SECOND PERIOD
GERMINATION -ACADEMY AND COLLEGE History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919; The Lengthened Shadow of One Man, Volume I | ||
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
SECOND PERIOD
GERMINATION -ACADEMY AND COLLEGE History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919; The Lengthened Shadow of One Man, Volume I | ||