University of Virginia Library

XXXI. Major Offenses: Riots

The students, during 1825, being free of all personal
control,—the Board of Censors having declined to act
and the Faculty possessing no real power,—a spirit of
insubordination soon boiled up to the surface. Premonitory
symptoms of this rebellious mood cropped out
as early as the night of June 22. A similar outburst took
place on the night of August 5, and again on the night
of September 19. These "vicious irregularities," as
Jefferson himself described them, came to a furious head
about ten days later. After dark, a great crowd of
students collected on the Lawn disguised with masks,
and the cry arose, "Down with the European professors."
A large bottle, filled with a foul liquid, had been
tossed through a window of Long's pavilion into his
sitting room, the night before, and the violent feeling
which broke out twenty-four hours afterwards was chiefly
directed against Key and himself. One student,
wrapped in a counterpane, was the most conspicuous of
all. Dr. Emmet, who, with Professor Tucker, had
boldly gone among the rioters, seized him by this flowing
garment. "The rascal," cried the youthful outlaw,

"has torn my shirt!" Immediately, one of his friends
threw a brick at Emmet, while Tucker was assailed with
a cane. The vulgarest words of abuse were hurled at
both, and they were determinedly resisted by the entire
band, amid the tumult of derisive shouts and howls.
The ensuing day, instead of showing contrition for their
violent conduct, they sent a committee to the Faculty
with a resolution that sharply criticized Emmet and
Tucker because they had both ventured to lay their
hands at the same moment on the person of the same
student. About sixty-five young men had joined in this
resolution, which was so extraordinary in its assertions
that it was taken to be a sly device to shift the burden of
responsibility from their own shoulders to those of the
two stout-hearted professors.

Key and Long, as the direct upshot of these lawless
events, gave up their respective chairs. "We have lost
all confidence in the signers of this remonstrance," they
said, "and we cannot and will not meet them again."
This spirit of disgust was not confined to them. The
Faculty, as a whole, adopted a resolution that, unless
an effective system of police was established at once by
the Board, they would send in their resignations in a
body. The Visitors were now in session at Monticello;
and after their arrival at the University on the following
morning, they were indignant eye-witnesses to the state
of extreme disorganization into which the institution
had been thrown. They assembled in one of the apartments
of the Rotunda. Professor Tutwiler, who was a
student during the first session, has left a record of his
vivid recollection of that memorable scene. "At a long
table near the centre of the room," he says, "sat the
most august body of men I had ever seen,—Jefferson,
Madison, and Monroe, who had administered the Government,

twenty-four out of thirty-six years of its existence
under the Constitution; by their side, Chapman
Johnson, the head of the Virginian bar; J. C. Cabell,
statesman and patriot, and John H. Cocke, generosity
and philanthropy unbounded. Jefferson rose to address
the students. He began by declaring that it was one of
the most painful events of his life, but he had not gone far
before his feelings overcame him, and he sat down, saying
that he would leave to abler hands the task of saying
what he wished to say. Johnson arose and made a very
eloquent and touching speech. He did not spare the
offenders, and ended by calling upon every one who had
been concerned in the riotous conduct to come forward
and give in his name."

This appeal went straight to its mark; the numerous
culprits crowded forward to have their names set down
by the secretary of the Board; and among them was a
nephew of Jefferson, whose appearance in such a discreditable
position aroused an indignation in the agitated
sage which he found it impossible to disguise. The
young men most seriously implicated in these disorders
were expelled. Jefferson now drafted a resolution, addressed,
through the Faculty, to the students, who were
told of the necessity for establishing at once an inflexible
system of discipline, to be applicable as well to those who
were conscious of their own rectitude as to those who
had committed notorious breaches of the peace. He
was very sharp in his reflection on the general disposition
to shelter the guilty by declining to testify against
them. He urged the innocent to throw off with disdain
"all communion of character" with offenders by exposing
their identity, and by co-operating with the Faculty
in their repression. "Let the good and the virtuous of
the alumni of the University do this," he exclaimed, "and

the disorderly will then be singled out for observation,
and deterred by punishment, or disabled by expulsion,
from infecting with their inconsideration the institution
itself, and the soundness of those it is preparing for virtue
and usefulness."

The next riot of importance occurred on the night of
May 18, 1831. The night before, there had been an
intermittent firing of pistols within the precincts. While
the Faculty was in session, the students began to assemble
on the Lawn; at once a pandemonium of discordant and
alarming noises broke out; pistols were fired off; shrieks
and yells were raised; split-quills and tin-horns were
blown; and the college bell rung with unexampled violence.
Slowly the collegians withdrew to one of the gymnasiums
fronting the Rotunda. Leaving the Facultyroom,
Emmet, Davis, and the chairman started towards
the spot, and as they drew near, several students hurried
forward and warmly counselled them to go back, as the
mood of the rioters was such that there would certainly
be personal violence if the professors endeavored to remonstrate
face to face. A shower of stones began to
fall about them, and they decided that it would be discreet
to retire. The tumult, it seems, was designed as
a protest against the Uniform Law. At a late hour, the
crowd dispersed, with a final outburst of noise, but without
having done any damage to property.

In 1833, an ordinance was passed which provided that,
in case of a riot at night, all students were to retire to
their rooms so soon as the signal was sounded on the
college bell. The young men seem to have strongly resented
this regulation. A mass meeting was called to
take place at Hotel C, the present hall of the Jefferson
Society, for the purpose of resisting "the late tyrannical
movements of the Faculty." The chairman, observing

this notice on the college boards, incorrectly supposed
that it was directed against a new rule touching the
Uniform Law, and he gave an order that the hotel
door should be closed. The students, when they assembled,
finding the door locked, smashed in the panels and
entered. A resolution was promptly adopted condemning
the passage of the retiring ordinance as an ex post
facto one, and advising that it should be ignored.
The proctor now came in and wrote down the names of
forty-four of the seventy students present; and three of
these, at his instance, were summoned before the Faculty
as having broken down the door. Before action
could be taken in their case, Rev. Mr. Hammett, the
chaplain, in person warned the Faculty that, if these three
students were dismissed for their supposed offense, the
entire body of their fellow students would withdraw
from the University. He entreated the Faculty to put
off their decision until the excitement had subsided.
That body concluded to take no action at all against the
three, as they were apparently no more culpable than
the rest of their companions. They announced explicitly
that they had no wish to curtail the students' right to hold
public deliberations, provided that permission had been
obtained to assemble in a room previously approved, and
that the spirit shown was an orderly one.