify their petition for the entire
sum when brought before the General Assembly. At
this moment, the money was already in the custody of
John Winn, a member of the Board, who had become the
commissioner by order of the court; and it seems now
to have only needed the approval of a majority of the
voters, and the authorization of the Legislature, to assure
the immediate diversion of the whole amount,—
principal as well as interest,—to the use of the Academy.

On June 17, a committee, composed of John Winn,
James Leitch, John Nicholas, Frank Carr, and Alexander
Garrett, was named to decide upon the most suitable
site for the institution. Should a new edifice be erected
on the most commodious and economical plan, or should
a house already in existence be chosen? The question
before the committee really was: should the Stone tavern
be purchased from Estes, or should they buy new ground
in the neighborhood of Charlottesville where no building
was already standing?

It is no cause for surprise to find that, when the trustees
re-assembled on August 19, Jefferson was present for
the first time since their second conference. The point
coming up for determination was the one which interested
him most. It is easy enough to comprehend that the
mind which conceived the splendid group of University
structures at a later date, shrank from the possibility of
a rough tavern, of no architectural beauty whatever from
cellar to garret, being accepted as the correct housing for
the institution which he had already resolved to enlarge
into a great seat of learning. Fortunately, he was not
a common local politician, for had he been, he would
have looked upon the good will of a popular innkeeper
as important to the success of his political future, and,
therefore, not to be jeoparded; nor were his social relations
with that innkeeper such as to make him hesitate
to derange his plans. Jefferson concentrated his gaze
upon the paramount claims of his own great scheme; and
he was too sagacious to yield one inch, even in the obscurity
and uncertainty of its initiation. As he was on a
footing of friendship with all the members of the building
committee, it is reasonable to presume that he was
consulted by them when they came to draft their report;
unquestionably, its tenor was in harmony with his own
wishes and convictions; and when it was handed in, he
was in the room to support it with the weight of his influence
with the board. The report took the ground that
it was not advisable to purchase a building within the
town, but that an unoccupied site, at least half a mile
from its boundaries, should be bought. The Academy,
however, in making this selection, was not to be compelled
to pay a higher price than it would have been required
to do had an improved and convenient situation in Charlottesville
been preferred. As there were now no funds

in the board's possession, the committee recommended
that the choice of the site should be put off until a definite
offer could be submitted.

The expectation of obtaining funds was based on three
petitions to be sent to the General Assembly: the first,
for the appropriation of the money from the sale of the
glebes, now in the custody of Commissioner Winn; the
second, for a dividend accruing from the interest of the
Literary Fund; and the third, for a lottery.

The first two of these petitions had already been drawn
by Jefferson, Randolph, and Carr. The petition for the
lottery was signed by one hundred and forty-seven citizens
of Albemarle county, who did not disguise the fact,
even in the document itself, that one of the purposes they
had in view was to make certain the collection of funds
sufficient for the purchase of the Old Stone tavern, in
order to assist its genial proprietor financially. There was
no word of disapproval by Jefferson of that petition on
this account, although it is altogether probable that he had
no patience with this particular side of it. With another
of its clauses, however, he was warmly in sympathy; indeed,
this section seems to have received its tone from
his own exasperated and outspoken opinion of the impoverished
means of acquiring a higher education in his
native Commonwealth. "We have too long slept in
unpardonable apathy," it ran, "over the crying and lamentable
fact that, in the rich, populous, and liberal State
of Virginia, there stands not one literary academy calculated
to command the education of her youth. ... We
see our youth flying to foreign countries (Yale, Princeton
and other Northern colleges) to obtain that of which
they are deprived at home: a liberal education. We
behold them asking of foreigners (the North) what
their fathers refuse them. It is calculated, in an alarming

degree, to alienate the young from the spot of their
nativity, to instil into their young, open, and unsuspecting
minds, opinions and sentiments inimical to the interest
and happiness of their parent country (Virginia), for
we see that they have too frequently returned back into
the bosom of that country with a respect and affection
for everything abroad, the effect of which is a contempt
and disrespect for everything at home."[8]

These words have the characteristic ring and flavour of
Jefferson in writing about Northern institutions of learning
at that time, or in commenting upon the supposed
monarchical designs of the Federalist leaders.

After the meeting of the Board on August 19, his interest
in the plans for the Academy grew rapidly warmer
and far more personal. On September 7, nineteen days
subsequently, he penned the famous letter to Peter Carr,
the president of the board of trustees, from which quotations
have already been made, as offering the most precise
and voluminous statement by himself of his views on
education. That letter demonstrates in the clearest manner
that his mind was now deeply engaged with the
thought of converting the projected academy into the
university which he had so long been contemplating.
"What are the objects of our institution?" he asks.
"Let us take a survey of the general field of science,"
he replies to his own question, "and mark out the field
we mean to occupy at first, and the alternate extension of
our views beyond that, should we be able to render it as
comprehensive as we would wish. ... We must select
the materials from the different institutions of others
which are good for us, and with them erect a structure
whose arrangement shall correspond with our own conditions,

and admit of enlargement. With the first (primary)
grade of education, we shall have nothing to do.
The sciences of the second grade are our first object:
(1) languages, including history; (2) mathematics, including
chemistry, zoology, botany, mineralogy, anatomy,
and the theory of medicine; and (3) philosophy. To
adapt them to our slender beginnings, we must separate
them into groups comprehending many sciences each,
and greatly more in the first instance than ought to be
imposed on, or can be completely conducted by, a single
professor permanently. They must be subdivided from
time to time as our means increase, until each professor
shall have no more under his care than he can attend to
with advantage to the students and ease to himself.
In the further advance of our resources, professional
schools must be introduced and professorships established
in them also."

Jefferson asserts, in the same remarkable letter, that
he had "lost no occasion to make himself acquainted with
the best seminaries in other countries, and with the opinions
of the most enlightened individuals on the subject
of the sciences worthy to be taught in the new institution."
So keen was the interest which he now felt in
its expected evolution into a great seat of learning, that,
for the first time, he began to regard with just apprehension
the possible dissipation of the moneys, derived from
the sale of the glebes, that had been deposited in the several
State banks. Were such banks safe places of custody?
"Perhaps, the loss of these funds," he wrote
Cabell, only three weeks after the date of the letter to
Carr, "would be the most lasting of the evils proceeding
from the insolvency of those banks." There is a suggestion
of pathos in this solicitude about a sum so small
and so inadequate for the development of the noble

scheme which he had in mind; but he was clearly aware
of the opposition which he would have to overcome before
he could hope to obtain even a meagre legislative
appropriation; and he was, therefore, the more earnestly
disposed to husband the few petty resources for public
education which he knew could not be disputed or withheld.
In the prosecution of his plans, he seems to have
gone so far as to submit to the trustees of the Academy
a sketch for the building of a separate pavilion for each
separate school, with the entire number grouped along
three lines of a square, and in each a spacious lecturehall
and two apartments for the use of the professor who
would occupy it.[9] This is an additional proof of how
little he was thinking of the small local academy, and how
much of the university which he intended to take its
place. The Academy, indeed, was a mere figure of straw
in his scheme, to exist only for such time as would be
required to procure the charter of the College, which
was to forerun the University somewhat as the Academy
was to forerun the College.

VI. The Academy Converted into a College

Did the papers sent to David Watson, the delegate
from Louisa, by Peter Carr, as president of the board
of trustees, to be submitted to the General Assembly at
the session of 1814–15, contain a petition for the conversion
of the Academy into Central College? At this
time, Charles Yancey and Thomas Wood represented
the county of Albemarle in the Lower House, and Joseph

C. Cabell in the Senate. Why was it that David Watson,
the delegate of a neighboring county, was preferred for
an important service that did not concern directly his
own constituents? He was probably a friend of Carr's,
and perhaps more influential than the Albemarle delegates;
but to pass the latter by was a slur upon them
which the future interest of the new seat of learning apparently
did not justify. Why were not the papers enclosed
first to Cabell, the senator for that district? Possibly
because Cabell, having married and resided in Williamsburg,
was supposed to be a staunch friend of the
College of William and Mary, the prospects of which
were certain to be damaged by the establishment of a
college in Albemarle. In spite of this fact, it is probable
that, had Jefferson been consulted, he would have
recommended Cabell as the principal steersman, for Cabell
also represented the district, and although, at that
time, not intimately known to him, was sufficiently known
to raise a high opinion of his talents in Jefferson's mind.

An unnecessary delay would have been avoided had
Carr enclosed the papers to Cabell, for, during the whole
session of 1814–15, Watson held them back without giving
any explanation of his dilatoriness. Jefferson wrote
to Cabell on January 5 (1815) that the petition had not
been presented to the General Assembly, and he gave
expression to his regret, for he thought that, had it been
submitted and received favorably, a small appropriation,
in addition to that asked for, might have been obtained,
which would have enabled the trustees to erect in Charlottesville
what he said would be "the best seminary in
the United States." In his impatience, Jefferson sent
Cabell copies of all the papers,—with the exception apparently
of the petition for the lottery,—which had been
reposing in Watson's inert hands, for, with characteristic

foresight, he had been careful to retain duplicates of the
originals. The package forwarded contained: (1) a letter
that described the plans for the institution; (2) Jefferson's
reply to the observations of Dr. Cooper on this
plan; (3) the trustees' petition; and (4) the draft of the
Act which the General Assembly was expected to pass.

It was stated in the petition that the resources relied
upon by the trustees were the proceeds of the projected
lottery; the fund, with the interest added, accruing from
the sale of the glebes of Fredericksville and St. Anne's
parishes; and the dividend from the profits of the Literary
Fund of the State as pro-rated to Albemarle county.
The additional aid which Jefferson, but for Watson's
neglect, had hoped to procure from the General Assembly
was a loan of seven or eight thousand dollars for a period
of four or five years. He declared that, with this amount
of money available, he would be in a position to engage
three of the ablest characters in the world to fill the higher
professorships,—"three such characters," he said, "as
are not in a single university of Europe"; and for those
of languages and mathematics, able instructors could also,
at the same time, be employed. "With these characters,"
he exclaims, "I should not be afraid to say that
the circle of sciences composing the second and final
grade would be more perfectly taught here than in any
institution of the United States." In these words, we
have again that almost pathetic touch to which we have
previously referred: the contrast between the magnitude
and nobility of his designs for higher education in Virginia,
and the smallness of the funds at his disposal.
This was the inception of that protracted struggle for
State appropriations for the most beloved and treasured
scheme of his illustrious life, which was not to end until
he sank on his deathbed at Monticello, and which, attended

throughout by alternate dejection and encouragement,
was pursued with an unselfish persistence and devotion
that forms one of the most inspiring chapters in
the history of American education.

Before the Academy was merged in the College, his
correspondence with his most loyal and zealous coadjutor
in this prolonged appeal for assistance, began. "I had
no hint from any quarter," Cabell wrote on March 5,
1815, "that I was expected to bestow particular care on
the business. There was nothing which should have defeated
the petition unless objected to by some of the
people of Albemarle, who might not wish to appropriate
the proceeds of the sale of the glebes to the establishment
of the Academy at Charlottesville; or a few members of
the Assembly who might have other views for the disposition
of the income of the Literary Fund; or from Eastern
delegates from the lower counties, who may have
fears for William and Mary. ... I hope that there
would be no other effect produced by the plan on William
and Mary than that necessarily resulting from another
college in the State." This petition, the second of the
documents which Jefferson sent to Cabell in Richmond,
contained a prayer for the substitution of a college for the
Academy, and as this was a copy of the original petition
which Carr enclosed to the Louisa delegate, Watson, the
original petition itself must also have been of precisely the
same tenor. It was re-submitted, with the other papers,
to the General Assembly at the beginning of the session of
1815–16, but now under Cabell's general direction. On
December 18, he wrote to Isaac Coles as follows: "Notwithstanding
my unabated regard for the institution of
William and Mary, I shall do everything in my power to
give success to Mr. Jefferson's scheme of a college now
pending before the Assembly. The more the better. He

has drafted a beautiful scheme of a college at Charlottesville."

The patron of the bill in the Lower House of Assembly
was Thomas W. Maury, one of the delegates from
Albemarle. When the debate upon it began, antagonism
at once arose to that clause which asked for an appropriation
out of the profits of the Literary Fund in
proportion to the population of the county. This opposition
was based on the presumption that the public
uses to which this fund was to be applied had not yet
been determined; and on Cabell's advice, this provision
was struck out as not likely at that time to be adopted.
All the other clauses were ultimately approved by the
House. Before the measure, however, could reach the
Senate, Yancey, the other representative of Albemarle
in the lower body, seeking out Cabell, requested him to
offer an amendment to it, when called up in the upper
chamber, that would eliminate the clause empowering
the trustees of Central College to carry out the main
requirement of the law of 1796 by fixing the exact date
for putting in operation the general plan for public education
in Albemarle. Mr. Yancey was worried by the
apprehension that his constituents would be displeased
should they find themselves placed on a different footing
in this respect from the freeholders and householders of
the other counties, all of whom enjoyed the right to designate
the time by popular vote. Cabell seems to have
belittled the grounds for this fear; but he shortly afterwards
discovered that the Governor of the State, a
shrewd politician, held the same opinion as Yancey.

His hope of securing the final passage of the bill in
the form in which the Lower House had left it, was soon
dissipated; discussion in the Senate brought out at once
an expression of hostility to that clause which clothed the

proctor of the College with all the functions of a justice
of the peace within the academic precincts. Cabell hurried
off a letter to Jefferson the very day the bill was
reported in the Upper House (February 16, 1816), to
find out why this stipulation had been inserted. His
purpose was to silence the unfriendly senators. Jefferson,
in his reply, which was delayed until the 24th, pointed out
that he had simply suggested the adoption of a rule which
had always prevailed in every great European seat of
learning; and that if the proctor was a man of integrity
and discretion,—which might be presumed from his selection
for his office,—he was just as likely as the neighboring
justices of the peace to prove himself entirely trustworthy
in the exercise of all his judicial powers. Another
desirable feature was, that, acting as he would do in
the privacy of the College, he would be able to shield
culprits among the immature students from the disgrace
of the common prison by confining them to their rooms,
when their offenses were not very heinous. "My aim,"
Jefferson added, "was to create for the young men a
complete police of their own, tempered by the paternal
affection of their tutors." Nowhere, in his opinion,
would such a local police be so much required, for the
history of the College of William and Mary had demonstrated,
both before and after the Revolution, that students
and town boys would be constantly kicking up rows
and breaking out into riots to gratify their mutual feeling
of animosity. Should the proctor, in the performance
of his magisterial duties, expose himself to the charge
of either partiality or remissness, the nearest magistrate
could quickly and easily interpose.

Jefferson's argument failed to convince the opposing
senators, and the clause was stricken out by Cabell; and
the like fate also befell at his hands that clause to which

both Mr. Yancey and the Governor had expressed their
emphatic objection as being impolitic and untimely.

Would the Senate, unlike the Lower House, be willing
to vote in favor of any kind of appropriation for the benefit
of the new College? Cabell thought that their consent
could be only obtained to a plausible subterfuge.
At that time, a Mr. Broadwood had acquired a great
reputation in the country below Richmond by his success
in teaching the deaf and dumb. "Why not invite him to
Charlottesville," Cabell wrote Jefferson in January, "and
establish him in the house which Estes has offered to
sell? Would it suit your purpose to get an Act passed
for a lottery to purchase that house for an establishment
for the deaf and dumb as a wing to Central College?"
So convinced was Cabell that only in some indirect way
resembling this could an appropriation be assured, that
he wrote to Jefferson again on the same subject before
time sufficient had passed for a reply to be returned to his
first letter. "It is barely possible," he remarks on this
second occasion, "that the General Assembly may give
the Central College something for teaching the deaf and
dumb. I am endeavoring to prepare the more liberal
part for an attempt at an amendment of a professorship
of the deaf and dumb. Thus far it is well received, but
it may be baffled. I have thought that such a plan might
engage the affection of the coldest member." Could
there be a more pertinent commentary on the obstacles,
that, on every side, confronted the advocates of popular
education in Virginia than this scheme, which Cabell
brought forward only in a spirit of despair? But Jefferson,
while he was anxious to get assistance from the public
treasury, was unwilling to lower the dignity of his great
plan by obtaining that aid on conditions which were inconsistent
with its true character. In his reply, he candidly

stated, that, in his opinion, Charlottesville offered
no special advantages that would justify Mr. Broadwood
in removing his school thither. A large town, like Richmond,
was far preferable for such an establishment.
The aims of an academic college and the aims of a school
for the deaf and dumb were fundamentally different.
The one was designed for science, the other for mere
charity. "It would," he added, "be gratuitously taking
a boat in tow which may impede but cannot aid the motion
of the principal institution."

Before the bill was put upon its final passage, Mr. Poindexter,
who represented the Louisa and Fluvanna district,
submitted a resolution that the share of those counties
in the sum accruing from the sale of the Fredericksville
and St. Anne's glebes, so far as these parishes overlapped
the area of that district, should be reserved for their
use, and as the proportion was small, Cabell thought it
advisable to assent; and he was swayed in doing this
further by his own conviction that the new college should
rely upon State appropriations rather than upon such
meagre resources as were set forth in the bill for its
creation.

Albemarle Academy was converted into Central College
by an Act of Assembly dated the fourteenth of February,
1816. Among the influences which are said to
have hastened the passage of the bill was the success that
had crowned the canvass to obtain subscriptions for the
Academy; and also the announcement that the great political
economist of France, Say, having expressed his willingness
to remove his home to Albemarle, would, in that
event, quite certainly consent to be employed as a professor
in the new seat of learning. Perhaps, the most
curious fact associated with the incorporation of the College
was the strong probability, at one time, that it would

be established without the elimination of the Academy.
So much for the hold which Triplett Estes had on the affections
of the one hundred and forty-seven citizens of
Albemarle who had been urging the lottery as a means of
raising the fund needed to buy his property in Charlottesville!
An independent bill was submitted in the Senate
authorizing the lottery to be carried out, and providing
that, if the Visitors of the new college should prefer the
Old Stone tavern as a site, they should have the right to
buy it with the proceeds of the lottery. Should they fail
to do so, however, this sum could be used to secure that
site for the revived Academy. Cabell offered an amendment
that the proceeds should be put absolutely at the
disposal of Central College even if the Visitors should
decide that it would be improper to locate the institution
in the Estes house or unwise to purchase that house even
at a reasonable price. Cabell feared that, if the bill
should become law without this amendment, there would
arise a conflict between the Academy,—which, under the
terms of that bill, would have to be placed in the Old
Stone tavern,—and the Central College, created by an
entirely different Act, under the provisions of which its
Visitors were impowered to choose a site wherever their
judgment should guide them. The bill for the lottery
was rejected by the Senate, and with it disappeared all
danger of the threatened duality.

VII. Jefferson's Foresight for the College

One of the conspicuous qualities of Jefferson's manysided
mind was a far-sightedness that was at once minute
and imperialistic in its scope. His possession of this characteristic
to an extraordinary degree has come to light in
the course of our previous narrative, but perhaps it was

never more clearly evinced than in the name which he
gave to the new college, and in his choice of the men who
were to be coupled with himself in its organization and
development. Had he styled it Albemarle College, he
must have put aside all hope of ultimately obtaining a
larger support from the State than would be granted to
any other of the local academies. At the best, the most
sanguine expectation that he could nurse would be, that,
in time, it would rise to the respectable but not preeminent
rank of Washington and Hampden-Sidney Colleges.

Jefferson had a State university really in view, and as
such an institution could be only founded with the assistance
of the Commonwealth, he wisely decided to give
the new seat of learning the name that would approximate
the closest to the broad meaning of the words,
"University of Virginia"; in short, a name that, from
the very start, would lift it above the common level of
the academies and colleges already in existence, by clothing
it with the dignity of an institution rightly bidding,
in the opinion of all, for the patronage of the Virginians
in the mass. By such a name alone, the supreme convenience
of its situation, in those days of stage coach and
private carriage, would be indicated to every citizen in
the State who had a son to educate. But Jefferson looked
upon this last fact as important only because it would be
promotive of his main object. He anticipated that, when
the struggle for the site of the university, which he was
confident would be built in the future, began, the people
would have become accustomed to thinking of the college
at Charlottesville as the only really central seat of
learning underway in Virginia, and for that reason, if
for no other, possessing the prior claim to final conversion
into a great State institution. In other words, he reckoned

the value of the temporary success to Central College
chiefly in the light of its increasing the chance of the
College's transformation into the University, when the
hour was ripe for that long forecasted event.

There was a choleric debate going on, at this time, as
to the wisdom of removing the capital from Richmond to
some place which would better subserve the convenience
of the Virginian people by its more central situation.
The advocates of Staunton were active to uproariousness
in urging the superiority of her claim on this score; and
some of them even put out a plain threat, that, unless the
seat of administration was transferred to the west of
the Blue Ridge, those parts of the Commonwealth would
confederate to erect a new State. It is not improbable
that, in the midst of this scramble for preference, Jefferson
harbored the hope that Charlottesville would be
selected as the new metropolis; and had he been a member
of the General Assembly at this hour, and as young
as he was in 1776, he might have secured the simultaneous
establishment of both the capital and the university
on the banks of the Rivanna, in his native county. He
had shown how important he considered the association
of the two to be at the time that he was endeavoring to
broaden the course of study at the College of William and
Mary, when Williamsburg was still the seat of government.
Being fully aware, through his frequent correspondence
with Cabell, of the ferment in the General Assembly
over the question of removing the Capital, he
clearly foresaw the opposition which both Staunton and
Lexington would stir up to the erection of the university in
the eastern shadow of the Ridge,—Staunton because it
would interfere with the success of her campaign to acquire
the new seat of administration; and Lexington because
it would put an end to the realization of her ambition

to become the site of the proposed State institution.
In giving the name "Central College" to the new seat
of learning, Jefferson, in a spirit of quiet calculation, defied
the political aspirations of the one town, and the
academic aspirations of the other; and at the same time,
tacitly announced to the entire Commonwealth that, when
the hour should arrive for locating the university, he was
going to make a bid for the site on the score of this centrality,
to which he knew no rival could pretend.

But he was not satisfied with creating but one favorable
condition, at the very start, to sustain the claim
which he expected to bring forward just so soon as the
General Assembly should decide to establish a university:
his next step was to join with himself in the directorate
of his new college men of such preeminence in the social
and political affairs of the Commonwealth that their personal
distinction would be a powerful agency in winning
popular respect for it, thus influencing public sentiment in
support of his ultimate designs.

One of the baffling questions that offers itself in this
somewhat obscure initial stage of our history is: how did
Jefferson succeed, apparently so amicably,[10] in getting rid
of the very estimable board of trustees of Albemarle
Academy? That board embraced, as we have seen, fifteen
or sixteen citizens of the county who deservedly enjoyed
a high degree of repute in their own community.
Was no bad feeling aroused in them when the seat was
withdrawn so abruptly from under them? No reason for
their elimination that could have been submitted, however
sound from a practical point of view, could have been
entirely acceptable to their sensibilities. Were they too

numerous? This was a fault which could have been removed
by reduction. Were they lacking in influence?
To intimate that they were was perhaps too delicate an
assertion to make even by innuendo. The plausible and
soothing explanation that was given by Jefferson was
probably this: (1) that the original board was too large,
and that it was better to drop all its members than to
irritate the many by choosing only a few from its number
to serve on the second board: (2) that the only solid
hope of enlarging the scope of the new college was by
drawing together for its support a board which would
represent, not one county, but the entire State; and (3)
that the conversion of the College into a university, which
could only be accomplished by such means, would confer
both a sentimental and a material advantage on the people
of Albemarle county. It was, perhaps, this ulterior
scheme, well known to every member of the old board,
that softened the chagrin which must have been felt by
them as a body. In one alone did exasperation against
Jefferson show itself in action, and in that instance, this
may have been due to political and not to personal irritation.
John Kelly was the exception. When an offer was
made for his land near Charlottesville for the purpose
of using it as the site of the College, he seems to have
declined it with a brusqueness that was decidedly offensive;
and this conduct was emphasized by the fact that
he was conspicuous in the religious life of the community.

The Board of Visitors of Central College comprised
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, David
Watson, Joseph Carrington Cabell, and John Hartwell
Cocke. Jefferson and Madison, besides their extraordinary
services in other lofty public positions, had
each occupied the Presidency during eight years in critical

times. Mr. Monroe was, at the hour of his appointment,
the actual incumbent of that exalted office. The careers
and the characters of these three distinguished statesmen
belong to the history of the whole country, and are too
well known to call for any description here. The reputations
of the other three members of the Board were
confined to Virginia. It is not necessary to dwell on
the character of David Watson, or the events of his life,
as he seems, either from indolence or ill health, to have
taken no part in the labors of the Board; and a substitute
was ultimately found for him, apparently with his full
approval. There was a wide gulf between his conduct
in this respect, whether voluntary or involuntary, and
that of the remaining members of the body, Cabell and
Cocke, Jefferson's two most faithful and persevering coadjutors,
—the one in assisting him to obtain the appropriations
from the General Assembly, which were indispensable
to the success of the University; the other, in
aiding him in its actual construction. The indefatigable
services of both to the institution continued during a period
of many years after the death of the "sachem," as
they admiringly called him in the privacy of their correspondence;
and they stand in its history second only to
him in the energy, devotion, and intelligence of their
unceasing efforts in its behalf. That history would not
be adequately treated without a full account of their careers
to show the reader the spirit and the calibre of the
two men, to whom, after Jefferson, the University was
most deeply indebted, either for its foundation, or for
its prosperity during its formative years. It is only by
examining the honorable record of their lives that we can
clearly understand why, after choosing a famous former
President of the United States, and an actual President,
as members of the new board, he should then have selected
two younger men, whose reputations were limited
to the area of their native State.

VIII. Joseph C. Cabell

Joseph Carrington Cabell, who was born in the tumultuous
atmosphere of the Revolution, was the grandson
of William Cabell, an English gentleman who emigrated
to Virginia, patented a principality in the valley
of the upper James, and founded a family of social and
political importance in itself, and of remarkable ramifications
by inter-marriage. Joseph's mother was sprung
from the Carrington family, which occupied a corresponding
position of distinction in the general history of the
Colony and State. The course of his education followed
the normal groove of those times,—first, he sat under a
tutor in his father's house; next, attended two private
schools in Albemarle county; and then, after one term
passed at Hampden-Sidney College, recommended perhaps
by its nearness to his maternal kinsfolk, he entered
the College of William and Mary. Here he soon won
the affectionate interest of the venerable president, Bishop
Madison, by his accurate scholarship, uncommon talents,
and genial temper. The same superior qualities made an
equally strong appeal to his companions among the students;
his friends felt for him a tenderness so deep and
true that it continued to soften the tone of their letters
to him many years after they had become absorbed in
their callings; and that they were entirely worthy of him
in character and abilities alike, is proven by the eminence
which they reached in their native State,—Isaac Coles,
private secretary of President Jefferson; Henry St.
George Tucker, Presiding Judge of the Court of Appeals;
Benjamin Watkins Leigh, Senator of the United States;

Philip P. Barbour, Justice of the Supreme Court; Chapman
Johnson, Robert Standard, and John T. Lomax,
famous lawyers; and finally, John Hartwell Cocke.
Graduating in 1798, he began the study of the law under
St. George Tucker, professor of jurisprudence and politics
in the College; but seems to have found constant
distractions in the gaieties and political demonstrations
that diversified the life of the little town.

Cabell was fettered throughout life with a delicate
constitution. Alarming pulmonary weakness began to
assail him even before his final departure from Williamsburg.
In 1801, he made his first voyage for the restoration
of his strength; his tour, in this instance, did not
carry him further than Norfolk; but after spending several
months in the office of Daniel Call, in Richmond,
during the autumn of that year, he made a second voyage,
which reached as far as Charleston, where he passed the
winter. His taste for travel, which had its earliest stimulus
in this search for health, was not yet satisfied, for,
during the following summer (1802), he visited the principal
resorts in the mountains of Virginia, and in the
autumn, set out on horseback on a long journey; Turkey
Island, on James River, was his first goal; from that place,
he rode to Fredericksburg, Mt. Vernon, Western Maryland,
Harper's Ferry, and Winchester; and from Winchester
returned to his home. He derived so little permanent
benefit from this excursion in the open air that he
decided to pass a winter in Southern France. "While I
am compelled to spend time and money in pursuit of
health," he wrote his father, Colonel Nicholas Cabell, in
November (1802) "is it not better, at the same time, to
travel for improvement, and where can I turn my attention
with more propriety than to the two most cultivated
countries on earth, England and France?"

During the detention of his ship in the port of Norfolk
by unfavorable winds, he made his first and last application
for a Federal office. James Monroe had been appointed
by the President to settle the irritating differences
which still hung on between the United States, on the one
side, and France and Spain, on the other. Cabell sought
the position of private secretary to the envoy, or the
secretaryship of legation attached to the mission, should
the former place have been already filled. "I hope," he
wrote Monroe, "that you will favor the views of one who
has impaired his constitution in the pursuit of science,
and who now goes to Europe chiefly with the view to
widen the sphere of his knowledge." But this highminded
aspiration for office was frustrated so soon as it
expressed itself. Arriving at Bordeaux in February,
1803, very much debilitated by a rough voyage, he, nevertheless,
at once resumed his journey to Paris, and after
he reached that city, had opportunities to enjoy many of
the public and private pleasures which it offered,—witnessed
a brilliant review of troops by Napoleon; dined
with Volney and Kosciusko; and went on long rambles
through the streets with Robert Fulton, who had come
over from London to continue his experiments with the
submarine in the waters of the Seine. Fulton urged his
companion to interest himself in internal improvements
on his return to Virginia; and the advice was not lost,
as the course of Cabell's future career will reveal.

During a visit to Italy, with the view of inspecting the
celebrated universities of that country, Cabell, while
stopping in Naples, was brought into delightful intercourse
with Washington Irving. They strolled through
the famous museums and palaces of the city together,
climbed to the crater of Vesuvius, and were nearly suffocated
with gas from its crevices by a sudden shift in the

wind. Together they slowly travelled to Rome, where
they passed Holy Week in the enjoyment of all those ceremonies
of the Church which made that part of the year
so splendid in the Eternal City. After his return to
Paris, in the same genial companionship, Cabell started
upon a second tour, which carried him, by measured
stages, into Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland, and later
still into England, where he was introduced into the literary
circle that had as its centre the unconventional William
Godwin.

By the advice of his physician, he dropped his books,
and filled up his time with lectures and conversation only.
His principal aim was always the acquisition of knowledge,
—especially in the several departments of natural
science,—and this led him to sit at the feet of Cuvier and
other eminent professors, in the study of zoology, vegetable
chemistry, chemistry proper, anatomy, and mineralogy.
"France," he wrote, "presented to my view all
the branches of natural history under the aspects of new
and captivating splendor." He assisted an American
friend, MacClure, in collecting a valuable quantity of minerals,
in the course of which they explored together the
hills of Auvergne, and sauntered as far as the Alps; and
in order to extend and perfect his information about botany,
he spent a winter at the University of Montpelier,
famous at that time for the thoroughness of its instruction
in this province of Nature. So keen was his interest in
education that he visited Pestalozzi at Yverdon to observe
the original methods of that celebrated teacher of
the young. His intimacy with Washington Alston stimulated
his native taste for the fine arts; he made detours in
his travels to inspect the most renowned galleries; and
during his stay at Rome, purchased many engravings of

Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican, and also of the noblest
paintings by Poussin, Guido, and Domenichino.

When Cabell was on the point of setting out from Virginia
for Europe, his brother, William H. Cabell, had
warned him "not to suffer anything to shake his attachment
for his own country, or to render him dissatisfied
with the American state of society, manners, and customs."
"The moment you feel any disposition of the
kind," he concluded, "fly back to America." There was
no need of this counsel, amiably designed as it was. Cabell's
thoughts, in all his travels, researches, and studies
abroad, were principally directed towards serving his native
State by gathering up all sorts of knowledge that were
likely to be useful to it when applied for its benefit later
on. He returned to the United States in the spring of
1806, after an absence of three years, which had quadrupled
his stores of information without weakening his
loyalty to the land of his birth. He brought back with
him a letter of introduction to Dr. Barton, of Philadelphia,
who possessed a wide reputation for his attainments
in the sciences of botany and natural history. Through
a letter of introduction from Barton, Cabell for the first
time, made the personal acquaintance of Jefferson, whose
reception of him was marked by uncommon warmth and
cordiality, for Cabell was a friend of his secretary, Isaac
Coles; belonged to a family of high social station in Virginia;
and was known to be interested in the sciences
which appealed most directly to the President's taste.
Jefferson tried to induce him to enter the Federal service,
—offered him in turn the consulate at Tunis, the UnderSecretaryship
of State, the Secretaryship of Orleans Territory,
and finally, the Territorial Governorship; but Cabell
had been too long abroad to be seduced into accepting

offices that would further prolong his absence from Virginia,
with which he was now anxious to identify himself
again in both social and civic life.

He soon found a charming wife in Williamsburg in
the stepdaughter of the eminent jurist, St. George
Tucker, the daughter of Mrs. Tucker by her marriage
with George Carter, in early life. Mrs. Tucker herself
was a daughter of Sir Peyton Skipwith. In the veins of
the youthful and lovely Mrs. Cabell there ran, from these
two sources, the most aristocratic blood to be found in a
State that could rightly boast of the gentle descent of its
leading families. She was also the wealthiest heiress in
Eastern Virginia; her Corrotoman estate spread over an
area of nearly seven thousand acres of land, peopled by
several hundred slaves and many white tenants; and in
some years, the products of its soil swelled in volume to
four thousand bushels of wheat and three thousand barrels
of corn.

Although the laws of the State, at that time, vested in
the husband the property of the wife, Cabell kept the
splendid estate thus acquired entirely detached from his
own; administered its affairs in his name as trustee with
the most scrupulous care; and at his death, it reverted to
her trebly augmented in value through his sagacious management.
With his own inheritance thus largely increased,
he was in the position of a man of handsome fortune,
who could follow his own inclinations in the pursuit
of a calling, without being harassed by the necessity of
earning his daily bread. Should he begin again the study
of law? "Watkins Leigh was here yesterday," wrote
W. H. Cabell to him in April, 1807, "and said that you
ought not to think of law except as a politician, or except
as it will advance your political aims. He thinks there
is a moral obligation on every man in your situation to be

a politician." St. George Tucker, who was one of the
best, wisest, and most accomplished men of that day, held
a different opinion: he urged Cabell, with characteristic
earnestness, to aim at eminence in the law. Cabell replied
that he "meant to begin as a lawyer, and allow the
passage of time to settle the question whether or not he
should diverge permanently into the field of politics."
In the meanwhile, he resolved to attend the course of lectures
on jurisprudence which Judge Nelson was delivering
in Williamsburg, where Cabell was now residing with his
wife; but this turned out to be only an excellent preparation
for the political career upon which he was so soon
to embark, and which he was to pursue so usefully and so
honorably for so many years. His most intimate friends,
Watkins Leigh, Isaac Coles, and John Hartwell Cocke,
understood the predominant bent of his tastes. "You
have been a wanderer long enough," wrote Coles in December,
1807, "it is now fit that you should have a home.
... Build a box on your Warminster farm and become
a candidate for the Legislature from Amherst."

He adopted this counsel, went back to his native county,
offered himself for office, was successful, and took his seat
in the House of Delegates in December, 1808. He continued
a member of that body during two very notable
terms, and was one of the committee that reported in
favor of the establishment of the Literary Fund, the most
vital legislative stroke of those times. He represented
the new county of Nelson in the Lower House; but, in
1810, was elected to the Senate as the member for the
district composed of the counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna,
and Nelson. He retired from that body in 1829,
and from 1831 to 1833, sat again in the House of Delegates,
as that division of the General Assembly was the
one in which he could uphold and push the interests of

the James River and Kanawha Canal to the most signal
advantage. In 1833, he was pressed to become a candidate
for the Governorship, but declined to permit his
name to be used; and although an opportunity was frequently
open to him to enter Congress, he was content to
be of use to his State exclusively within its own borders.
He pointedly discouraged the effort to bring about his
nomination in 1822, with these simple and modest words,
"I have devoted the prime of my life to the service of
our district. I shall endeavor to close my course with
fidelity to my friends. ... My mind feels relieved, now
that the world will be pleased not to regard my zeal on
certain subjects as sprung from a thirst for office and
popular favor."

In political as well as in personal intercourse, Cabell
was in the closest harmony with Jefferson. We shall
soon come to that epic chapter in the history of the University
which records their great struggle, with tongue and
pen, to obtain the necessary appropriations for its construction;
but they were together interested in numerous
other questions of hardly less importance in principle.
In their voluminous correspondence, they are discovered
exchanging views on all sorts of subjects: on the right
of one generation to bind another by legislative enactment;
on whether a member of the House of Representatives
could legally represent a district in which he did
not reside; or whether it was expedient to divide a State
into townships rather than into counties. "My object,"
wrote Cabell, in 1814, "is to be useful to my country in
the station which I occupy (Senate), and in availing myself
occasionally of your valuable aid, it would be highly
improper to disturb the tranquility of your retirement,"
and he, therefore, assures the venerable statesman of the
scrupulous privacy in which all his letters would be kept.

Again and again he seeks that aid, either for a general or
a particular purpose bearing directly on his legislative
duties. In September, 1814, before setting out for Richmond,
he writes, "I would wish to carry some useful
ideas with me when I join the Senate, and I take the liberty
once more to ask you to furnish me with such suggestions
as you may deem useful." And a few weeks afterwards,
he writes again, evidently in acknowledgment of
Jefferson's prompt compliance with this previous request,
"I should be extremely thankful for any further communication
you may, at any time, be pleased to make me,
feeling myself always highly gratified and instructed by
any views which you take of any subject."

Cabell's sense of integrity as a public servant was so
pure and delicate that it amounted at times to feminine
sensitiveness. "Why will you suffer your peace of mind
and your happiness," wrote his brother, William H. Cabell,
in 1814, "to be at the mercy of any man who chooses
to assail you, or to make even an insinuation against the
propriety of your conduct? I believe I should be less
concerned, were I convinced that ninety-nine one hundredths
of the world thought me a villain than you would
if you thought an obscure individual, one thousand miles
away from you, believed you only incorrect."[11]

The faithful and lofty spirit that animated him
throughout his political career is transparent in all he
did, spoke, and wrote. "I think the greatest service a
man can render," he remarked in one of his letters, "is
to speak the truth and to show that is his only object,"
and these simple words epitomized his personal as well
as his political motives. "You have pursued an erect

and honorable course," said Cocke to him, in 1819, "and
as an enlightened and high-minded public servant ought,
you must be satisfied with the approbation of your own
conscience." Such was the attitude towards him of all
who had observed his actions, whether calculated to bring
to him universal popularity or general disfavor.

There were three great public interests of which Cabell
was an ardent and indefatigable supporter: Internal Improvements,
Education, and Agriculture. We have already
mentioned Robert Fulton's advice to him to make
the question of Internal Improvements a part of his political
platform on his return to the United States. He
lived long enough to earn the name of the DeWitt Clinton
of Virginia by his unwearied exertions for the revival,
construction, and extension of the James River and Kanawha
Canal, which, before the building of many railroads
in the Commonwealth, was looked upon as an enterprise
as imperial in its scope as the Erie Canal itself; and
justly so, for had it been situated in a community of large
financial resources, and not been obstructed by a vast
mountain crossing, it would have been extended to the
Ohio and Mississippi, and by pouring the wheat and corn
of the West into the lap of Norfolk, would have made
that city a second New York, and changed the destinies
of the State. Previous to 1821, only twenty miles of
the canal, beginning at Richmond,—where it united with
tidewater,—had been completed, and that only partly
at public expense. With the assistance of Chapman
Johnson, the distinguished lawyer, Cabell drew up a
charter for the new James River and Kanawha Canal
Company, and then undertook to obtain popular support
for the resuscitated enterprise. From the shores of
Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio, he travelled through county
after county, addressing the people from the steps of the

court-houses in the spirit of another Peter the Hermit, as
was said at the time, and earnestly soliciting subscriptions
to carry the bed of the proposed waterway far beyond
the crest of the Alleghanies. Under his Presidency, the
line was constructed westward for a length of two hundred
miles. In the administration of its affairs, he exhibited,
according to Governor Wise,—a man particularly
competent to judge him correctly,—"such conspicuous
zeal, ability, and decision, such unsullied integrity and
becoming dignity, and yet so much amenity, with so
choice, vigorous, and discriminating an intellect, and bore
himself with so much honor and justice, that he carried
with him, in his retirement, the universal respect, confidence,
and regard of those who knew him."

Cabell's interest in general education in Virginia was
not limited to one great seat of learning: he used his
influence on every occasion, and by every means, to improve
all the facilities for secondary and primary instruction
also, and for both sexes too. At the hour that he
was the Atlas of the fortunes of the University in the
General Assembly, he was acting as one of the trustees
of the Charlottesville Ladies' Academy. He apparently
went so far as to have the methods of Pestalozzi adopted
in the schools of Nelson county; and he also made a
patient investigation of the Lancasterian system, which
was based on the social principle. He also planned to
erect so ambitious an institution as a college at Warminster
in the immediate neighborhood of his home at
Edgewood, and would probably have successfully carried
out this scheme by means of a public lottery, had not his
friends united in warning him of its supposed impracticability,
which dispirited him for its further prosecution.
"My great object," he wrote to one of the critics, who
had described the projected college as a lighthouse in the

sky, owing to the remoteness and seclusion of the site
chosen for it, "was to prove how much could be effected
by studious measures judiciously directed, and to encourage
their introduction into other parts of Virginia."

Cabell's unfailing support of all bills before the General
Assembly to improve the condition of agriculture in
Virginia had its stimulus in part in his keen interest in the
diversified operations of his own plantation. In correspondence
with Cocke, his most intimate friend, who was
an enthusiastic farmer, he is repeatedly making or replying
to inquiries that played about all sides of the farmer's
life. Fruit trees, grass, wheat, tobacco, buildings, timber,
rams, overseers, hedges, lime, machinery and ploughs,
one after another, are the subjects upon which special information
was either sought or given. In September,
1818, he writes to another friend, Isaac Coles, that he is
too busy with surveying his lines to compose certain essays
which he had promised to read before the Agricultural
Society. "Confound politics," he exclaimed in a letter
to Cocke, in 1821, "welcome my native fields." "I am
jogging on here," he wrote to the same correspondent, in
1828, from Edgewood, "riding over my farms and
superintending the servants." He was not in sympathy
with the impatient sentiment that prevailed among many
Virginians, about 1830, in favor of Abolition, because
he was convinced that slavery was so intertwined with
all the roots of the community's life that it could not be
torn up without jeopardizing the health, even should it
not destroy the existence, of every associated interest.
But no master was ever more benevolent or more watchful
in his relations with his slaves; in 1848, when he was
far advanced in years, a typhoid epidemic broke out on
his plantation; notwithstanding his physical infirmities,
he passed four or five hours daily on horseback engaged in

visiting the sick, comforting them with kind and encouraging
words, and administering their medicines with his own
hands. He declined to accept Cocke's invitation to
Bremo at this time. "It is quite inadmissible for us," he
replied, "to leave those dependent on our care for their
lives to visit even the most valued friends."

Cabell died in 1856, and the last scene of his life was
consistent with the noble tenor of it throughout.
"Never," reported his nephew, N. F. Cabell, who was
present at the closing hour, "have I seen more dignity,
calmness, and resignation to the divine will." His death
was appropriately announced by the Governor of the
State, who spoke of him as emphatically and peculiarly
"the Virginia Statesman," the man whose entire public
services had been absorbed in building up and advancing
the general welfare of his native commonwealth. Having
possessed the close personal friendship of Jefferson,
Madison and Monroe, he had caught that spirit of wise
moderation, in both word and act, which had given them
such preeminence as political sages. And there was something
too about his temper and demeanor that recalled
to those who knew him a still loftier example of manhood
and statesmanship. "No one could be much with Mr.
Cabell," remarks a friend of his in his last years, "without
seeing that he had taken George Washington for his
model. In his principles and his conduct, in the dignity
of his character, and even in the gentlemanly and becoming
particularity of his dress, you could not fail to observe
the resemblance."[12]

IX. John Hartwell Cocke

John Hartwell Cocke is not to be credited with as conspicuous
services in assisting in the foundation of the University

as Cabell, but the work which he, as one of the two
members of the committee of superintendence, performed
in aiding in its building and initial development, gives
him a place in its early history second only to that of his
friend, the principal coadjutor of Jefferson. The family
to which he belonged had been planted in Virginia in the
seventeenth century, and had always stood in the first rank
for fortune and refinement. Inheriting, like Cabell, a
competent estate, he was left at liberty to follow his own
tastes, which all leaned towards the pursuits of a country
gentleman. Unlike Cabell, he was destitute of political
aspirations; and he was drawn into enterprises of a public
character more by a high and keen sense of civic responsibility
than by any desire to raise his own personal
repute. He first appears in a public capacity in April,
1813, as captain of artillery. "After theorizing in the
nineteen manoeuvres," he jocularly wrote Cabell from the
field, "I am now making an excursion to the theatre of
the war to see a little practice." That he really possessed
military talent is evident by his promotion to the rank of
Brigadier before the war was brought to an end; and in
fact, he won such solid distinction as a soldier that his
name was, in 1814, canvassed in the General Assembly for
the office of Governor, until he positively refused to permit
its further use. "We need," said Randolph Harrison,
in a letter to Cabell, "an active, intelligent, zealous
patriot, and one possessing a good deal of military skill
and ardor. There is no man in the State who unites all
these qualifications in so eminent a degree as John Hartwell
Cocke."

Cocke, like Cabell, was a broadminded advocate of
public improvements of all kinds, and, in 1823, visited
New York in order to inspect the new Erie waterway, and
to obtain practical information for opening up the obstructed

navigation of the upper James River. A few
years afterwards, he warmly supported a scheme to launch
a fleet of small iron steamboats on the turbulent bosom
of that stream; and he was placed upon the earliest board
of directors appointed for the administration of the affairs
of the James River and Kanawha Canal.

Cocke's approval of popular education was so keen that
he threw the full weight of his influence in favor of every
attempt that was made to establish a State university;
he was chosen by the Governor, at Jefferson's request,
as a member of the Board of Visitors of Central College;
and he was retained on the University Board in spite of
his protesting his disqualification, from lack of experience,
to meet the increased responsibility. "As to my
personal views," he declared, with characteristic modesty
and unselfishness, "God forbid that I should permit such
grovelling motives to interfere with what I believe to
be the public interest." His enlightened opinion touching
education extended to primary and secondary instruction
also. He established near his beautiful home at
Bremo, in 1820, a seminary for boys under the age of
fifteen, and drew up for its government a set of rules
marked by excellent judgment. It was, however, his
own high character that was the principal ground of the
confidence which this school inspired in its patrons. "My
calculations for my son's improvement," wrote Robert
Saunders, of Williamsburg, to him, in 1819, "are made
more on his situation with you than on the talents and fitness
of the tutor. I am frank enough to say, without
intending to compliment you, that I prefer your superintending
eye to the benefit he might derive from the best
classical scholar I might know in Virginia."

But far more multiform in its scope than the Bremo
Academy was the gymnasium, on the most thorough German

model, which he strove so earnestly to set up at
Monticello, in the hope of encouraging the erection of
many others resembling it to serve as great preparatory
schools for the University of Virginia, which, at that time,
were very much wanted.[13]

The spirit of the most catholic philanthropy animated
Cocke throughout life. He was deeply interested in the
labors of the Bible, Tract, and Sunday School Societies,
and frequently made the toilsome and irksome journey
to New England simply to attend the great conventions
of those bodies periodically held in the principal cities of
those States. The familiar social intercourse with influential
Northern men of the different religious denominations
which these occasions rendered possible, created
in him a less prejudiced attitude of mind towards the
Northern States than was to be perceived among the Virginians
at large. "While we nurse an angry spirit instead
of a conciliatory one towards them," he wrote to
Cabell as late as 1855, "the distance between us will
continue to grow." But it was not merely this temper,
which so wisely deprecated the further feeding of the
spreading and consuming sectional fires, that distinguished
Cocke from the personal friends about him. He was the
boldest and most persistent advocate in his native State at
that time of the adoption of universal prohibition. Amiable
ridicule, sneering derision, and silent contempt for
the doctrine, which, in the next century, was to be incorporated
in the statute book of Virginia, did not shake his
loyalty to his convictions on this subject, or divert him
from publicly and emphatically expressing them. "Of
all the events in our history," he said, "the Maine Law

and its progress strikes my mind as the most important";
and he predicted that the great moral revolution which it
represented would pervade all Christendom. Governor
Preston, Andrew Stevenson, and Cabell, his intimate
friends, never let a chance slip without prodding him,
with high good humor, for his obsession; but Cocke's
sole reply was to send them another flight of pamphlets
barbed to a nicety against King Alcohol. At the very
moment that they, in the spirit of that drinking age,
were laughingly condemning his habits of abstemiousness
as repugnant to good fellowship, they honored
the benevolent motives in which all his actions had their
fountainhead. "I appreciate your feelings in your solitary
home," wrote Cabell, in 1848, "and do not wonder
that you roam about the world to soothe your feelings
by doing good to your fellowmen."

Cocke was as firm and outspoken an opponent of duelling
and slavery as he was of intemperance. Against the
first, he directed his pen with all the literary and reasoning
skill at his command; and the latter he was in the habit
of bitterly stigmatizing as a "curse" to his native State.
Only a man of invincible moral courage could have openly
taken such a stand in those intolerant times. As early as
1821, he pressed upon the representative in Congress
from his district the advisability of an amendment to the
Constitution that would allow an appropriation to be
made for the transfer of Southern negroes to Africa as
the only means of practical emancipation then available.
Ten years afterwards he wrote, "I have long and still
do steadfastly believe that slavery is the great cause of all
the great evils of our land, individual as well as national,
and every man of common foresight and reflection is
obliged to admit that we or our posterity are inevitably
destined to be overwhelmed unless the cause is removed.

... How is it that all will not agree to go faithfully
and honestly about the work of removing this blot upon
our national escutcheon; this cancer that is eating into the
vitals of the Commonwealth?" He was in favor of submitting
a petition to the National Government in order
to obtain the assistance of the country at large, for he said
that the vast and complicated task of extirpation could not
be successfully prosecuted in the "straight-jacket which
the States Rights gentlemen have put on us." He did
not join in the outcry of exasperation and execration,
which, in the South, greeted the publication of Uncle
Tom's Cabin, for he anticipated that it would hasten the
end of the institution which it attacked so subtly, and
which he himself detested so heartily. Writing, in 1846,
he declared that he expected, should he survive to a great
age, "to see such changes in Virginia touching slavery
that it would now be deemed to be madness" to predict;
and as his death did not occur until after the War of
Secession, his own eyes beheld the abysmal ruin which he
had forecasted one third of a century before it actually
took place.

Cocke, in the spirit of all the Virginians who occupied
the same rank in society, found a wholesome delight in
the pursuit of the different branches of agriculture. As
far back as 1809, he wrote to Cabell that his time was
"divided between his family, his farms, his garden, and
his books"; and that he did not have a moment "to be
troubled about politics." "I would not change my situation,"
he exclaims, "with the most puissant prince of the
House of Napoleon." He exhibited this characteristic
spirit of independence even in his views of his own calling.
Tobacco was still the principal crop of the region in which
his home was situated, and it had already gone far towards
depreciating the fertility of its lands. There was

no public sentiment, however, favorable to its abandonment.
Cocke, as he expressed it, "dared to sport a new
idea" about this staple by urging that it should be no
longer cultivated; and he was probably influenced in doing
this by the hope that, not only would an improvement of
the soil follow, but that the vices of chewing and smoking
would, in the end, be seriously curtailed, even if they did
not entirely disappear. He spoke of tobacco tillage and
the use of slave labor as the twin evils of agriculture in
Virginia, and until both should come to a stop, the State,
he predicted, would enjoy no prosperity. The laws practically
debarred him from emancipating his bondsmen to
their advantage, but, in 1855, he could say with perfect
veracity that not one tobacco plant was then grown on a
single foot of soil which he had inherited from his ancestors.

Although the name of General Cocke has passed into
obscurity because he steadily declined to be elected to high
office, yet in power of foresight, he was the most remarkable
of all his Virginian contemporaries of his own generation.
He not only urged a more conciliatory attitude
towards the North, and more frequent intercourse with
its people, as a means of removing mutual antagonisms,
but he confidently anticipated the success of numerous
causes which were, in his day, looked upon with chilling
indifference or outspoken aversion, but which have become
an accepted part of the solid structure of our present social
and political life. He warmly supported every plan
to raise the standards of education in all departments,
from the lowest to the highest; he advocated with never
ceasing energy and devotion the wisdom of adopting
universal prohibition; he condemned the barbarism of
duelling, which had destroyed some of the most accomplished
and chivalrous sons of Virginia, and had gilded

the spirit of lawlessness by making it gentlemanly; he
endeavored, by his own example, to discourage the culture
of the tobacco plant as ruinous to the soil of his native
State; but above all, he solemnly, repeatedly, and consistently
declared himself in favor of peaceably abolishing
the institution of slavery before its forcible removal
should overwhelm every interest of the Commonwealth.
Ought we to be surprised that Jefferson, the apostle of
liberal principles, should have chosen this farsighted citizen
to be one of the Visitors of the untrammeled institution
which he was about to found?[14]

X. Site of the College Selected

The space that has been used in describing the personalities
of Jefferson, Cabell, and Cocke is fully warranted
in the light of a fact that will become increasingly perceptible
as our theme advances; namely, that the establishment
of the University of Virginia was not dictated by an
irresistible popular impulse, but was due primarily to
the unwearied exertions of Jefferson and Cabell; and its
actual construction to Jefferson, assisted throughout with
ability and fidelity by the modest Cocke in the background.
Unless we take in the public spirit that had previously
animated these men, we cannot arrive at a perfectly accurate
conception of all the influences in which the institution
had its origin. We have now to relate the story of
the practical work which was done in founding it, for, as
we shall see, the incorporation of Central College was
really the incorporation of the University; the history of
the College is the history of the University in its chrysalis
state, which must be studied if we are to understand correctly

the first phase of its existence. It is in this phase
that we discern the embryo of the nobler structure to follow;
the springs as it were of the stream which was so
soon to begin to flow in full volume; the slender sapling
that was so soon to grow into a fruitful tree.

Among those features inherited from the College which
became highly characteristic of the University was its official
organization, its system of administration, its plans
for buildings, and its requirements for professors. The
provisions of the Act of Incorporation of Central College
show as plainly as the design for its construction how long
the thought of a university had been simmering in Jefferson's
consciousness, for when the real university was determined
upon a few years afterwards, the only alterations
made in those provisions were such as were called
for by the widening of the scope of the original scheme.
One of the first clauses in the charter of Central College
reveals that it was this future university, and not the present
college, that he had most vividly in mind: the Governor
of Virginia was to be the patron of the new seat of
learning; and there was to be a board of six visitors by
his appointment. Jefferson himself informs us that this
provision was inserted for the explicit purpose of "divesting
the situation of the College of all local character and
control, and placing it under the will of those who represented
the Legislature." The visitors were to hold office
for a term of three years; were to come together at
least once in the course of each twelve months; were to
possess the right to choose a treasurer and proctor; to
select the professors, determine their salaries and fees,
and prescribe their courses of instruction; to lay down
rules for the discipline of the students, and adopt regulations
for their lodging and board; to overlook in a general
way the officers, agents, and servants in the performance

of their respective duties; and, finally, to draw up
such by-laws as would be needed to conserve the general
welfare of the institution, and protect and increase its
estate.

The treasurer was to continue in office during the
pleasure of the Board, and was only to pay out moneys
in obedience to their specific or general instructions. The
title to all the college property was to be invested in the
proctor as trustee; suits were to be brought in his name;
and he alone was to receive donations and subscriptions.
He was to be the custodian of the buildings and all other
estate in the College's possession; the provider and dispenser
of the food and fuel that would be required by
the students; the immediate overseer of the agents and
servants; and the personal medium through whom all the
orders, laws, and regulations of the Board were to be carried
out.

By the Act of Incorporation, Central College became
the beneficiary of all the rights and claims of Albemarle
Academy. The only certain income which it could expect
to enjoy at an early date consisted of the subscriptions,
which had been pledged, chiefly, it would seem, by the citizens
of the surrounding region; and the money accruing
from the sale of the glebe lands in Fredericksville and St.
Anne's parishes. No steps had been taken as yet to swell
these funds by means of the lottery which had been authorized.
It was due to the emptiness of its coffers that, although
the College was chartered in February, 1816,
more than twelve months passed before the Board of Visitors
assembled. If the proceeds of the glebe sales had
been received from the commissioner of the county in the
meanwhile, the amount was looked upon by them, previous
to that meeting, as too small to justify them in buying a
site and laying the foundation stone.

Apparently, it was not until April 8, 1817, that the
Visitors endeavored to hold a sitting, and even on that
occasion, only three were present; namely, Jefferson, Cabell
and Cocke. As a quorum was wanting, no business
was transacted beyond fixing upon May 5 as the date for
the convening of the whole Board; but the real purpose of
the three Visitors was perhaps to inspect a site for the
College which had been offered to Jefferson, and which
he, probably, thought should be secured, at least optionally,
at once. This was done; and when the full Board
met on the day appointed, one of their first acts was to
ratify this provisional purchase. Jefferson's preference
had been for the ground situated on the first ridge lying
to the east of the present site of the University, property
that belonged to John Kelly, a member of the former
board of trustees of Albemarle Academy. Kelly is
said to have been a Federalist in political creed; and for
this reason, it is reported, the purpose for which the land
was to be bought, and Jefferson's connection with it, were
kept secret when the tender for it was made. It is quite
probable, however, that he had a more personal motive
for disliking the master of Monticello. We learn from
the recollections of Alexander Garrett, that, when the first
suggestion came up of converting Albemarle Academy
into Central College, the trustees, presumably Kelly
among them, proposed that the new institution should be
named Jefferson College, and that Jefferson emphatically
objected to this, and recommended "Central College"
instead. If Kelly, as one of the trustees, was ready to
honor his distinguished neighbor so signally at this time,
there must have been some reason besides his Federalism
why he, one year later, was so brusque in declining the
tender for his property; and that reason, as we have already
surmised, was his possible resentment at the summary

dropping of the old board of trustees. So soon
as he found out that Jefferson was behind that offer, he
turned his back on all further negotiation: "I will see
him at the devil," he exclaimed, "before he shall have it
at any price." When this rough and abrupt reply was
carried to Jefferson, he quietly remarked, "The man is
a fool, but if we cannot get the best site, we must be content
with the best we can get."[15]

Perhaps, he would not have taken his disappointment
so philosophically had he not felt that the land belonging
to John M. Perry, lying to the west of Charlottesville
also, but at a somewhat greater distance, afforded a fairly
satisfactory substitute. This site was formed by a narrow
ridge that sloped gently from north to south. It
fell sharply away from the eastern edge of the small
plateau at its top, and from the western edge spread
downward here and there in a declivity quite as marked.
Although this site was on very high ground, the view of
the Blue Ridge must have always been screened more or
less by the former Carr's Hill and the present Preston
Heights. The Southwest Mountains,—which were then,
as now, directly in the scope of the vision,—shut out the
horizon too closely at hand to make the scene in that
quarter as impressive as the grand spectacle of the Blue
Ridge would have done in the other, had a site been
obtainable which would have offered an unobstructed
outlook on that splendid chain. In a country distinguished
for its magnificent landscapes, the spot chosen for
the Central College commanded not one entirely; not
even from the future northern portico of the Rotunda.

This was the first drawback. The second lay in the

fact that the trend of the slope required that all the
buildings, with the exception of those on the northern line,
—the southern line was expected to remain open,—
should face east and west. The architect Latrobe pointed
out the practical disadvantage of this arrangement before
the first pavilion had been erected. "Everyone," he
wrote Jefferson in August, 1817, "who has had the misfortune
to reside in a house,—especially if it constituted
a part of a range of houses, facing east and west,—has
experienced both in summer and winter the evils of such
an aspect. In the winter, the accumulation of snow on
the east, and the severity of the cold on the west, together
with the absence of the sun during three fourths of
the day, and in the summer, the horizontal rays of the
morning sun heating the east side and the evening sun
burning the west side, of the house, render such a situation
highly exceptional." To this critical but thoroughly
practical suggestion, Jefferson replied by saying that "the
lay of the ground was a law of nature to which they
were bound to conform," but that the objection urged
could be partially overcome, first, by placing but one family
room in each pavilion in front, and one or two in flank,
and leaving apertures for windows in the southern wall.
The lecture-room below, he added, could be given "the
same advantage by substituting an open passage adjacent
instead of dormitory." He conceded, however, that
"the dormitories admitted of no relief but Venetian
blinds to their windows and doors." "There," he said,
"the heat would be less felt because the young men would
be in the school-rooms most of the day."

There was perhaps a third drawback,—one, however,
that had so little practical importance that it does not
seem to have come up for consideration in the selection
of a site for the proposed group of buildings. If anyone

will take position at the foot of the last terrace of the
Lawn towards the south, and follow the east and west
lines of the pillars in front of the pavilions and dormitories,
as far as the line of the Rotunda, the impression
is a more or less blended one, since the pillars, in that
perspective, appear to run together to such an extent as
to form to the eye a continuous white mass. The nobility
of the Rotunda alone relieves the too solid effect of
the almost indistinguishable individual features of the
pavilion and dormitory fronts. Had the academic village
been erected in a circular form, after the model of
the great square of St. Peter's at Rome, the result would
probably have been more striking because then each
pavilion and each column of the arcades would have stood
out distinctly from their respective fellows, with the Rotunda
rising in stately dignity at the northern opening of
the architectural circumference. But neither the nature
of the ground, nor the bent of Jefferson's taste, nor the
practical character of his scheme, whether for the buildings
or for the professorships, permitted this finer and
more impressive disposition of the numerous structures
he had in view. In his earliest plans, there was no arrangement
for the East and West Ranges, for, in the
beginning, he was contriving simply for Central College,
which might or might not become the University of Virginia,
with its far broader need of accommodation for an
ever increasing number of teachers and pupils. Had he
been designing for what was certainly to be the supreme
State institution so soon as finished, with a large attendance
of students and an ample endowment fund assured,
it is remotely possible that the plan for the new seat of
learning would have taken this nobler circular form at the
start. But, as already stated, it would have been first
necessary to choose a wider and more level site than the
one selected for the site of a college with an obscured
future.[16]

The first parcel of land, which covered an area of fortyseven
acres, was, at the time of the purchase, an impoverished,
disused field. The second parcel, amounting to
one hundred and fifty-three acres, and situated about fiveeighths
of a mile from the first, contained a large quantity
of valuable timber and stone for building,—the reason
in part for its acquisition, since it was not needed as
the site of any of the projected structures. It was also
expected to form the watershed for the reservoir which
was to supply the cisterns within the precincts.

The first parcel had been patented, in 1735, by Abraham
Lewis, as a segment of a tract embracing eight
hundred acres. In the course of the previous year, David
Lewis and Joel Terrell, his brother-in-law, had acquired
title to three thousand acres, which took in the whole
of Lewis Mountain, situated on the western flank of the
present University site. At an early date, George Nicholas,
son of the colonial treasurer, Robert Carter Nicholas,
had purchased a tract of two thousand acres, which
included, among other sections of these first patents, that
portion on which the University buildings now stand. In
1790, James Monroe bought the part to which the present
Monroe Hill belongs. Twenty-four years afterwards,
John M. Perry purchased of John Nicholas,—
then filling the office of county clerk,—the actual site of
the University, and after holding it only three years, disposed
of it to the Visitors of Central College. Perry
was always addressed with the title of Captain, and had

sat on the bench of the county magistrates. He was a
man whose business branched out in many directions,
which would seem to indicate that he possessed at least
the qualities of energy and industry,—he was the owner
of large areas of ground, the proprietor of mills, and a
professional contractor. It was this combination of interests,
perhaps, that made him more inclined than John
Kelly to accept the offer of the Visitors for his two parcels
of land, for he not only thereby sold a respectable
number of worn-out acres at a satisfactory price, but, in
doing so, created for himself the prospect of securing
profitable jobs in the course of the future building. His
residence at Montibello, in the immediate neighborhood,
enabled him to give his personal attention without inconvenience.
As we shall see, he, as well as his son-in-law,
George W. Spooner, had an important share in the construction
of the College and University alike.

There seems to have been at first a cloud on the title
to the site, for it was not until June 23, 1817, that a
valid conveyance of it could be made to Alexander Garrett
as the trustee. On that day, Garrett, by the written
order of Perry, paid to John Winn $1,066.81 of the
money due for the area sold. That both tracts had
passed into the possession of the College by September
16, 1817, is confirmed by Perry's acknowledgment of
a deferred payment by Garrett, the late proctor of the
College, for Nelson Barksdale was now the incumbent of
that office.

XI. The Subscription List

Having acquired a suitable site for the College, the
next step was to erect the requisite buildings. Before describing
the remarkable architectural plan which Jefferson
had already drafted for use, it will be necessary to

dwell at some length on the sources upon which the Board
were relying for the funds that would be indispensable for
so expensive an undertaking. The most important was
the subscription list. Although a canvass had, with conspicuous
success, been made among the citizens of Albemarle
county and the surrounding region before the incorporation
of Central College, yet so far as it appears,
none of this money had been paid before May 5, 1817,
when the Visitors convened with a quorum for the first
time. It was at once perceived by them that a much
larger sum would be required for the new college than
was anticipated when the scheme had not as yet passed
beyond the stage of an academy. Jefferson, with characteristic
energy and promptness, submitted to the Board
the preamble for a new subscription list, the tone of
which reflected the extreme importance that he attached
to education. The right of self-government, he declared,
was among the greatest of political blessings, and only
an intelligent and instructed people could preserve it for
themselves. How was information to be disseminated
among them? By multiplying the number of seats of
learning, and thus bringing at least one within the convenient
reach of every parent or guardian. Central College,
he concluded, would "facilitate the means of education
to a considerable extent of country"; and it was
further recommended, he said, by the salubrity of its
climate, and by other local advantages. The subscriber
was asked to make a contribution payable as a whole on
April 1, 1818, or in four equal instalments, the first to
be handed in on that date, and the remainder, in annual
succession, during the ensuing three years.

Jefferson, Cabell, and Cocke led off with a subscription
of one thousand dollars apiece. So speedy was the
success following the appeal, that an early meeting of the

Board was desirable to authorize the beginning of the
building. Albemarle county alone had pledged, through
its principal citizens, the sum of nineteen thousand dollars.
"We are already sure of enough," Cocke informed
Cabell, in a spirit of high satisfaction, "to lay
the foundation of what I trust may be improved to be
a noble work." Cabell himself had, in the meanwhile,
been indefatigable in distributing the subscription lists
in many parts of Virginia,—he had sent copies to, among
others, Colonel Lewis, of Campbell county, Dr. Cabell,
of Lynchburg, Edmund Winston, John Camm, Stirling
Claiborne, Hill Carter, David Garland, Robert Rives,
Henry St. George Tucker, William Brent, and Ellyson
Currie, all of whom were influential citizens in their several
communities. Brent and Currie were residents of
the Northern Neck, which had not even yet recovered
from the ravages of the marauding British fleet; but this
did not discourage Cabell from asking them to solicit
subscriptions at the meetings of the county courts in their
district.

Colonel Lewis, of Campbell, made a counter proposition.
It appears that he was the owner of a virgin gold
mine situated in Buckingham county at a spot not far
from Cabell's home near Warminster. "It is the richest
mine of that metal ever discovered," he wrote, with honest
enthusiasm. He offered to convey a half interest in
this amazing underground storehouse of wealth to Central
College on condition that the whole was to be drawn
for in a lottery, in which twenty thousand tickets were to
be used, at a valuation of ten dollars a ticket; or ten
thousand issued at a valuation of twenty dollars. The
profit would, on this calculation, amount to two hundred
thousand dollars, which was to be equally divided between
Lewis and the College. The scheme, seductive as it was,

failed to dazzle Cabell's judgment, probably because the
mine was situated so close to his own plantation that he
had reason, from his own observation, to be skeptical as
to its richness. Only a week later, he was visiting Buckingham
courthouse, and still interested in the more prosaic
method of procuring funds by solicitation in person;
but neither he nor his friend, Eppes, the member of Congress
from that district, was encouraged by the upshot.

Jefferson too, about this date, found serious impediments
in the same path. The main obstruction which
he had to surmount, he wrote Cabell in September, 1817,
was the "idea that it was a local thing, a mere Albemarle
Academy. I endeavor to convince them it is a
general seminary of the sciences meant for the use of the
State. In this view, all approve and rally to the object.
But time seems necessary to plant this idea firmly in their
minds."

When the report of the Visitors was drawn up on
January 6, 1818, the total amount of the subscriptions
had grown to $35,102; and to this should be added
$3,195.86 derived from the sale of the glebes and now
in the custody of the court commissioner. Unhappily,
the larger proportion of the voluntary contributions was
payable in four annual instalments; none were due until
April 1, 1818; and some not until three years should have
passed after that date. At least one-half of the total
amount would be needed in the summer of 1818; and in
anticipation of this fact, Jefferson, on January 15, asked
Cabell, then in attendance in the Senate in Richmond, to
obtain a loan from the banks of ten to twenty thousand
dollars on the security of the subscription lists; but the
application was turned down until the Board should consent
to give their personal endorsement. Although additional
subscriptions continued to come in, this had no

influence in removing the uneasiness with which Jefferson
regarded the situation in several of its aspects. "I
should be much relieved," he wrote Cabell on the 16th,
"if the members of the Board, in the want of visitorial
full meetings, would individually call here whenever they
happen to pass. Even separate conferences with them
would lighten my mind of some of its load."

Taking the returns of the subscription as a whole, there
seems to have been no permanent reason for dissatisfaction.
In Albemarle county, where every prominent family
put its name in the list, the amount of the several
contributions ranged from one thousand dollars to
twenty dollars; seven citizens pledged themselves each
for the former sum and eleven for five hundred dollars
respectively; there were one hundred and twenty-nine
subscribers in all, and the total sum promised was $27,440.33.
In Richmond city, there were only eleven subscribers,
and the largest amount pledged was five hundred
dollars. Most of these contributors were bound to Jefferson
by ties of kinship or personal loyalty. The amount
pledged by the eleven aggregated $2,225.00. In Stafford
county but one subscriber was secured, and in Winchester,
but four, who together pledged themselves for
eight hundred dollars. All these subscribers were personal
friends of Cabell. In Amherst and Buckingham
counties, there was only one subscriber respectively, and
each pledged himself for a small sum. In Cumberland
county, which faced on the fertile low grounds of James
River, and contained the homes of many wealthy and
cultured families of gentle descent, the number of subscribers
rose to twenty-five. The sum contributed by
them was $2,190.00. In Fluvanna, there were fourteen
subscribers,—among them General Cocke,—and their
offerings amounted to $2,590.00; in Goochland, twenty

subscribers, with a total contribution of $1,185.00; in
Louisa, six, with a total of $1,400.00; in Lynchburg,
seven, with a total of $1,300.00; in Nelson, eighteen,
with a total of $2,952.00; in Orange, two,—one of whom
was Madison,—with a total of $1,030.00.

The list of the subscribers is a notable one, not simply
from a social point of view, but also for the high public
spirit and esteem for learning which their contributions
so plainly indicate. In the list for Albemarle, we discover
the following respected names: Carr, Divers, Coles,
Dawson, Duke, Garrett, Gordon, Garth, Harper, Harris,
Kinsolving, Lindsay, Maury, Randolph, Lewis, Leitch,
Minor, Monroe, Morris, Nicholas, Patterson, Shackelford,
Waddell, Southall, Watson, Shelton, Walker,
Winn, Wertenbaker, Wood and Woods; in Stafford
county, Brent; in Winchester, Carr, Holmes, Lee,
and Tucker; in Buckingham, Eppes; in Cumberland,
Bondurant, Deans, Daniel, Harrison, Hughes, Page,
Skipwith, Trent, Thornton, Walker, and Woodson;
in Fluvanna, Cocke, Scott, Cary, Fuqua and Winn; in
Goochland, Carter, Garland, Pickett, Pleasant, Pendleton,
Sampson, Randolph, and Watkins; in Loudoun,
Mason; in Louisa, Morris, Minor, Trueheart, and
Watson; in Lynchburg, Harrison, Pollard, and Yancey;
in Nelson, Rives, Calloway, Digges, Garland, Lewis,
McClelland and Mosby; and in Orange, Madison.

Many of the local subscribers, with the full concurrence
of the Board of Visitors, were anxious to pay the
entire amount of their contributions in a form that was
suggested by the needs of the College in the course of its
building. W. D. Garth, for instance, furnished many
feet of dressed plank in return for the release of his
pledge; Reuben Maury supplied a large quantity of
farm products on the same acceptable condition; so did

Garland Garth; and so did James Dinsmore with his
work as contractor.[17] As we shall see, a small number of
the subscriptions, chiefly because of death, insolvency, or
emigration, remained unpaid until as late as 1824, when
a collector was appointed at a handsome percentage to
obtain by suit or solicitation such as had not as yet been
settled. In order to swell the amount that was confidently
expected from the subscription list, the Board of
Visitors, at the meeting held on May 5, 1817, approved
the plan for the lottery which had been drawn up by the
trustees of Albemarle Academy; and they instructed the
proctor to carry it into execution at once through such
agents as he should appoint. The proceeds of the sale of
the voluminous tickets were to be deposited in the Bank
of Virginia in Richmond. It is to be inferred that the
lottery scheme remained in abeyance, for there is no
reference to any income acquired by this means. The
passage of the bill, in 1818, providing for the establishment
of a university, and appropriating an annual fund
of fifteen thousand dollars for its support, may have
caused the lottery to be put off indefinitely.

XII. Plan for the Buildings

But a far more important transaction of the Board at
this meeting was the adoption of Jefferson's plan for the
buildings. This plan, it seems, had been carefully

thought out by him many years before.[18] We learn from
a letter which he wrote the architect, Latrobe, in 1817,
that he had formed his general idea of an academic village
about fifteen years before, in response to a request
from Littleton Waller Tazewell, at that time a member
of the General Assembly, which was then disposed to consider
the founding of a university for the State. It was
this plan which he had submitted to the trustees of East
Tennessee College in 1810, when they had asked of him
an appropriate design for that institution; he had then
described it as follows: "a small and separate lodge for
each professorship, with only a hall below for his class,
and two chambers above for himself; these lodges to be
joined by barracks for a certain portion of the students,
opening into a covered way to give a dry communication
between all the parts, the whole of these arranged
around an open square of grass and trees."

The same plan,—except that one side was left open,
—was submitted to the trustees of Albemarle Academy
and accepted by them. The exact description of it as
adopted by the Board of Visitors of Central College was
in these words: "a distinct pavilion or building for each
separate professorship; these to be arranged around a
square; each pavilion to contain a school-room and two

apartments for the accommodation of the professor's
family, and other reasonable conveniences." It will be
perceived that there was, in this curt statement, no reference
at all to a Rotunda on the north line of the square;
indeed, the original scheme called for no difference whatever
between that line and the other lines in the general
character of its buildings.

In drafting this first plan of his academical village,—
which was to contain pavilions on each closed side of the
square, with dormitories between,—there were two practical
advantages that Jefferson kept clearly and constantly
before him. The foremost was that this arrangement
would sensibly diminish the possibility of serious loss by
fire. Had the dormitories and the professors' apartments
been crowded into one large building, there would
have been a perpetual hazard of the structure being burnt
up as a whole; this fate did overtake the central building
of the University of Missouri in 1893; and, in 1895,
it also befell the Rotunda and its annex at the University
of Virginia itself. In the time of Jefferson, there was
less facility for smothering an incipient conflagration,
and the danger of one was then far more justly alarming
because of its certain fatal consequences, should it occur.
But the second and most influential reason in Jefferson's
mind for the academic village was the ability which this
plan created to prolong the east and west lines of the
square indefinitely. He was forced to consider the economic
aspects of the situation primarily from the point
of view of the cost of supplementary buildings. The
scheme of a square open at its southern end was nicely
adapted to the financial condition of the College; one
pavilion or two pavilions, ten dormitories or twenty,
could, from year to year, or decade to decade, be added
on to the east and west side, or to both sides, as the increase

in the number of students, in the course of time,
should justify it. Suppose that, instead of this flexible
arrangement, one large dormitory building had been
erected. Did that allow in itself room for extension?
Either an unsightly wing would have to be attached, or
a second two-story barrack would have to be constructed,
a combination that would hardly have conformed to those
canons of taste which were sacred in Jefferson's eyes.[19]

With his acute sense of architectural beauty and his
taste for building, his mind must have been elated by
the prospects of gratifying both, which opened up to him
when the Visitors of Central College, on May 5, 1817,
recorded their approval of his noble plan and appointed
Cocke and himself a committee with full authority,
jointly or severally, to carry it out in detail. Not since
the completion of Monticello had he possessed such an
opportunity to show his extraordinary aptitude for architecture,
without being trammeled by the intervention of
others. In his designs for the Capitol at Richmond, and
for public edifices in Washington and private residences
in Virginia, there was always some one with the power to
modify or push aside his recommendations. In this new
field, he was quite as unhampered as he was in constructing
his own home, for Cocke, his colleague on the building
committee, while he did not, from a practical point
of view, approve the plan in many particulars, never undertook
to interfere or obstruct;[20] and this seems to have

been the attitude also of the Board of Visitors as a whole.
All recognized with Madison that the whole scheme of
the University belonged to Jefferson, and that his wishes
in regard to it should govern their action without question
or dispute.

Jefferson wrote to Cabell, his most sympathetic correspondent,
that, in his judgment, a remarkable "material
basis" for the University was necessary "for its intellectual
superstructure." It will be recollected that he
had once asserted that it was not more costly to build a
beautiful house than to build an ugly one, and he tacitly
refused to contract his general plan on the score of economy
except to take brick or stone as a substitute for
marble, which alone was really in harmony with his
splendid design. There was a time, even in the history
of Central College, when he was harassed with the
thought of his inability to secure the funds which he
needed for his projected pavilions and dormitories, but
this prospect never caused him to draw back to a commoner
level. Indeed, his disposition, after the projection

of the first pavilion, the plainest of all, was to grow
more ambitious in the character of his principal structures
as a means of further enhancing the beauty of the
whole group. That group, when finished, was, as we
shall see, to be marked by great variety, not only in small
details, but in general outlines; and it was in planning
this variety that his architectural talents had found the
widest scope for exercise and gratification. He did not
disguise to himself the fact that this variety, by its striking
combinations, would arouse the opposition of the
ignorant and tasteless from its very novelty. "That the
style and scale of the buildings," he remarked in one of
his reports to the General Assembly, "should meet the
approbation of every individual judgment was impossible
from the various structure of various minds. ...
We owed the State to do, not what was to perish with
ourselves, but what would remain and be preserved
through other ages."

The question now offers itself: how far were the details
of Jefferson's general plan altered by him at the
suggestion of others after the Visitors had authorized
the erection of the first pavilion? Up to that date, the
scheme in its entirety appears to have been precisely the
same as he had formed it in the beginning. So far as
we now know, not even a hint had as yet been obtained
from any one with any pretension to architectural training.
The nearest models to his proposed group in existence
were the cloistered retreats in Europe that had
come down from the Middle Ages. These were distinguished
for similar quadrangles and colonnades, with
dormitories or cells opening into covered ways, which ran
the whole length of the quadrangles. The real inspiration,
however, as we shall see, sprang from another and
more ancient source.

But that Jefferson received suggestions after May 5,
1817, when the first pavilion was determined upon, which
were reflected in the final construction of some of the
buildings, is now very clearly proven. Four days subsequent
to the meeting of the Visitors, he wrote to William
Thornton, the distinguished architect, whom he had
known in Washington: "What we wish," he said, "is
that these pavilions, as they will show themselves above
the dormitories, shall be models of taste and good architecture,
and of a variety of appearance, no two alike, so
as to serve as specimens for the architectural lecturer.
Will you set your imagination to work, and sketch some
designs for us, no matter how loosely with the pen, with
out the trouble of referring to scale or rule, for we want
nothing but the outline of the architecture, as the internal
must be arranged according to local convenience? A
few sketches, such as may not take you a minute, will
greatly oblige us."

It is palpable that Jefferson was seeking, not formal designs
that would materially alter the fundamental character
of his whole scheme, but simply hints or sketches
that would further enhance its beauty by variety. Two
sketches seem to have been sent to him by Thornton, accompanied
by suggestions, some of which were accepted
and others ignored. Thornton counseled that the front
of the first pavilion should be supported by arches next
to the ground, with Doric columns above the arches;
and this advice was adopted; but not so the advice given
at the same time, that the lecture-room should be placed
at the top of the house, and the height of the house increased,
—changes which were recommended to be followed
in all the pavilions. Thornton further thought
that the roofs of the dormitories should be made to slope
outward from a parapet, and that the arcades in front

should be supported, not with piers, but with columns,
such as are now to be seen there. An equally important
suggestion was that a single Corinthian pavilion should
be built on the north line of the square, which would thus
become the most conspicuous structure on the three closed
sides of that square. Apparently, under Jefferson's original
plan, more than one pavilion, with adjacent dormitories,
had been designed to fill up the whole of this
north line.

Jefferson was not satisfied with Thornton's aid alone,
but also wrote to Latrobe, his associate in public building
during his Presidency, and perhaps the most competent
professional architect in the United States at this time.
He gives him the same general description of his plan
which he had given Thornton, but with several additional
details; thus he mentions the width and depth of each
pavilion; and furthermore, points out that there is to
be a colonnade running the entire length of all the strucures
as high as the lower story of the principal ones. As
in his letter to Thornton, so in this letter to Latrobe, he
asks only for outlines, however loose or rough, of fronts;
the interior arrangements, he repeats, will be governed
by convenience alone. A few sketches only, he concludes,
were desired. Latrobe was so much flattered and gratified
by Jefferson's request for assistance, that, unlike
Thornton, who replied rather promptly, he delayed his
answer until June 17 in order to study the plan which had
been submitted to him. So bulky were the drawings that
he made in the course of this study that he did not
venture to enclose them by mail. Jefferson was visiting
his estate in Bedford county when Latrobe's letter reached
Monticello; and it was not until July 16 that he acknowledged
its arrival. "I did not mean to give you this
trouble," he wrote, "but since you have been so kind as to

take it, I shall turn it to good account. I am anxious
to receive your first draft as soon as possible because we
must immediately lay the first stone, as the first pavilion
must be finished this fall."

The magnificenct conception of placing a structure of
the most imposing character in the middle of the north
line had its origin, it would seem, with Latrobe. "The
centre building," he wrote on July 24, "ought to exhibit
in mass and detail as perfect a specimen of good architectural
taste as can be devised."[21] Thornton, it will
be recalled, had simply suggested that a single Corinthian
pavilion should be erected there instead of the less
imposing pavilions, with adjacent dormitories, which had
been projected by Jefferson; who seems, however, to
have been at once favorably impressed with Latrobe's
nobler proposal: "We will leave the north side open,"
he replied on August 3, "so that, if the State should
establish there the university they contemplate, they may
fill it up with something of the grand kind." It was characteristic
of his architectural taste that the "something"
which he finally adopted was on the model of the Pantheon.

The original plan had provided only two rooms for
the accommodation of each professor. It has been supposed
that Jefferson, having in mind the early principle
of the College of William and Mary, favored the employment
of unmarried instructors alone, and, therefore, was
only inclined to furnish bachelor quarters for each member
of the teaching staff. The quick eye of Latrobe
caught this defect in the plan at once, but Jefferson, in
his reply, explained it away by pointing out that the backside

of each pavilion was left without windows, in expectation
of an addition of two or three apartments,
should they be required for a man of family.

The roll of Latrobe's drawings arrived on October 6.
Two more pavilions having been authorized by the
Board, Jefferson, on the 14th, wrote to him, "We shall
certainly select their fronts from these (drawings). ...
Some of your fronts would require too great a width for
us because, the aspects of our fronts being east and
west, we are obliged to give the largest dimensions to our
flanks, which look north and south." The influence of
Latrobe is distinctly reflected in pavilions III and V,
and it possibly comes out also in several of the pavilions
erected after the incorporation of the University; but this
cannot be positively stated owing to the loss of the drawings.
It is most strongly suspected in pavilion X, which
closely follows III; and also in pavilion VIII. While
both Thornton and himself left the stamp of their genius
on some of the important details of the general design,
—Latrobe especially, by his recommendation of pavilions
at the angles and of a great dominating building at the
central axis, perceptibly modified and improved it,—the
credit of the general architectural conception of Central
College belongs to Jefferson. His fundamental inspiration
lay, not in the suggestions of contemporaries, valuable
as they were, but in the monumental works of Greece
and Rome as delineated in the plates of Palladio. This
fact will disclose itself more clearly when we come to describe
the progress of the whole design after Central
College had been converted into the University of Virginia.

XIII. The Actual Building

The Board of Visitors of the College, it will be recalled,
authorized on May 5 (1817) the erection of
the first pavilion, and empowered a special committee,
composed of Jefferson and Cocke, to supervise the successive
stages of construction. The first step was to lay
off the plat of ground selected for the site of the institution.
It was not until July 18 that Jefferson staked
out his plan. The theodolite was fixed in the ground at
the middle point of the northern line of the square, on
which now rises the circular walls of the Rotunda. In
the beginning, there had to be embraced in the survey
an area sufficient to allow twenty dormitories to be attached
to each of the pavilions projected for the three
lines. The same area was still required when the number
of pavilions for the east and west lines, respectively,
was increased to five, for, at the same time, the number
of dormitories to be attached to each pavilion was reduced
to ten. At this period, as we have mentioned, the
site was simply an open worn-out field rising high and dry
by itself, and without any obstructions in the way of trees
or bushes. The lay-off was completed under Jefferson's
eye, and certainly partly, if not entirely, with his actual
assistance. Ten working men, quite probably hired
slaves, were promptly turned in to change the surface,
with spade and hoe, to the exact condition required for
the foundation of the several buildings. The design of
East and West Ranges, as distinguished from East and
West Lawn, had not yet been considered; the lay-off in
the beginning was confined to the present lawn and the
sites of the structures that were to confront it.

It was not until October 6 (1817) that the cornerstone

of the first pavilion, the modern Colonnade Club,
was put in place. It is a fact tending to arouse some
speculation that the site of this pavilion should have been
selected at so obscure a point in the lines forming the
three sides of the square. Why was it not chosen nearer
the northeast or northwest corner? Why not on the
ground now occupied by the Rotunda? According to
the original plan, no pavilion was to be erected at a
corner, but Latrobe seems to have altered Jefferson's
resolution in this detail. The suggestion from Thornton
in favor of a very handsome Corinthian pavilion at the
centre of the northern line, and from Latrobe of a
Rotunda there, may also have decided him at this time
to reserve this spot for a more imposing use in the
future.

The morning that was to witness the ceremony of laying
the corner-stone was at first fair, but the clouds later
on began to gather;—happily, however, only to disperse
and leave the weather clear again. The county and superior
courts, with their promiscuous attendance of citizens,
set upon business or amusement, were in session in Charlottesville;
but when informed of the impending event,
the judges left the bench, and accompanied by the crowd
of hangers-on, repaired to the scene. The doors of
all the stores were locked, private houses shut up, and the
entire population of the little town darkened the road to
the College. They were animated, some by an interest
in learning, some by a spirit of diversion, and some, perhaps,
by a desire to gaze at a group of three men composed
of two former Presidents of the United States,
Jefferson and Madison, and the present incumbent of that
office, Monroe. Among the persons who occupied the
seats of prominence at the ceremony was David Watson,

a member of the Board of Visitors, who seems, on this
occasion, to have shown his first, and, with one exception,
his last interest in Central College.

The corner-stone was laid with the customary state by
Lodges 60 and 90. Rev. William King was the chaplain,
John M. Perry, the architect, and Alexander Garrett, the
worthy grand-master. President Monroe applied the
square and plumb, the chaplain asked a blessing on the
stone, the crowd huzzaed, and the band played "Hail
Columbia." Corn was now scattered, and then Valentine
W. Southall delivered the address to the general audience.
With the grand-master's address to the Visitors,
the ceremony was concluded.

Alexander Garrett, as proctor, had already contracted
with John M. Perry for the erection of the first pavilion.
It was to be built of brick and was to contain one large
room on the lower floor, two on the upper, and offices
and a cellar in the basement. All the carpenter's and
joiner's work was to be done by Perry; and he was also
to supply the lumber as well as the ironmongery. Payment
was to be made in three instalments: two hundred
dollars to be delivered in cash at once; five hundred so
soon as the roof was raised; and the remainder when the
house was accepted as satisfactorily finished. This contract
is interesting for a reason additional to its being the
first: it not only bore the signature of Jefferson, but it was
witnessed by William Wertenbaker, then a young man,
but afterwards to become one of the most useful and
honored officers of the institution through more than half
a century.

Jefferson had early taken steps in person to procure
bricklayers of the highest expertness. With that purpose
in view, he, during his sojourn at Poplar Forest, in
Bedford county, in the summer of 1817 visited Lynchburg,

for "they have there," he wrote Latrobe, on July
16, "the new method of moulding the stock-brick in
oil, and execute with it the most beautiful brick which I
have ever seen."

So dilatory were the workmen in constructing the first
pavilion that he grew doubtful as to whether it would be
finished before the ensuing January. He rode down to
the College on alternate days, although, at this time, in
his seventy-fifth year, to quicken the laborers by the stimulus
of his presence. "I follow it up," he wrote Cabell
on October 24, "from a sense of the impression which
will be made on the Legislature by the prospect of its immediate
operation. The walls should be done by our
next court, but they will not be by a great deal." In the
following December, while again stopping at Poplar
Forest, he visited Lynchburg a second time to hire bricklayers
to construct the two additional pavilions which the
Board of Visitors had ordered to be erected. At that
time, this class of workingmen were asking fifteen dollars
a thousand for laying place-brick and thirty for laying
oil-stock, there having been recently a sharp advance in
prices owing to the increased charge for corn. Jefferson
entered into a provisional engagement with Matthew
Brown, a local builder, to pay him as much as was obtainable
for similar jobs in Lynchburg; but he hoped that, for
a contract involving the purchase and use of three hundred
thousand to four hundred thousand bricks, a cheaper undertaker
might be found in Richmond; and for that reason
he urged Cabell, then attending a session of the Senate,
to look about for one in that city. "Pray make a
business of it," he wrote, "make such a bargain as you
can and inform me immediately." Cabell, although assisted
by Major Christopher Tompkins, a builder of experience,
was unable to conclude a satisfactory arrangement,

and Jefferson, in consequence was constrained to
close with Brown.

He preferred to use slate for roofing, and in June,
1818, corresponded with Colonel Bernard Peyton, of
Richmond, for the purpose of obtaining a man with sufficient
practical information to pass correctly upon the
quality of the products of certain quarries in Albemarle
county and willing to undertake the contract for covering
the pavilions and dormitories, should that quality
sustain the requisite test. One Jones, of Wales, who
had already done work of this character in Charlottesvills,
had removed to Richmond, and it was he whom
Jefferson was anxious to employ. It was soon shown
that the stone in the strata around the College was not
suitable for a delicate tool,—it proved both expensive
and tedious to chisel it. In July, 1817, Jefferson had
been authorized by the Board of Visitors on his own
motion to import a stone-cutter from Italy; he had decided
to construct the two additional pavilions on a more
ornate and ambitious model than the one followed in the
first pavilion; and for this reason, he thought that it
would be imprudent to depend exclusively on the domestic
workingman, and that he ought to go abroad for the
most highly trained skill that could be found there. One
of the most competent of the domestic builders was James
Dinsmore, whom Jefferson had, in 1798, discovered in
Philadelphia and brought to Monticello, where he remained
as his principal employee in house joinery for ten
years. "I have never known," said Jefferson, "a more
faithful, sober, discreet, honest, and respectable man."
Associated with Dinsmore at Monticello was John Neilson,
whom Jefferson had also come to know in Philadelphia,
in 1804, and who continued under contract to him
during a period of four years. Both of these men were

at one time in the service of Madison at Montpelier; but
Neilson was, at the beginning of the building at Central
College, engaged in working for General Cocke; and it
was not until the construction of the University itself was
fully underway that he took an important part in it, in
partnership with Dinsmore.

Jefferson was sanguine that the first pavilion, with its
dormitories, would be completed before the end of 1817,
but it was not finished by August 4, 1818, although it
was, on that date, reported to be "far advanced." A
second pavilion, with its dormitories too, was expected,
—without good reason, however,—to receive the final
stroke of the hammer and trowel by the ensuing January
(1818).

XIV. The First Professors Elected

Long before these pavilions, with their annexes, were
built, Jefferson had been revolving the anxious question
as to how the professorships were to be filled, and which
of them, if necessary, should have the preference. The
Board of Visitors, at their meeting on October 7, 1817,—
the day following the laying of the corner-stone of the
first pavilion,—had decided as to who should be the
occupants of the one already going up, and the two additional
ones which they had just concluded to erect. The
first they determined to set aside for the professor of
languages, belles-lettres, rhetoric, oratory, history and
geography; the second for the professor of chemistry,
zoology, botany and anatomy; whilst the third, until
wanted for the remaining professor, should be converted
into a boarding house, to be rented to a respectable
French family on condition that only the French language
should be spoken there by the students in the course of
their meals. At the meeting of the Board of Visitors

three months afterwards, there seems to have been a readjustment
of this assignment of houses: on that occasion,
there were submitted estimates of the cost of four
pavilions, with dormitories attached,—the pavilions to
be reserved for the use of the professors of languages,
physiology, mathematics, and ideology, respectively. It
was determined that, should there be, before the following
April, a failure to collect the whole amount that was
due by written promise,—this being the only fund that
was expected to be available for the construction of the
buildings,—then the money needed to pay the salaries
of the professors of chemistry and languages, the first
who were to be appointed, should be obtained by floating
a loan with the banks on the security of the property of
the College, and the several instalments of the subscriptions
as they should fall in.

Writing on January 18, 1800, to Priestley, Jefferson
said, "We should propose to draw from Europe the first
characters in science by considerable temptations, which
would not need to be repeated after the first set had prepared
fit successors, and given reputation to the institution.
From some splendid characters, I have received
offers most perfectly reasonable and practical." It will
be recalled that, at one time, he had just reason to be
confident that he would be able to secure the talents of
Say for a chair in Central College so soon as incorporated;
and also that he had sanguinely fixed his eye on
other aliens of equal celebrity. It seems like an unexpected
and puzzling anti-climax to discover that the first
man who was invited to become a professor in that college
was a clergyman and an American, Dr. Samuel Knox,
of Baltimore; at a meeting of the Board, held on July
28, 1817, several weeks before the corner-stone of the

first pavilion was laid, he was named for the chair of
languages, belles-lettres, rhetoric, history, and geography,
—a multiplicity of courses that called for the most versatile
accomplishments in the teacher. As remuneration
for the performance of these laborious duties, he was to
receive a fixed salary of five hundred dollars, and the sum
of twenty-five dollars for each pupil; and since the field
to be traversed by him was wide and popular, the accumulation
of fees on this account was expected to be very
large.

Dr. Knox, either appalled by the burdens which the
task of teaching in so many departments of knowledge
would impose on him, or repelled by the non-sectarian
character of the projected institution, briefly, vaguely, but
discreetly, replied that "he had gone out of business";
which would seem to prove that he had been a professor
as well as a preacher by calling. His shadowy figure enjoys
this distinction in the history of the University
down to the War of Secession: he was the first clergyman
who was asked to fill one of its chairs during that period.
Some years afterwards, Jefferson appears to have made
it plain to Francis Walker Gilmer that, in his search for
English scholars, the application of no minister of the
Gospel was to be considered with favor.

On October 7, about two months after Knox's refusal,
the compass was boxed by the Board of Visitors, under
Jefferson's prompting, in extending to Dr. Thomas
Cooper, an invitation to become the professor of chemistry
and law. Cooper, if not openly and frankly an infidel,
was so vague and shifty in his religious beliefs that
he acknowledged that he himself could not state definitely
what they were. He seems to have been a very erratic,
if not unsavory character, on the whole, in spite of his indisputable

learning and versatile talents.[22] Jefferson enthusiastically
admired him for more than one acquirement.
For instance, he was so much impressed by a
judicial decision which Cooper had delivered that he predicted,
in a letter to Cabell, that it would "produce a
revolution on the question treated; not in the present day,
because old lawyers, like old physicians and other old
men, never change opinions which it had cost them the
whole labors of their youth to form; but when the young
lawyers sit on the bench, they will carry Cooper's doctrine
with them." "The best pieces on political economy
which have been written in this country," he added, "were
by Cooper. He is a great chemist, and now proposes
to resume his mineralogical studies."

Was Cooper the marvelous political economist, jurist,
and chemist that Jefferson pronounced him to be? Jefferson's
insight was sometimes rather awry, as his unqualified
encomiums on Ossian and the obscure economist,
Tracy, prove. It is not beyond the range of probability
that Cooper's general attainments were overrated by
some of the communities of the New World in which he
lived simply because their culture was not yet sufficiently
discriminating, as in the Old, to detect the superficiality
amid the rather glittering pretensions. But whether he
was a man of as phenomenal parts as Jefferson and others
supposed, it is not to be denied that he had, throughout
his career, exhibited a rough contempt for the sentiments
and feelings of others; and that discretion in expressing
his own views was a quality which he seemed to esteem
but little, and show but rarely. He was an Englishman
by birth, who had begun his active life as a member of

the bar; and even in his youth, was so radical and so rampant
in his opinions that he was sent on a sympathetic
mission to Revolutionary France as the representative of
eight British democratic clubs. He became a friend and
disciple of Priestley at an early date on account of their
similar relish for scientific researches, for unorthodox
religious beliefs, and for a freedom in political affairs
that verged on extreme republicanism. Priestley suffered
for his liberal opinions by their bringing down on
his head the fury of the mob that pulled his Unitarian
chapel to pieces and set the torch to his home. In his
very natural disgust, he resolved to seek an asylum in
the less heated atmosphere of the United States; Cooper,
who also found Birmingham at this time an uncomfortable
spot, accompanied him; and both settled in a quiet
back region of Pennsylvania.

Jefferson had been first interested in Priestley in consequence
of his heterodox writings, which had largely influenced
his own religious creed; and he had been further
drawn to him by the fact that he was one of the first persons
of his nation to perceive the importance of physical
science in education. The religious and political persecution
to which he had been ruthlessly subjected recommended
him still more warmly to Jefferson, who detested
every form of oppression, intolerance, and injustice, no
matter how erratic, unworthy, or humble the object of it
might be. Association with Priestley in scientific tastes,
and in a common martyrdom for opinion's sake, was all
that was needed to rivet his good-will and respect for
Cooper, now a citizen of Pennsylvania, and this was further
justified by the reputation which Cooper had won
as a judge, and afterwards as a professor in Dickinson
College and a lecturer in the University of Pennsylvania.
He is said to have been imprisoned at one time by the

Federalists, doubtless under the Alien and Sedition Acts;
and this, naturally enough, further magnified his merits
in the eyes of Jefferson, whose feelings towards that party,
it will be recalled, were tempered by little of his customary
philosophy. The Board of Visitors, when they convened
on October 8, 1817, in order to secure Cooper's
services, by making it most advantageous to his pecuniary
interests to accept their appointment, agreed to reimburse
him for the expense of transporting his collection of books
and minerals to Central College, and to continue to pay
him interest, at the rate of six per cent., for the use of
his philosophical and chemical apparatus and mineralogical
specimens, until there should be surplus enough (after
the indispensable charges upon the funds of the College
had been defrayed) with which to buy the entire quantity;
and should this surplus not arise within a defined
time, then the purchase was to be made with money to be
borrowed from the banks. The cost of materials needed
in the course of the chemical lectures was to be taken over
by the Board.

Jefferson was made very sanguine by this liberal offer,
and on the 14th, about a week later, wrote cheerfully to
Francis Walker Gilmer, "Our Central College looks up
with hope. Cooper, I think, will accept a professorship
in it. We are in quest of a Ticknor for languages, but
have not yet found one. If left to ourselves, we shall
be better than William and Mary, but if the Legislature
adopts us for the University, we will then be what we
should be. I have considerable hope they will do it and
at the coming session."

These words let out into the light an important, if
not the principal, reason for Jefferson's urgency in hurrying
the first three buildings to a finish and for his premature
nomination of professors: he wished to be in a

position to say, just so soon as the discussion over the
establishment of a university should begin in the General
Assembly at its approaching term, that Central College
was now, in reality, a working institution, in possession
of teachers, dormitories, and pavilions; and that it only
needed the necromantic touch of the wand of the State
treasury to expand almost at once into a great seat of
learning. It will be recalled that he did endeavor to turn
the property of the College over to the Commonwealth
by the bill for general education, which he submitted in
the winter of 1818; that effort failed, as we have seen;
but a second was to end in the desired success, at the
meeting of the Assembly in the winter of 1819, by the
adoption of the Rockfish Gap Report.

By his shrewd stroke of making the Governor of the
State the patron of the College, Jefferson secured the
tactical advantage of laying before the General Assembly
annually a complete record of those proceedings of
the Board of Visitors which formed the history of the
institution during the previous twelve months. This offered
a regularly recurring opportunity of arousing an interest
in the College in the minds of the persons who had
the most power to serve it. In the report for January
6, 1818, he dwells on the plans that had been adopted
for filling the several chairs. "Our funds already certain,"
he wrote, "will enable us to establish, during the
ensuing season, two professorships only with their necessary
buildings; and to erect a pavilion, and—if the outstanding
subscription papers fulfil our hopes,—the dormitories
also for a third; depending for the salary, as well
as for the salary and buildings for the fourth, on future
and unassured donations. The four are to be languages,
mathematics, physiological and ideological sciences."
Each of these important professorships, on account of

its fixed remuneration of five hundred dollars, and the cost
of the pavilion and the dormitories to be attached to it,
would call for an expenditure at the start of at least
$8,333.30. Jefferson was not at all content with the
thought of limiting the number of chairs to four, as he was
aware that it would be impossible for this number of instructors
to find the time to teach in every subdivision of
the extensive and pregnant subjects which would be assigned
to them. "To do this as it should be done,"
he said, "to give all its development to every useful
branch of all the departments, and in the highest degree
to which each has already been carried, would require a
greatly increased number of professors, and funds far
beyond what can be expected from individual contributors.
For this, the resources at the command of the Legislature
alone is adequate."

XV. Fight Against Cooper

By February, 1818, the prospect of retaining Cooper
had become overclouded. An acute hostility to his appointment
had already been expressed by members of the
religious denominations. During the following autumn,
after the Report of the Rockfish Gap Commission, in
favor of converting Central College into the State University,
had been drafted for delivery to the General
Assembly, Abbe Corréa endeavored to strengthen Cooper's
position by trumpeting his great attainments.
"Learning and love of science and of its diffusion," he
wrote Francis W. Gilmer, "are as different as light and
caloric. They are not always united. I have met
through life many a phosphoric savant who did not communicate
heat. Judge Cooper does both." The University
having been chartered, his reappointment came up

again for discussion by the Board at a meeting held at
Montpelier, the home of Madison. In the teeth of
weather graphically described by General Cocke as the
"most snowy that he had ever seen," Jefferson rode on
horseback over the clogged country highways to be present;
he was now close upon his seventy-sixth birthday;
but neither the infirmities of old age, nor obliterated
roads, nor a nipping wind, were suffered to create insurmountable
obstructions to the journey. It was not simply
that he wished to hasten the progress of the buildings,
—he was acutely interested in Cooper's prompt reelection
because that would allow two professorships to be inaugurated
practically at once.

Chapman Johnson, one of the most astute lawyers of
the State, and a very accomplished and winning man, had
taken David Watson's place on the Board. He, together
with Cabell and Cocke, were averse to Cooper's reappointment.
Cabell had written to Jefferson and hinted a
doubt about the expediency of the choice, but if he was
employed, said he, he should not be permitted to come
alone. Nevertheless, Cabell thought that Jefferson
should be sustained if he had committed himself to
Cooper; and this seems to have been Johnson's attitude,
too, when he learned from R. H. Lee, of Staunton,—
who had been one of Cooper's pupils,—that his character
was entitled to unquestionable respect. Cocke, however,
was not so much inclined to yield, though pained by the
position in which his conscientious objections put him.
"The thought of opposing my individual opinion," he
wrote Cabell on March 1, 1819, "upon a subject of this
nature against the high authority of Mr. Jefferson and
Mr. Madison, has cost me a conflict which has shaken
the very foundations of my health, for I feel now as if I
should have a spell of sickness. But I could not act

otherwise, for if I had expired under the trial, I should
have held out to the last."

Jefferson, however, was not to be turned in his resolution;
he urged that the new institution was bound in law
to enter into a contract with Cooper, should he accept
the proposal which had been made to him.[23] "Moreover,"
he added with the extravagance which tinged his
impressions quite frequently when the spirit of the partisan
was aroused in him, "Cooper is acknowledged by
every enlightened man who knows him to be the greatest
man in America in the powers of his mind, and in acquired
information, and that without a single exception. I understand
that a rumor unfavorable to his habits has been
afloat in some places, but I never heard of a single man
who undertook to charge him with present or late intemperance,
and I think rumor is fairly outweighed by
the counter-evidence of the great desire shown at William
and Mary to get him; that shown by the enlightened
men of Philadelphia to retain him; and the anxiety of
New York to get him; that of Corrèa to place him here,
who is in constant intercourse with him; the evidence
I received on his visit here, when the state of his health
permitted him to eat nothing but vegetables and drink
nothing but water; his declaration to me at the table that
he dared not drink ale or cider or a single glass of wine,
and this in the presence of Corrèa, who, if there had
been any hypocrisy in it, would not have failed to tell
me so."

Jefferson carried his point, and on March 29, 1819,

Cooper,—who, it will be remembered, had been elected
professor of chemistry and law in Central College,—
was appointed to the diversified chair of chemistry, mineralogy,
natural philosophy, and law, in the recently incorporated
University; he was guaranteed a salary that
was not to fall short of $3,500 in amount; and the Board
agreed to purchase his apparatus at cost, and twenty-five
hundred specimens of his mineralogical collection at fifty
cents apiece. Furthermore, the annual expense of all
articles consumed in the experiments of his chemical lectures
was to be defrayed by the institution, provided that
it did not exceed two hundred and fifty dollars. There
was but one condition in modification of this contract;
namely, that payment for the mineralogical specimens
was to be deferred until more schools had been created,
and more professors engaged; but, in the meanwhile, an
annual interest of six per cent. was to be paid on the sum
of the purchase money. When this liberal agreement
was entered into, there was a prospect that the first lecture
would be delivered at the University in the spring of
1820; but by October, 1819, it was clearly foreseen that
this would be impracticable, and the Board, through the
committee of superintendence,—Jefferson and Cocke,
—so informed Dr. Cooper; who consented to put off
the commencement of his duties to a later date, without
any compensation beyond the advance of fifteen hundred
dollars for his subsistence. This was to be deducted from
the first instalment of salary after he should begin to
discharge his functions; but he reserved the right to occupy
a pavilion in the meanwhile. Jefferson, who, in the
first instance, had been too impatient to contract with
him, looked upon these terms as moderate and reasonable.
Cocke, the other member of the committee, demurred
to Cooper's establishing his domicile at the University
before he could be usefully employed there, since
it was calculated, he said, "to injure the institution at a
time when it stood in need of every friend who could
rally around it."

The deep aversion of the religious sects now again
raised a threatening voice. Cooper had published an
edition of Dr. Priestley's works, in the preface to which
he had given expression to views flagrantly unorthodox.[24]
Dr. John H. Rice, editor of the justly influential Evangelical
Magazine, who, as we shall soon see, had taken an
energetic part in creating a popular sentiment favorable
to the passage of the University bill, came out with a
vigorous but temperate article condemning Cooper's employment
as a teacher of youth. The quotations which
he submitted from Cooper's writings were such as to
shock the minds of a conservative people like the Virginians;
and he was, therefore, sustained by public opinion
in the assertion that, as the University was a State institution,
the different denominations who joined in supporting
it had a right to be offended by the selection of
professors whose heresies struck, as they thought, at the
foundations of "social order, morals, and religion."
Jefferson's choler was quickly and thoroughly aroused by
these clerical reflections on Cooper, who, he declared with
bitterness, had been charged with Unitarianism "as presumptuously
as if it were a crime." "For myself," he
wrote General Robert B. Taylor, "I am not disposed to
regard the denunciation of these satellites of religious
inquisition"; but his colleagues differed in view from him,
and when the mortified Cooper offered his resignation,

they wisely and discreetly accepted it. He received the
remainder of the fifteen hundred dollars promised him,
of which seven hundred and fifty had already been anticipated
by him. His final communication with the Board
was marked by both dignity and manliness: "Whatever
my religious creed may be, and perhaps I do not exactly
know it myself, it is a pleasure to reflect that my conduct
has not brought, and is not likely to bring, discredit on
my friends."

Jefferson did not disguise his chagrin over this miscarriage.
"I have looked to him," he wrote General
Taylor, in May, 1820, "as the corner-stone of our edifice.
I know of no one who could have aided us so much
in forming the future regulations for our infant institution,
and although we may hereafter procure from Europe
equivalents in the sciences, they can never replace
the advantages of his experience, his knowledge of the
character, the habits, and manners of our country, his
identification with its sentiments and principles, and the
high reputation he has obtained in it generally." Such
was the unlucky upshot of the only formal arrangement
which was entered into to procure a professor for Central
College. The contract was passed on to the University,
where it ended in the disaster which has been described.
The later experience with Professors Long and Key, who
did not remain until the end of the terms for which they
were employed, confirms the pertinency of Jefferson's
reasons for so ardently wishing to engage Cooper so far
as those reasons related to his residence of many years
in the country, and to his sympathy with Republican doctrines
and institutions. From other points of view, his
resignation, perhaps, was no cause for regret. He
seemed to flourish most in a storm-centre created by himself;
but that was not the atmosphere which would have

brought respect and prosperity to an infant seat of learning,
with a reputation yet to be made and confirmed.

XVI. The Bill for Conversion

In the midst of all these plans for building pavilions
and dormitories and engaging professors, how did
Jefferson expect to acquire the funds which would be
needed for so many purposes? The subscription list
was his only immediate reliance, and knowing how slender
and inadequate it was, he began to direct a wistful
eye towards the State treasury, which now possessed,
in the Literary Fund, a source of large income for the
benefit of public education. He was convinced that no
institution of permanent importance could be sustained
by private contributions alone; and this, as we have already
pointed out, was a powerful motive with him in
hastening the completion of the College, for as long as it
was without pavilions, dormitories, and instructors, no
appeal could be made to the General Assembly for assistance
with any prospect of success.

When, in the winter of 1817–18, Jefferson's bill for
general education was submitted, with an alternate clause
for the adoption of Central College as the university then
talked of, Cabell hoped that, should that clause be ignored
and no university authorized, a separate bill asking for
an appropriation for the College would be more fortunate.
"I have often observed," he wrote shrewdly to
his chief at Monticello, "a disposition in the Assembly
to console the disappointed by granting them something
on the failure of a favorite scheme. Miserable omen for
science and literature that their friends should fly to such
a sentiment on such an occasion, yet it would be better to
do this than to fail altogether." It was his plan, should

the conversion be refused, to obtain an annuity, ranging
from $3,500 to $5,000, from the Literary Fund for the
College, to be used for the support of its professorships,
while the money from the subscriptions might be reserved
for the construction of the buildings. But he soon found
that there were many obstacles in his path. On February
6, 1818, he again wrote to Jefferson, "The friends of
Staunton and Lexington wish to keep down the Central
College. I believe that they would oppose the appropriation
of a dollar to it. Should it get even a little
amount, it would be established, and one year more would
throw Staunton out of the chase altogether, and Lexington
in the background. For these reasons, I think the
back country will oppose a small appropriation to the
Central College with nearly as much zeal as it would the
establishment of the University at that place."

After struggling against this illiberal attitude, and witnessing
the defeat of Jefferson's bill, Cabell became so
much disheartened that he doubted the expediency of petitioning
for the desired annuity at this session. "Let it
be done at the next," was his frequently reiterated advice.
Such was the character of the present House, he said,
that it was questionable whether it would grant the College
even the right to hold a lottery. "Certain interests,"
he continued, "have conspired to cause the Assembly
to turn its back on literature and science. A portion
of the middle country delegation, by cooperating
with these interests, have darkened our prospects on this
occasion. These, it is thought, are opposed to the Central
College, partly because of their hostility to some
of the persons who support it, or from other motives but
little more commendable. It is of infinite importance
to the best interests of the State to send some able and
virtuous men to the next Assembly." And again he said,

"If I had the cooperation of some four or five men, such
as I could describe, everything could be effected." And
again, "Our only safe course is to look around and select
suitable persons and to try and prevail on them to come
into the next Assembly. It is a subject of infinite delicacy
and should be handled with great discretion."

Whilst Jefferson's bill, which really aimed at the conversion
of Central College into a State university, was
thrown out at this session, nevertheless an Act was passed,
as a substitute, that authorized the establishment of a
great seat of learning for the whole Commonwealth, and
the selection of a commission to choose its site. The
struggle for that site was to be adjourned to Rockfish Gap,
and the conference there was to be attended by Jefferson.
For the first and last time in the history of this
protracted controversy, he was to be present in person on
the ground where the battle was actually fought; and
the complete success which crowned his participation in
that occasion, demonstrates that the influence of his
tongue could be quite as powerful as the influence of his
pen, whenever he considered it wise to exert it.