I. How the University was Reached
Jefferson, it will be recalled, had not only confidently
expected, but had publicly announced that the University
would be in a condition to receive students on the first of
February, 1825. This day was chosen because it was anticipated
that the English professors would have arrived
by then and be ready to begin their lectures. Had all
the teachers been on the ground, the institution was, by
December 1, 1824, really prepared to start upon its active
career, for, with the exception of the Rotunda in part,
and the Anatomical Hall, in whole, the important buildings
needed for the commencement of work were finished,
whether pavilion, dormitory, hotel, or lecture-room; the
courses of instruction had been laid off; the administrative
officers, elected; and the ordinances for the government
of the students, adopted. It was due to the detention
of Key, Dunglison, and Bonnycastle by the delaying
mishaps of their voyage, that the University failed before
March 7, 1825, to enter upon its first stage of operation,
for which it had been equipping itself so assiduously,
in so many ways, during the previous six years.
This day of consummation must have been looked upon
by Jefferson as one of the happiest in his long and illustrious
life, and his deeply quaffed delight at that hour
must have compensated him most acutely for all the vexing
and distracting obstacles that had, so persistently,
arisen in his path,—only to be overcome in the end, however,
by extraordinary energy and tenacity on his part,
and on the part of his loyal and unselfish supporters.
Hitherto, we have been describing the physical, institutional,
and legislative history of the University in process
of construction. We have now to start upon its
history as a completed seat of learning. The student,
who, up to this hour, has always been behind the wings,
now comes forward, and taking his stand at the centre
of the stage, never leaves the mild glare of the scholastic
footlights during the remainder of the story. It was for
his benefit that those beautiful edifices had been erected;
for him, that those accomplished professors had been
brought from overseas; for him, that those varied and
extensive courses of instruction had been provided; for
him, that those disciplinary laws had been adopted. We
must now begin to look at the entire setting, whether
physical, or moral, or intellectual, from the point of view
of its relation to his welfare. Without his presence,
without his interests, it would all become a costly but
unmeaning show,—a house of splendor without an occupant,
a comely body without a spirit.
The Board of Visitors, in order to obtain students
for the first term, were not content simply to let the public
know that the doors of the University were now open,—
notices stating in detail the advantages which it had to
offer were inserted in the principal newspapers of the
South as far as Milledgeville, in Georgia. Jefferson
himself posted a shower of circulars with his own hands.
Before the session of 1825 had come to an end, the
session of 1826 was announced in the journals of every
Southern State lying east of the Mississippi River, and
also of the cities of Columbus and Cincinnati, in the State
of Ohio. "It is better to diffuse advertisements through
many States and parts of States," Chairman Tucker
shrewdly wrote, when instructing the proctor, "than to
advertise longer in a smaller number."
How were the students who entered the University
during the first years able to reach it? We have seen
how slow and cumbrous were the means of transporting
to that place so much of the material that was used in its
construction. It was, of course, less arduous in those
times to convey a person from one part of the country to
another than to carry a barrel or a hogshead; but the only
difference in the degree of difficulty was the difference in
movement between a bulky stage and a lumbering wagon,
each pulled by a team of four sweating and hard-breathing
horses. Both creaked through the mud and over the
stones, with almost equal sluggishness. The barrel and
the hogshead had over the passenger at least the advantage
of being insensible and unconscious throughout the
long journey. Writing in 1824, Isaac Coles, Jefferson's
private secretary, incidentally mentions that public
coaches were then plying at intervals on the road between
Richmond and the West. When Cabell went up
to the University in 1819, he was conveyed as far as that
place by one of these jolting vehicles; and thence, through
the wooded countryside, jogged on horseback to his own
house at Warminster. Stages, at this time, also creaked
and rumbled on the highway that wound from Fredericksburg,
through the bushy wilderness of Spottsylvania, to
Gordonsville and Charlottesville.
In 1820, a lighter carriage was regularly provided for
travellers passing from Piedmont to Tidewater or the
reverse. During that year, Solomon Ballou[1]
solicited
the public patronage for a "hack," which, as he announced
in the columns of the
Jeffersonian Republican,
would set out from Charlottesville for Richmond on
Wednesdays; and every Sunday would leave the capital
on its return to Albemarle. The hack was the most
ubiquitous vehicle on the streets of the little town so
soon as the students began to pour in; and it was extravagantly
patronized by them at all hours of the day
and night, until, in 1826, it was shut out of the precincts
between twelve o'clock noon and seven o'clock in the
morning; and several years afterwards, there was a debate
in the Faculty whether it should be suffered to enter
the bounds at all. The only superiority which such a
vehicle could assert over the ordinary stage coach, in a
prolonged journey, was the greater speed with which it
could be drawn over the public roads. It must have cut
down the time consumed in such a journey; but like the
coach, offered no comforts of any kind to the sleepy traveller,
however luxurious it may have seemed to be to the
tipsy and uproarious student returning to his dormitory
not long before dawn.
In traversing the region between Richmond and Charlottesville,
the passenger had to spend at least one night
on the lonely road, either in the dark corners of the stagecoach
itself, or in one of the taverns by the way that had
been built for the baiting of man and beast. By 1838,
the Central Railway had been finished as far as Louisa
county. The journey could then be brought to a close in
a single day. The student who lived in Richmond left
that city by train at five in the morning, and descending
from the cars at the raw terminus in the woods, entered
the patient coach that was standing by for him and his
fellow-travellers to transport them towards the Rivanna.
He accomplished the remainder of his journey at a speed
of six miles an hour, without counting the tiresome delays
that resulted from the numerous stoppages. By the new
means of locomotion, he was able to save not less than
nine hours of time, and to escape the rough discomforts
of the primitive country inn at night. The heavy coaches
in which the passengers were slowly sent on to their common
destination were owned by the railway company.
The student whose home was in Baltimore, Washington,
or Fredericksburg, on the north, or in Norfolk, on
the south, came, in the one instance, by rail, and in the
other, by steamboat, to Richmond; and there, like the
resident of that city, took a seat in the steam-cars for
the Louisa terminus, travelling thence by coach to the
University. It was in this roundabout way that the
young men from the northeastern, eastern, and southeastern
regions of Virginia,—from the valleys of the
Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James,—could most
conveniently reach Charlottesville. It was not until
1849 that the railway was built as far as Keswick, which
left only a short interval to be still traversed.[2]
In 1838,
the fare from Richmond, by consecutive rail and coach
conveyance, was five dollars and a half, and from Fredericksburg,
six dollars. During the times when the stage
was the only passenger vehicle plying on the same road,
the fare from Richmond was but three dollars,—which
shows that the greater convenience following from
the railway had led to a heavy addition to the original
charge.
The students whose homes were situated in the Valley,
or beyond the crest of the Alleghanies, travelled to the
University by way of Rockfish Gap in stage coaches.
These also, after 1838, were owned by the Central Railway
Company. The same corporation was in possession
of two important lines that ran from Staunton to Lexington
and Buchanan respectively, and a third line that
crossed the mountains by turnpike to Guyandotte. Direct
and reliable means of transportation from points
south and north of the Ohio River, and as far as Kentucky,
Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi, was thus furnished
through all the revolutions of the seasons. The
students from Southwest Virginia, and the South Atlantic
States, came up by stage from Lynchburg. In 1829,
Alexander Garrett was appointed a commissioner to lay
off a new bed for the Lynchburg highway; but his work
was probably confined to the vicinity of the University.
It seems that, in 1832, the road passed so near to the
arcades of one of the Ranges that the idle young men who
occupied the dormitories in that quarter amused themselves,
when the coach slowly rolled in sight, with flouting
and jeering at the passengers. This vociferous greeting
they called the "family smile." In 1838, the Central
Railway set up a line of public stages on the Lynchburg
highway; but it was only on alternate days that a coach
started from Charlottesville for that city or the reverse.
The hour of departure was midnight.
