University of Virginia Library

XLI. The Chaplains

Rev. Mr. Hatch, who inaugurated the religious services
at the University, rises first to view in association
with two scenes of an antipodal nature. He was the
clergyman who visited Francis Walker Gilmer during
the last days which that young Virginian passed on earth,

and it must have been a melancholy sight for him to witness
the rapid wasting of a spirit gifted with so much
talent and learning. In the second scene in which Mr.
Hatch is earliest discovered, he was engaged in marrying
a couple in a cabin on the mountain-side.[43] When the ceremony
ended, the bridegroom, with great embarrassment,
told him that he was too poor to pay the expected fee.
It happened that the clergyman, as he entered the room,
had noticed hanging against the wall a bunch of large
gourds, then in common use as light and fragrant water-dippers.
Pointing to them, he said, "I will be satisfied
with some of those gourds." The bridegroom, very
much relieved, not only, with alacrity, took them all down
from the wall, but assisted the clergyman in festooning
his horse's neck with them as his only available means of
carrying them off to town. And so Mr. Hatch cheerfully
departed, the gourds dangling and clattering in
front of him, while his own thoughts probably wandered
so far away as to be oblivious of the ludicrous spectacle
which he presented as he rode forward along the public
road. As he began to descend Vinegar Hill, in Charlottesville,
his horse suddenly took fright, and dashed
down the street at the top of his speed, with the clergyman
clinging desperately to his neck, and the gourds
bouncing and clashing in the rush of air. Not since John
Gilpin ran his "famous rig," had there been a more frantic
horse or a more helpless rider. A great commotion
was aroused among the astonished bystanders as he flew
by, and not until the horse stopped at the door of the
rectory stable did the wild race come to an end.
Whether the gourds survived the pounding is not mentioned
in the record of the event, but the clergyman fortunately
escaped without personal injury, to continue his
faithful services among his widely dispersed parishioners.

The arrangement with Mr. Hatch and Mr. Bowman
was not protracted beyond twelve months. It could
never have been convenient to these clergymen, since it
required them to traverse a considerable distance before
they could reach the precincts; and it also interrupted the
performance of the full duty which they owed to their
respective flocks in town; nor could afternoon services
alone at the University itself have brought contentment
to those professors and students who were, by nature and
training, interested in religious exercises.

The first regular chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Smith, of
Philadelphia, was appointed in 1829. He was a Presbyterian
in doctrine. The term was now limited to a
single session. During the sessions of 1830–1831 and
1831–1832, the chaplaincy was in abeyance. This was,
perhaps, to be laid at the door of the smallness of the
voluntary contributions made for its support, a condition
all the more to be deprecated because the chaplain, at
this time, was constrained to secure a living-room at his
own expense beyond the precincts. During the brief
period of suspension, there was no recurrence to the clergymen
in Charlottesville, but, in their stead, the chairman
invited pastors of the different Protestant sects to
preach at the University in turn. These accepted with
out any expectation of a fee. Rev. Mr. Armstrong, of
Richmond, Rev. Calvin Catlin, of New York, Rev. Benjamin
Rice and other men of distinction in their calling,
delivered, in succession, moving and edifying sermons in
the apartment in the Rotunda reserved for religious
services.

It was the students, and not the Faculty, who took the
initiatory step for the restoration of the chaplaincy.

At the beginning of the session of 1832, a committee, composed
of McClurg Wickham and three other prominent
collegians, informed the chairman that a large number
of the young men had entered into a mutual pledge to
contribute such a sum as would make certain the celebration
of divine services within the precincts on every Sunday.
Thirty-three signatures were appended to this
honorable list, and among them were to be found the
names of several men who won distinction in after life,
—John W. Stevenson, John A. Meredith, John B.
Young, Frank S. Ruffin, and David H. Tucker. The
professors as well as the visitors swelled the fund by their
relatively large subscriptions of twenty dollars respectively.

During the winter of 1833, Rev. Mr. Ragland, who
had been attending a course of lectures, preached with
regularity in the Rotunda; but before the close of the
following spring, Rev. Mr. Hammet was formally appointed
chaplain, at a salary of three hundred dollars per
annum, which was guaranteed to him by an agreement between
the students, on the one hand, and the professors
and Visitors, in their private capacity, on the other. The
salary was retroactive from the first day of the previous
January. Hammet possessed an uncommon gift as a
pulpit orator, and soon secured a firm hold on the attention,
respect, and affection of the students. Indeed, his
influence with them was so strong, that, when, during
his chaplaincy, they resented the closing of their assembly
hall by the Faculty, they sent him, as their sympathetic
ambassador, to warn that body of the bad consequence
of showing an unconciliatory spirit in the settlement of
the dispute. The chaplaincy was still limited to a term
of one year. When Rev. Mr. Hammet retired in accord
with this rule, the Episcopal Convention,—which met

in May, 1834, and which was granted the privilege of
nominating his successor,—designated Rev. N. H. Cobbs
for the post. Cobbs was a youthful clergyman of remarkable
talents, who was then the rector of a rural
parish in Virginia. The formal invitation to become
the chaplain at the University was received by him in
June, and it was with reluctance that his vestry released
him from his charge, because, they said, the salary of
six hundred dollars offered was insufficient for his support.
Cobbs was justly of the same opinion. "This
sum," he wrote, "would not cover my expenses; but by
extending my labors of an evening to the church in
Charlottesville, I may be enabled, with rigid economy,
to avoid the painful evils of debt."

No clergyman with a known itching for disputation
was permitted to preach within the precincts even after
the presence of regular chaplains, representing, in succession,
the several Protestant denominations, had ensured
the institution's reputation for religious equality.
When one of the pastors of the Charlottesville churches,
in 1835, requested that Dr. Thomas, of Richmond,
should be invited to deliver a sermon in the Rotunda,
the reply was a refusal, on the ground that he was a
Campbellite Baptist, said to be ambitious of making converts
to his creed, which would be attempted at the University
only by a series of controversial arguments certain
to arouse a spirit of antagonism in the hearts of his
auditors. The chairman, in announcing the refusal,
restated the rule which he had been instructed to follow;
namely, that no one but the chaplain and himself
should have the right to ask foreign clergymen to fill
the University pulpit on occasion; and that only sermons
free from controversial taint were to be tolerated.
The reply that was made to Dr. Thomas, the disciple,

was repeated when the like application was received from
Dr. Campbell, the founder of this new branch of Baptists.
Campbell promised to avoid the subject of sectarianism
in his discourse, and to restrict his remarks to
the evidences of Christianity. When this conservative
pledge on his part became known, the chairman was made
a target of censure; a large body of students expressed
their disapproval of his extreme position; but an equally
large body sustained it. This incident reveals the jealousy
with which the religious services at the University
were guarded,—a jealousy that sometimes, as, in this
instance, verged on intolerance.

Rev. Robert Ryland, a Baptist, succeeded Mr. Cobbs.
Diffident by temperament, he made no pretension to oratory.
Col. Pendleton described him as a plain, sensible,
and pious man, of decided force of character, but mild
in his deportment and pleasant in his manners. A Presbyterian,
the Rev. Mr. Tustin, followed Ryland. During
the session of 1827–8, Rev. J. P. B. Wilmer was the
incumbent; and at intervals of one year, down to the end
of the session of 1841–2, the duties of the chaplaincy fell
in turn upon Rev. D. L. Doggett, a Methodist, Jas. B.
Taylor, a Baptist, W. S. White, a Presbyterian, and
W. M. Jackson, an Episcopalian. The delicate balance
of the ecclesiastic scales was never shaken. All these
men were young, full of energy, and full of talent, and
with hardly an exception, rose to eminence in their calling
in after-life. Hammet,—apparently without abandoning
his sacred profession,—was elected to a seat in
the National House of Representatives. Cobbs was advanced
to the Episcopal prelacy of Alabama, and Wilmer
to that of Louisana. Doggett was long the eloquent
Bishop of the Methodist diocese of Virginia, and Ryland,
the respected President of Richmond College. Taylor,

during many years, occupied a position of unique influence
among the Protestants who resided in the shadow of
the Vatican. Jackson was chosen to a pulpit in Norfolk,
and enjoyed a wide reputation for his saintly life in
that community, while White was called to a pastorate in
Staunton, and until his death, was a beloved minister of
his denomination.

We have, in the course of our previous narrative, mentioned
that a room in the Rotunda was explicitly reserved
by Jefferson himself for religious exercises. This apartment
having become too small, by 1835, to accommodate
with comfort the group of students and professors who
appeared at the door on Sunday morning, the members
of the Faculty formed themselves into a committee for
the purpose of collecting funds enough for the erection of
a spacious church edifice within the precincts of the University.
They chose, as the tentative site, the ground
that lay south of the Lawn and opposite the Rotunda;
and from an architect of high reputation, they procured
the plan of a structure in the Gothic style, which would
hold not less than eight hundred persons. It was calculated
that the cost of this building would amount to
twenty thousand dollars. An address to the public was
drawn up, and Mr. Cobbs, the chaplain, was the first to
be appointed to solicit and receive subscriptions. The
members of the Board, at that time, approved of this
scheme in every detail but one: they ordered the postponement
of the choice of a site.

Four years passed, and it would appear that the efforts
to raise the required fund had either proved fruitless,
or some objection to the plans was offered by the
new set of Visitors, for the chapel remained unconstructed.
When they assembled in August, 1839, the
only one among them who urged its erection, was William

C. Rives; but as there were several absentees, including
Cocke and Cabell, who shared his favorable attitude,
he induced the members of the Board to put off
their decision. It seems that two of those present were
hostile to the project because they were apprehensive lest
the Unitarians should claim the privilege of being represented
in the chaplaincy, in their turn,—which these two
Visitors asserted, with acute solicitude, would be "a gross
abuse of the principles of religious freedom and toleration."
Mr. Cobbs and General Cocke, now his assistant,
were still under a pledge to solicit public subscriptions;
and both were convinced that there would be no
grave difficulty in raising the amount needed just so soon
as they should be able to announce that the Board's approval
had been got; but this apparently could not be
obtained from that body by the votes of the required
majority. The eastern gymnasium, having, by 1841,
been reconstructed, so as to create room for a larger
audience, permission was granted by the Visitors for its
use for religious exercises on Sunday.

If the Board shrank from allowing a separate church
building to be erected on the grounds, they showed equal
timidity in offering a home to the chaplain within the precincts.
To do so would, in their opinion, be giving him,
as a clergyman, the equivalent of his pecuniary support by
the University; and for the institution to aid a man of
his cloth, even in this indirect way, was tantamount to
the State doing so; and for the State to do it, was to violate
the statute for the preservation of religious freedom;
and to violate that statute was to bring down on the
heads of the officials guilty of it the hot censure of the
people. It was by some obscure process of logic resembling
this that the Board of Visitors declined to grant
Rev. Mr. Hammet the right to shelter his head under

the roof of pavilion VII, which had offered an asylum to
so many houseless societies and libraries, and even to the
wandering and perplexed Board itself, when the doors of
Monticello were finally closed. "No room there could
be assigned him," said the Visitors, "because he did not
come within the scope of a general or special Act."[44] However, he was at liberty to obtain an apartment in the
pavilion of some professor, or in a hotel, should one become
vacant; but if this was impracticable, then he was
to seek for a room in a boarding-house beyond the precincts
for the rest of the session; after which, should he
continue at the University, it was possible that an apartment
might be found for him somewhere within the
bounds.

It might be inferred from the account that has been
given of the disorder which prevailed among students
between 1825 and 1842 that the fires of religious feeling
burnt rather low among them during that interval. This
would be an erroneous conclusion if it should be presumed
to be applicable to the entire body. McClurg
Wickham, a student who won great respect for his active
part in the religious work of that period, asked permission
in February, 1833, to establish a Sunday school
within the precincts and to hold its sessions in the Rotunda;
but his petition was denied in the latter particular

at least, on the ground that the apartment desired in
that building was reserved for the delivery of lectures
and sermons. It is possible that the spectre of the
statute for the preservation of religious freedom, which
so often shook the professorial soul in those times, had
again flitted across the chairman's path, for he seemed
to think that sermons had been legalized at the University
by the clause in the Act of Incorporation allowing
religious worship, but not Sunday schools. The Board of
Visitors exhibited a more liberal spirit of interpretation:
in July, 1833, they instructed him to assign a room to the
projected Sunday school in whichever building he should
consider the best adapted to its meetings.

When this school was reorganized at the beginning of
the session of 1834, as many as sixty students joined it.
Mr. Cobbs was now the chaplain, and his personal popularity
to some degree explains this large attendance. A
Bible class was also in existence at the University in 1841.
There was, however, observed a recession in religious
feeling among the students after 1835; and this palpable
fact was boldly commented upon by a prominent religious
journal,—which even went so far as to reproach the innocent
Visitors for impiety, because they had filled one
chair by the appointment of Kraitser, a Roman Catholic,
and another, by the appointment of Sylvester, a Jew.