History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919; the lengthened shadow of one man, |
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 | HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY
OF VIRGINIA History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919; |  |
HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY
OF VIRGINIA
FIFTH PERIOD
EXPANSION AND REFORMATION, 1842–1861
I. General Character
The Fifth Period in the history of the University of
Virginia—which began in 1842 and ended in 1861, an
interval of two decades—was equally remarkable for
the spirit of reformation and for the spirit of expansion
which animated it.
The spirit of reformation found its most conspicuous
and characteristic expression in (1) the abolition of the
uniform law, and also of the law that required the students
to leave their beds at dawn; (2) the adoption of
the Honor System; (3) the organization of the Young
Men's Christian Association. These salient measures,
dictated by the pressure of events, while they failed to
suppress at once the feeling of soreness against the
Faculty which had so long estranged the young men, yet
they set influences to going that gradually brought about
relations of cordiality and kindness between the two, by
making the one more sober and reasonable, and the other
less aloof and less unsympathetic. Violations of the ordinances
continued, and at least one alarming insurrection
took place; but, in the main, the spirit of disorder that
did show itself was the aftermath of the anterior period,
and except in small and quickly passing outbursts, was not
early rising ordinances, although protracted in its consequences,
because a constant cause of friction was thereby
permanently rooted up, was, however, soon forgotten;
but the Honor System and the Young Men's Christian
Association, once introduced, remained indefinitely the
two most powerful agencies for the encouragement and
fortification of a purer and calmer atmosphere within the
precincts of the institution. Under their beneficent influence,
the scheme of self-government which Jefferson was
so anxious to set up among the students, was realized, if
not to the furthest limit of his sanguine expectation, yet
to a degree never before thought to be attainable.
The spirit of expansion, during this period, was as perceptible
as the spirit of reformation, and, in some measure,
perhaps, was its offspring. The extent of this growth
within the University was most discernible in (1) the increase
in the number of students; (2) the addition of the
important professorship of history and literature; (3) the
division of the chair of ancient languages into two chairs
of equal dignity; (4) the enlargement of several schools
by the introduction of new departments, subject to different
instructors; and (5) the provision for new lecturerooms
and laboratories by the building of the Annex.
Beyond the precincts of the University, the expanding
power of its influence was to be seen in the improvement
which had taken place in the standards and methods
of the private academies through the agency of its own
highly trained graduates; but above all, it was to be perceived
in the careers of that large number of alumni, who,
in every Southern community, had won so honorable a
position, especially in the professions of law and medicine,
and in the church and in public life. Expansion within
the University was abruptly arrested by the breaking out
moving with orderly and steadily increasing speed, had
been suddenly jolted from the track, with its capacity for
further progress practically destroyed for the time being.
II. Increase in the Attendance
The first notable feature of the Fifth Period, 1842–
1861, was the large increase in the number of students.
This fact was attributable to at least three causes: (1)
the steady growth of prosperity in all parts of the South,
the region from which so great a majority of the young
men were drawn; (2) the rising reputation of the University
through the successful labors of its graduates in
the secondary schools; and (3) the final elimination of
the stage-coach by the extension of railway transportation
to Charlottesville from the remotest points. During
the session of 1842–1843, only one hundred and
twenty-eight students were entered in the list of matriculates.
Ten years later, this number had jumped up to
four hundred and twenty-five, and at the end of nine
years more, had jumped still higher—to six hundred
and four. The institution stood then on the very brink
of the military struggle between the States. The largest
number of young men enrolled previous to that conflict
were admitted during the session of 1856–7, when six
hundred and forty-five were daily seated in the lecturerooms.
In comparison with the thousands of students now
swarming in the principal American colleges, the attendance
at the University of Virginia, in 1856–7,—the largest
in its history under the old plantation system,—seems
somewhat unimposing; but that number takes on its true
meaning when we compare it with the number at Harvard
1852–3, Harvard could claim six hundred and fifty students;
Yale, six hundred and four; the University of Virginia,
four hundred and sixty-six,—the last institution,
therefore, fell short of Harvard in attendance by one
hundred and eighty-four matriculates; and of Yale, by one
hundred and thirty-eight. During the session of 1855–
6, Harvard enrolled six hundred and sixty-nine students;
Yale, six hundred and nineteen, and the University of
Virginia, five hundred and fifty-eight. The shortage of
the last institution in comparison with Harvard was now
only one hundred and eleven; and in comparison with
Yale, only sixty-one. The rate of numerical progression
was, therefore, in favor of the University of Virginia, for
the numerical superiority of Yale had been reduced one
half, and of Harvard more than one third.
It is quite possible that the losses of the two Northern
universities, and the gains of the Southern one, were
really due to the gradual acquisition by the latter of much
of the patronage that had, during many years, been drawn
by Harvard and Yale from the States of the South. We
have already mentioned that, previous to 1842, there was
a remarkable increase in the number of young men matriculating
at the University of Virginia who had come up
from the communities of the Gulf and the Southwest.
The attendance from the same region reached more extraordinary
proportions in the course of the next nineteen
sessions; and the reason for this fact was still the same:
the continued growth in the prosperity of these commonwealths
through the ever augmenting demand for their
principal staple, cotton. The reputation of the institution
had always been high, and there were now ample
means in those parts for taking advantage of the educational
facilities which it offered. Arkansas and Texas
had patronized it prior to 1842; but in the interval between
that year and the session of 1860–1, the former
sent up twenty-two students and the latter fifty-nine.
During the same interval, the attendance from South
Carolina more than doubled, and the attendance from
Florida, more than trebled. So also in the case of the
three large commonwealths, Alabama, Louisiana and
Kentucky: the number of young men hailing from them,
in the course of the first seventeen sessions, was only
two hundred and seventy-four; but during the nineteen
sessions that preceded the war, it rose to eight hundred
and fifty-eight. The attendance from both Carolina and
Mississippi, during the same period, trebled, while the attendance
from Tennessee and Georgia doubled.
The proportion of increase for some of the States situated
beyond the borders of the South was quite as high,
though the list of their matriculates was comparatively
slim. The attendance from New York advanced from
eight for the first seventeen sessions to fourteen for the
next nineteen. The figures for Maryland were respectively
forty-nine and one hundred and sixty-two; for
Pennsylvania, fifteen and twenty-seven; for the District
of Columbia, forty-six and eighty-eight; for Illinois, five
and eighty-three; and for Ohio, six and twenty-five. At
least four States of the North are found in the roll of
students for the first time after the session of 1841–2;
namely, California, with an attendance of twelve; Connecticut,
with an attendance of five; Iowa and Indiana,
with an attendance of one respectively. The number
of students from Virginia, during the last nineteen sessions,
was almost as many again as the number that matriculated
during the first seventeen,—the figures for
the latter period were approximately twenty-three hundred
thousand, four hundred, and seventy-two. The aggregate
attendance from the Southern States, exclusive of
Virginia, but inclusive of Maryland and the District of
Columbia, was, during the first seventeen sessions, eight
hundred and forty-one, and during the ensuing nineteen,
two thousand, seven hundred, and forty-six. For the
Western States, the figures for the same periods were
eleven and one hundred and ten, respectively; and for the
Northern, seventeen and fifty-eight. There were, during
the second period, as during the first, a few students
who were credited to England, Germany, South America,
and the West Indies.
Just before the session of 1845–46 began, there were
several influences at work that discouraged an increase
in the volume of attendance. Indeed, the number of
students matriculating between 1842–3 and 1848–9 was
smaller than between 1833–4 and 1839–40. What were
these influences? So far as the cotton States were
affected, the fluctuating value of the local paper currency
was a frequent impediment to any important addition to
the enrolment from that region of country. "I learn
that there are about one hundred and twenty-five students
at the University," Alexander Garrett wrote Cocke,
in 1842. "Many others in the South will come as soon
as they can obtain funds that will be received at anything
like par value. Southern paper has been at 40 per cent.
discount. It is now at about 25, and getting still better.
If it continues to improve, we can expect more students
by spring."
But there were also moral reasons that explain the
small attendance. These were fully set forth in the report
which the investigating committee of the General
Assembly submitted in 1845. This report stated that
still controlled by the malignant power of irreligious
sympathies; that the murder of Professor Davis,—which
had confirmed the general impression of the students'
turbulent disposition,—was still indignantly reprobated
beyond the precincts as well as within; that many young
men either remained at home, or matriculated at other
colleges, because their preparation for the University,
owing to its high standard, was altogether inadequate;
and finally, that the absence of a curriculum relieved the
average student of a motive for attending the lectures
longer than a year or a couple of years at most. How
far this last condition operated to diminish the number
of matriculates after their first year, will be revealed by
an examination of the following statistics for the period
extending from the session of 1842–3 to that of 1860–1,
—in their first year, 4754; in their second, 1838; in their
third, 638; in their fourth, 179; in their fifth, 24; and
in their sixth, four.
Had the University of Virginia adopted at the beginning
the curriculum system in the greatly modified
form which, in our own times, prevails at Harvard University,
—that is to say, with an almost equal proportion
of obligatory and elective studies,—it is quite probable,
in the light of what has always been observed in all curriculum
colleges, that, instead of there being, during the
Fifth Period, 1842–1861, only six hundred and thirty-eight
matriculates in their third year, and only one hundred
and seventy-nine in their fourth, there would, in the
aggregate, have been four thousand, five hundred at least
in the joint third and fourth years,—which are the
junior and senior years in institutions that still retain the
curriculum. The difference in attendance between the
first and second years was, in a measure, still due to a
1842; namely, the smallness of the proportion of young
men who were able to graduate owing to the severity of
the test. It was calculated that, in the School of Mathematics,
in 1851 this proportion was one in sixteen; of
Natural Philosophy, one in six; of Chemistry, one in
eight; of Ancient Languages, one in eleven; of Medicine,
one in six or seven; of Law, one in eighteen or nineteen;
and of Moral Philosophy, one in four. Many of those
who failed were too much discouraged to return to the
institution.
III. State Students
We have seen that the University of Virginia was,
from the threshold of its history, the target of ignorant
prejudice, selfish jealousy, and calculated hostility.
There were those persons who honestly thought that it
diverted to the education of the wealthy funds which
ought properly to have been spent on the education of the
poor; there were the friends of the small colleges, who
were convinced that its advancement could not be brought
about without damage to these seats of learning, in which,
for local or denominational reasons, they were alone interested;
there were the demagogues, who endeavored
to curry popular favor by denouncing every public institution
that was liberally patronized by the prosperous;
and finally, there was a respectable group of citizens, who
looked with disapproval on the University because it was
so unreservedly in sympathy with the political principles
of Jefferson. Among the partizan organs published in
Richmond, at least one,—and that one edited with conspicuous
ability,—was influenced by this political spite
to be-little and injure it at every turn. Naturally, those
who were responsible for the University's administration
Even if it had not been distasteful to them from a moral
point of view, it was impossible for them not to regret it
from a practical, since the institution was dependent upon
the good will of the General Assembly for the payment of
its annuity, without which its operating machinery must
have soon slowed down to a full stop.
It was foreseen, at an early date, that, unless the University
could be made popular by some shrewd device,
it must suffer,—perhaps irretrievably in the end,—from
this illiberal or interested outcry against it. The most
sensible of all the proctors of those times, Brockenbrough,
was the first to suggest the only measure that was exactly
calculated to silence the noisy opponents who were always
pointing a threatening finger at the institution as a seat
of learning reserved for the affluent. It will be recalled
that he recommended to Thomas W. Gilmer, then a member
of the General Assembly, the passage of an act
which should allow at least one student from each senatorial
district of the State to be admitted without requiring
him to pay the usual tuition fees. It is quite
possible that he had in mind that clause in Jefferson's
bill of 1779 which provided without charge for the higher
education of a definite proportion of those indigent pupils
who should show, in the intermediate academies, the possession
of remarkable talent and scholarship. The Faculty
warmly approved of Brockenbrough's suggestion;
and again and again they urged its adoption in a form
only slightly different from its original tenor. But it was
not until 1845 that any step was taken to increase the
number of students by the admission of State scholars.
Radical voices were already growing blatant. In November
of that year, the Richmond Whig asked the following
significant question: "Cannot the annual appropriation
more profitably expended for the great cause of education
than in instructing from one hundred to one hundred
and fifty youths, all of whom have the means of finishing
their course through their own resources?"[1] "There
should be no professors' fees," that journal declared, "no
library fees, no proctor's fees. These should be paid by
the State and people."
This was an extreme expression of Jefferson's views,
and the Visitors and Faculty were sagacious enough to
perceive that the public sentiment which it reflected could
be successfully used to stabilize the University's position.
Here was a means of countering the charge that it was
a seat of learning practically open only to the rich, a
charge that had caused acute perturbation because menacing
the very existence of the institution by robbing it of
the bulk of its income. The authorities of the University
fully approved of the General Assembly's action in requiring
them to educate at least one young man chosen
by a board in each of the thirty-two senatorial districts
into which the State was then divided. This seems to
have been first recommended to the Assembly by the legislative
committee which investigated the riots of 1845.
In June, 1846, the Visitors drafted the regulations
that were to govern the new set of students: they were to
be liable for no dues beyond the fines imposed for derelictions;
their general status was not to differ from that
of the paying matriculates; they were to be permitted to
prolong their studies for two years at least, and even
for a more protracted period, should they exhibit uncommon
sixty dollars,—which was a smaller sum than the
ordinary student was expected to deposit in the hands of
the hotel-keeper during a single session. The proctor
was instructed to enter into an agreement with some responsible
person to provide food for the State scholars
on this basis; and as an encouragement to such a person,
by swelling his profit, he was to be permitted to occupy
the proctor's house; to enjoy the lease of the Dawson
farm for a period of one year; and also to obtain fuel
from the University's woods. If the number of State
scholars should fall short of thirty-two, he was to be
granted the right to make up his complement of boarders
from the mass of the other students.
The first steward, as the contractor was called, was
Major Edmund Broadus, and his engagement dated from
November 13, 1846. The earliest State scholars had
been admitted during the previous September. These
young men assembled at the University with the credentials
of their district boards and were closely examined
by a committee of the Faculty. Twenty-five were present
on the first occasion. Subsequently, the original selection
seems to have rested exclusively in the hands of the
professors as a body. To all, the test of mental capacity,
moral excellence, and inadequate means to obtain an education
at their own expense, was strictly applied. The
preference, in making a choice, was given to those who
wished to enter the academic schools; but candidates
for the professional schools were not shut out. A committee
was appointed to distribute the State students
among the different classes; and should more than ten
of them enter a single class, its instructor was to be
entitled to twenty-five dollars for each individual in excess
of that number. There was, at a later date, an additional
which was aptly calculated to increase the beneficial effect
of the innovation: every State student, in matriculating,
must agree to teach for a period of two years after leaving
the institution.
The system of State students was a prosperous one
from the very start,—no doubt, because it was looked
upon favorably by the Faculty and Visitors alike, who
joined heartily and intelligently in the effort to forward
it. "I heard in Charlottesville, with much pleasure,
from the officers of the University," James M. Mason, a
member of the Board, wrote Cabell in November, 1846,
"of the successful working so far of our arrangements
for the education of the poor boys, and trust that what
we have done, will deter the General Assembly from
farther disputes to contract its revenues." During the
ensuing year, when the system had stood the test of twelve
months' passage, a few changes were made in the first
regulations. Now, as formerly, the applicant must be
at least sixteen years of age; but his credentials, instead
of being handed in in September, were to be submitted
prior to June 15, so as to give the Faculty an
opportunity to fill all vacancies before the session should
begin. He must also designate the schools which he
wished to enter; and they must be at least three in number.
If mathematics, natural philosophy, and ancient
languages were chosen, he must prove that he had enjoyed
the same amount of preparation which was expected
of the regular student. If no candidate should
come forward from any one of the districts, the Faculty
were, in 1849, empowered to select one from another
district, whether already represented or not.
In the course of this year, the General Assembly
adopted an additional provision, which still further
the State students should not only be taught without payment
of fees, but should also be exempted from all expense
for board. This law was in operation for a time,
but its effect turned out to be injurious. Previously, the
spirit of the State students, without exception, had been
to strive, to the very height of their ability, to utilize all
the opportunities for acquiring knowledge that were
thrown open to them. Now, supported by the Commonwealth,
many of these young men fell into habits of restless
idleness, while others wasted most of their time in
vicious dissipation. The general decline of the body was
the more remarkable as the General Assembly had, in
eliminating the charge for food, required that the age of
the applicant should never be less than seventeen because
of the greater likelihood of a person at that older period
of life comprehending the real advantagesto follow from
the enjoyment of the privilege.
The Visitors had unanimously protested against the
allowance of free board. They asserted that, with an
annuity of only fifteen thousand dollars, it would be difficult
for the institution to stand up straight under the
heaviness of this new load; and that the additional charge
could only be met by cutting down the amount now applied
to the prosecution of the regular work. No weight
was given by the Legislature to the justness of this complaint
until 1856, when the rule granting free board to
State students was repealed. An improvement in their
character as a body was soon discernible. In the meanwhile
(1853), the Visitors had endeavored to persuade
the General Assembly to loan the University the sum of
twenty thousand dollars; and its consent to do this was
only obtained on condition that the number of State
students should be increased to fifty. Cabell pointed out
Legislature should agree to increase the number of
teachers also, and make special appropriations for the
purchase of books and apparatus in addition. The proposal
was not pressed for the time being.
At the termination of the Fifth Period, 1842–1861,
the general impression of the system of State students
was as favorable as it had been at the close of the first
year of its operation. The mistake was made in the beginning
of segregating them. Not only did the entire
company eat their meals under the same roof, but twelve
dormitories were, in 1848, built on Monroe Hill to provide
them with lodgings. Many persons at first predicted
that the system would fail in the end, because,
owing to this segregation, these young men would feel
that they belonged to an inferior social caste in the University,
and, for that reason, would be apprehensive of
the tacit ostracism or the open jeerings of their more fortunate
fellows. Time proved that this anticipation was
entirely without foundation. Not only did the Faculty
and Visitors exert themselves, as we have seen, to encourage
and assist the State students, but the general attitude
of the college at large towards them was helpful
and sympathetic. In 1848, Major Broadus declared
that, as a body, they bore a favorable comparison with
an equal proportion of the regular students; and that
the best scholars among them were quite as finished as the
best in the ranks of those who had paid the fees. It was
remarked at this time, before the quality of the mass had
been lowered by free board, that each one was anxious
to enter the classes of at least four professors, so as to
derive the greatest profit possible from their course of
two years. Among the most successful students at the
University after 1856, were many who had only been
an important proportion of these belonged to the most
highly respected families of the Commonwealth.
A writer in the Watchman of the South in 1841, after describing the
expensiveness of the life at the University of Virginia, which he attributed
partly to the operation of the uniform law, asserted that the "State was
paying $15,000, not in behalf of the poor to be educated, but to educate
the rich."
IV. New Buildings
The continuous rise in the attendance created a recurring
need for more dormitories and dining-rooms.
Anterior to 1842, as we have seen, there had been several
outboarding houses, which, with the Faculty's approval,
solicited and received the patronage of the students.
After that year, the call for respectable establishments of
this kind, situated beyond the precincts, became more urgent.
An increase in the number of matriculates from
one hundred and twenty-eight, during the session of
1842–3, to four hundred and twenty-five, during the session
of 1852–3, and six hundred and forty-five, during
the session of 1856–7, would have taxed the resources of
the University had not these boarding houses been close
at hand and spacious enough to take in the overflow. In
1845, F.D. Fitch was licensed to open a house of this
character, and, in 1846, Charles Johnson. Mrs. Carr,
who resided on Carr's Hill, almost within a stone's throw
of the Rotunda, was able to count as many as fifty young
men seated daily at each meal in her comfortable diningroom.
All the State scholars assembled at these hours
under the roof of the Monroe mansion, in charge of
Major Broadus. Colonel Woodley, the proctor in 1845,
was granted the right to admit as many as eight students
to his table, on condition that they should be the sons of
his friends, and had been recommended by them to his
care. Subsequently, he was permitted to receive an additional
four. After the death of Dr. Emmet, his widow
at Morea eked out her income by accepting boarders; and
her example was followed by Mrs. McKennie, the very
name.
So cramped did the accommodations for the students
finally become, that many of them asked for permission
to engage their rooms and meals in the taverns of Charlottesville;
but the ordinance forbidding this had not
been repealed, and the Faculty decided that they had no
right to overlook the fact of its existence. The rule was
first relaxed in favor of C. D. Haworth, who, being a
chronic dyspeptic, found it impossible to get in the University
hotels and outboarding houses the particular kind
of food which he required. In the end, the ordinance
was revoked, and all students who had failed to secure a
room and board in the University, or just beyond its
precincts, were left at liberty to seek them in the hotels
of Charlottesville. But it was necessary that they should
obtain the parental consent before they could lawfully
do this. During the years that immediately preceded the
session of 1860–1, the regulations confined the area of
this outer residence to the quarter of the town that lay
on the western side of the Midway Hotel.
In spite of the relief afforded by these practical measures,
the accommodations for the students continued to
be straightened. In 1848, twelve dormitories, as already
stated, were erected on Monroe Hill for the use of the
State scholars; but even this addition brought but small
relief. At the meeting of the Board, the following year,
the executive committee were requested to submit, in the
course of the ensuing June, a plan that would provide for,
among other buildings, another new row of bedrooms.
A detailed plan was drafted, and then adopted, and the
proctor was promptly empowered to contract for three
hundred thousand bricks in anticipation of the construction
that was soon to begin. No further step, however,
that were most acutely needed. In 1854, one hundred
dollars was appropriated to convert the brick observatory
standing at the foot of Monroe Hill into apartments
for students; and, at the same time, the professors
were asked to give up the use of the dormitories situated
next to their pavilions. Three years later, the executive
committee were instructed to build on the west side of
the precincts such a number of rooms as would accommodate
fifty young men, and on the east side,—beyond
the line of the Central Railway,—enough to accommodate
sixty more. A boarding-house, with a dining-room
capable of seating one hundred persons, was also to be
erected. The sum of twenty thousand dollars was reserved
to defray the cost of these different structures.
This extensive and comprehensive project apparently
fell to the ground. Its nearest approach to realization
consisted of the enlargement, at a later period, of the two
dining-rooms of the East and West Ranges to a point
where they would allow space for not less than one hundred
chairs at table. W. A. Pratt was, in 1858, appointed
the superintendent of the buildings and grounds
in order to give relief to the proctor, whose office duties
had been steadily augmented by the ever growing number
of students. Pratt drew up an elaborate plan for
the creation of two parks,—one on the eastern slope
looking towards Charlottesville; the other on the western
level, to extend from the Lynchburg road to the Staunton
highway. The surface was to be scientifically graded
and planted in trees and shrubs of rare varieties. The
scheme was carried out only on the eastern side of the
precincts; and there but partially.
But neither parks nor enlarged hotels removed the harassing
dilemma which arose from the unhalting increase
still most needed; and, in 1859, the Board invited the
wealthy alumni to erect dormitories on sites to be chosen
within the precincts. The following were the terms on
which these houses were to be constructed: (1) the builders
should be entitled to rents for a period to be thereafter
agreed upon; (2) if the young men failed to apply
for the rooms, the Board should have the right to take
possession of them, and assign them to students, who
were to pay the usual rent, which was to be turned over
to the proprietors; (3) at any time, the Visitors could
appropriate to the University the houses, on paying
back the sums which they had cost, subject to deduction
for repairs. These terms did not prove seductive, and no
dormitories were built. By 1859, the Dawson Farm had
been disposed of, and the Board decided that the proceeds
of the sale should be expended in the erection of a
row of brick cottages on the western side of the grounds.
These cottages were expected to provide space for the
accommodation of at least fifty students. Six houses
were constructed; and to these, a seventh was afterwards
added.
But the problem which the University's authorities
were trying to solve satisfactorily was not limited to new
dormitories. As the number of students increased, the
need of a more voluminous water supply arose. In 1843,
the professor of natural philosophy was directed by the
Board to ascertain whether a line of iron pipes could be
laid from the spring on the Maury farm to the Lawn.
If he ever drafted a report in response to these instructions,
it was not followed up. Two years afterwards, the
executive committee was asked to find out the cost of
building such a pipe line from Observatory Mountain to
the University precincts. Should they conclude that it
arrange for its construction; but if they should decide that
it was impracticable, they were to take steps to collect
in cisterns all the rain that should fall on the roofs of
the dormitories and pavilions. Whichever course was ultimately
adopted, the supply remained inadequate, for,
in 1849, fifty-five hundred dollars was appropriated by
the board to increase the quantity. The water was
needed, not only for satisfying domestic purposes, but
also for extinguishing fires. The insufficiency became so
inconvenient and so dangerous by 1850, that the executive
committee were again authorized to build new cisterns
on the grounds; and, in the following year, three
additional ones were ordered to be constructed; but these
small reservoirs, owing to the frequent recurrence of dry
weather, and the constant draughts on their contents,
left the situation still of a critical character. For the second
time, the executive committee were instructed to procure
estimates for bringing a larger volume of water
down from the region lying to the west of the University.
In the meanwhile, the rector was empowered to apply to
the General Assembly for permission to borrow twenty
thousand dollars to defray the united costs of repairing
the roofs and increasing the quantity of the water supply.
An appropriation of twenty-five thousand dollars
was made by the Legislature at the session of 1853–4
for these combined purposes. Mr. Stevenson, the rector,
requested Mr. Gill, the chief engineer of the Central Railway,
to draw up the estimates for the water works; Gill,
being too busy to do this, recommended Mr. Eardman,
of Philadelphia; and through Professor George Tucker,
at this time a resident of that city, the services of this distinguished
engineer were secured. Eardman sent in his
report in June, 1854. He calculated that the cost of
a reserve fund of $21,122.90 for contingencies.
It was not until several months had passed that bids were
advertised for; and when these were received, they were
found, in every instance, to run beyond the appropriation.
In the meanwhile, the owner of the most important spring
had refused to sell, except on conditions which the executive
committee decided they had not the delegated
power to accept.
One year later,—no practical step having been taken
in the interval,—Charles Ellet was employed to devise
a plan for obtaining a sufficient supply of water, to be
accompanied by an estimate of cost. He enjoyed a national
reputation as a civil engineer, and his report was
promptly adopted by the Board. The executive committee
was again directed to give out the contracts for the
prosecution of the work. The right to take possession
of the springs necessary to complete the supply had already
been granted by the General Assembly. In accord
with Ellet's recommendation, iron pipes were laid down,
which connected a reservoir at the back of the Rotunda
with numerous fountain-heads situated in the high valleys
of the foothills towards the west. The water,—
which was first received in the reservoir,—was, by a
steam pump, forced up into two tanks located within the
cavity of the bricks that supported the bottom of the
dome in the rear. Each of these tanks had a capacity of
seven thousand gallons; and they were elevated at least
seventy feet above the surface of the Lawn. The pressure
was sufficient to drive water from them to any roof
within the central grounds of the University, except the
top of the dome itself. The tanks proved to be defective.
The leaking water at first seriously injured the exterior
walls of the Rotunda, and then slowly dampened
at one time, a heavy overflow, owing to a shortened provision
for waste pipes. Many of the books in the library
were, on this occasion, thoroughly soaked, the ceiling
was defaced, and the plastering of the lecture-halls below
was loosened.
In the spring of 1861, a live coal was dropped unobserved
in the loft of the Rotunda by plumbers who had
been repairing that part of the structure; a fire broke out;
and but for the energy of the students in suppressing the
flames, the entire building would have been burnt to the
ground. W. H. Chapman was publicly commended for
the conspicuously brave and effective share which he had
in this exciting episode.
As early as 1852, the executive committee were authorized
to contract for the introduction of gas into the
University area; but they must have found the estimates
unsatisfactory, for no step apparently was taken at that
time. In the summer of the following year, there was a
proposal by a gas firm to send an expert to examine the
grounds, and choose the site for a gas-house; but it was
not until 1857 that this means of illumination seems to
have been finally introduced; and then through the agency
of the Charlottesville and University Gas Company;
which also agreed to supply the necessary fixtures.
V. New Buildings—The Annex
While these different measures for adding to the number
of dormitories, and furnishing their occupants with
an ample supply of water and light, were in the process
of accomplishment, the need of more lecture-rooms and
more laboratories had become more acute. It was said,
in 1849, that only the professors of natural philosophy
and chemistry possessed the exclusive right to the apartments
ancient languages, modern languages, mathematics, moral
philosophy, and law were restricted to two lecture-halls
between them all. The large majority of the members
of the Faculty justly complained that the effectiveness of
their instruction, from day to day, was sensibly diminished
by this condition, which they predicted would only grow
more serious as the tide of new students should continue
to rise. A committee, composed of Andrew Stevenson
and Thomas J. Randolph, was appointed in September,
1850, to contract for the erection of an edifice that would
supply all the additional facilities for lecture-rooms and
laboratories which were now so pressingly demanded;
and they were also authorized to engage the services
of a supervisory architect. A report went about that a
building for artistic purposes only was about to be constructed;
and that the University funds were to be lavished
in mere show. "Now, I suppose," wrote Stevenson
to Cabell, in a spirit of amiable raillery, "we shall
hear that we are erecting galleries for the exploitation of
paintings and statuary and the fine arts."
The architects chosen were Mills and Kenwick. At
the rector's request, Mills visited the University, and
the two, after inspecting the ground together, drafted a
plan, under the provisions of which a great wing was
to be thrown out from the north portico of the Rotunda.
The main portion of this edifice was to be one hundred
feet in length, and fifty-four in width. Its connection at
its southern end with the Rotunda was to be in the shape
of a porch thirty feet long, while at its northern end,
there was to be a second porch of the same dimensions.
The structure, including the two porches, was to spread
out one hundred and sixty feet. The basement, and also
the first and third floors, were to be occupied by several
in addition, for the storage of the costly apparatus
belonging to the School of Natural Philosophy. The
second floor was to be reserved for a public hall, with
the capacity to seat twelve hundred persons.
At the time when the Annex was projected, the rear
of the Rotunda consisted of a porch approached on
either hand by a long flight of stone steps. The ground
back of this porch fell away abruptly; and on the face of
the bank thus created, there grew a waving mass of Scotch
broom. The porch was pulled down for the erection of
the south portico. It was not intended that the north
portico should be accessible from without; indeed, it was
Stevenson's expectation that a statue of Jefferson would
be eventually set up on this portico, as the view from its
edge was an open one in every direction, and as a bronze
figure so placed would be a conspicuous and imposing object
from all sides. Since the Annex, regarded as a
whole, was acknowledged by its projectors to be out of
harmony with the style of the other buildings, this terminal
portico, with its pillars, was a conscious attempt
to recover something of the lost architectural effect.
Mr. Randolph, loyal to the artistic spirit of his grandfather,
disapproved of the addition in the ugly and incongruous
form adopted; and he was also far-sighted
enough to perceive the increased danger of fire which this
large building would create, and which, in time, was to
be realized in a conflagration that threatened to consume
every structure on the grounds. But the desire to economize
in space overruled all aesthetic suggestions.
Within the area of the proposed edifice, ten thousand
square feet would be available for lecture-halls, and eight
thousand for exhibition-rooms. Five hundred feet were
to be reserved for a museum. The entire space open to
This did not take in the area embraced in the terraces,
galleries, and colonnade. The successful bidder for the
erection of the Annex was a builder named Hudson; and
George Spooner was appointed to overlook the successive
stages of the work.
How was the money required for meeting the expense
of constructing this new edifice obtained? The contract
provided that the first payment of ten thousand dollars
should be made in January, 1852, and the second, which
was to be twenty thousand dollars in amount, in January,
1853. By the act of March 7, 1827, the University had
been empowered to borrow, with the Assembly's approval,
and the Board now petitioned that body for the right to
negotiate a specific loan of twenty-five thousand dollars.
This was granted in February, 1852. Mr. Mills, the
architect, it seems, had estimated the cost of the building
at too low a figure; and after twenty thousand dollars
had been paid to the contractor,—which was done previous
to May, 1852,—it was found that at least fifteen
thousand more would be needed. When the Board convened
in June, 1852, the progress of construction had
reached such a stage that it was anticipated that the
Annex would be finished before their next annual meeting,
and they, therefore, assigned one of the basement
rooms to the School of Chemistry, another to the School
of Materia Medica, and a third to the School of Natural
Philosophy. The distribution of the remainder was
left to the decision of the executive committee. The
building had not been fully completed as late as September
1, 1853, although the public hall seems to have
been thrown open for the exercises in the preceding July.
In 1859, Mr. Pratt, the superintendent of grounds and
buildings, suggested that two wings should be joined on
style, though apparently not in size, of the Annex itself.
There were to be the like porticos at the point of union
and at the point of termination. If it had been practicable
to enhance the incongruous ugliness of the Annex in
an architectural way, this scheme would undoubtedly
have accomplished it; but happily for the peace of Jefferson's
artistic ghost, it was not carried out, although it
was seriously debated by the Faculty, who, notwithstanding
the fact that classes assembled in the medical hall,
a separate structure, seemed to find it quite hard to realize
that academic and law lectures could be delivered under
any other roof than one which either covered the
Rotunda, or ran off from its walls. Had these two wings
been erected, the bulky cluster of buildings which they, together
with the Rotunda and Annex, would have made
up, would have raised such an enormous conflagration
when the great fire broke out in October, 1895, that very
probably no human power could have barred the spread
of the devouring flames to pavilions and dormitories.
At least one alumnus thought that, before the public
hall was thrown open, this large apartment should be
adorned with choice paintings and statuary. Thomas H.
Ellis, a devoted son of the institution, and a man of cultivated
tastes, both literary and artistic, seems to have
been the first to propose this use of the vacant walls. In
a letter to Gessner Harrison, dated October, 1850, he
announced that Daniel H. London, a merchant of Richmond,
who had recently been visiting Rome, had reported
that a copy of Raphael's School of Athens could
be procured for the University at a cost of two thousand
dollars. A committee of the alumni, said Ellis, was
ready to canvas for the necessary subscriptions for the
purchase, should the University be willing to accept the
Faculty, replied favorably, but he suggested that the
painting should be placed in the library, an apartment
not suited to it either in light or shape, as he himself
candidly admitted. Why not erect instead a statue to
Jefferson, to be set in the north portico? This, he
thought, would be more appropriate than a picture even
of the highest merit; but Ellis dissented from this view;
and about two weeks after receiving Harrison's letter,
he wrote to Cabell to express again the opinion that the
only harmonious place for the painting was in the public
hall. He urged that the architect of the Annex should
be instructed to arrange in one room at least for the display
of works of art. Cabell sent this letter to the
building committee, and at the same time, wrote to Ellis
that space for the proposed picture could be easily found
between the windows on either side of the public hall.
It was not until February 12, 1857, that the gift of
the copy of Raphael's painting from the brush of Paul
Balze was actually made to the Visitors and accepted by
them. To Mr. Pratt, the superintendent, was left the
choice of a place for its setting in the public hall; and it
was due to his correct judgment that the wall back of the
platform was selected,—the only spot where it could be
easily seen from all parts of the room, and where it
could be conspicuously lighted up by the chandelier overhead
on the night of commencement. It was hoped
that the canvas of the School of Athens would, as time
passed, become the nucleus of a large gallery of paintings,
which would represent the principal scenes in Virginian
history, such as Henry addressing the convention
that ratified the State constitution, James Madison reading
the resolutions of 1798 to the General Assembly, and
as they were rising from their foundations.
The only other edifice of consequence constructed on
the University grounds in the course of the Fifth Period,
1842–1861, was the Temperance Hall. In June, 1852,
the Faculty were authorized to receive private subscriptions
for its erection,—this fund to be held by the Board
of Visitors as trustees,—while it was left to the executive
committee to choose the exact site for the projected
building. An address soliciting contributions was issued
in 1853 by members of University Division, No. 74, Sons
of Temperance, who had been long cramped by the narrowness
of their quarters. The amount of the rent paid
by the Division was also a charge that subjected the organization
to constant straits. It was estimated that a
modest building sufficient for all purposes could be erected
for fifteen hundred dollars. The excavation began in
1855, with a guarantee for the sum required signed by
R. R. Prentis, William Wertenbaker, Thomas J. Wertenbaker,
John B. Minor and John H. Cocke. The
builder was George H. Spooner, who had been so long
associated with the University.
VI. The Courses of Instruction
The increase in the number of students, not only created
the need of more dormitories and lecture-rooms, but
it also led to the addition of one new professorship, the
division of one chair into two chairs, and the subdivision
of several schools into departments, to assure a broader
platform of tuition. As late as 1856, the number of
schools had been neither diminished nor augmented.
That number remained the same as in 1825. It is true
that the professors of mathematics and the languages
overgrown classes more thoroughly; and the School of
Law also was now in charge of two professors instead
of one. Within the next few years, however, the School
of History and Literature was established, and the
School of Ancient Languages split up into the School of
Latin and the School of Greek, while the School of
Medicine was divided into four schools and one department,
and the School of Law into two departments. The
general course of instruction in the University, after these
changes had been made, fell within the scope of three
great divisions: First, the literary and scientific schools,
in which were taught the ancient and modern languages,
mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, moral philosophy,
and history and literature; second, the School of
Medicine, which embraced the subjects of medicine, comparative
anatomy, physiology, surgery, chemistry, pharmacy,
anatomy, materia medica, and botany; and third,
the School of Law, with its departments of common
and statute law, and civil, constitutional, and international
law.
Jefferson had contemplated an indefinite multiplication
in the number of important schools, and in the number of
dependent departments in each school. From the three
divisions just given, it will be perceived that it was a generation
after his death before his anticipation in either
particular began to take the form of reality. But there
was still room for further expansion and for further subdivision,
—separate professorships in applied mathematics,
natural history and geology, scientific agriculture,
zoology, botany, and practical astronomy, were still
wanting.
The numerous improvements which were made previous
to 1860 were at least hastened by an article that was
in the course of 1856. The author of that article chastised
the more unsparingly because he felt the keenest
interest in the institution. What do the graduates of
the University of Virginia know? he asked. To that
comprehensive question, he returned the following reply:
"They will never have heard of botany; they will never
have heard of zoology; they will never have heard of
English literature, unless a little belles-lettres may be so
denominated. They need not know a word of English
history, or indeed, in any serious sense, of any other.
They will have heard about twelve lectures on mineralogy
and geology. Of political principles, of ethnology,
of comparative philology, they will be equally ignorant;
so of theology, statistics, history of philosophy, archaeology,
physical geography, history of fine arts and aesthetics
in general."
These were serious deficiencies beyond dispute, but
there was not one among them which would have continued
many years longer had not the War of Secession
intervened to halt all further progress for nearly a
decade.
But the soul of a university does not lurk only in its
courses of instruction. The spirit of the scholar is created
as much by the intellectual atmosphere which he
breathes as by the literary food which he takes into his
mind. About the time when the critic in the Messenger
was plying the paternal birch with so much corrective
vigor, another alumnus, who was not less solicitous touching
the welfare of his alma mater, was also forming his
impressions of her. "I have lived and worked in more
than one distinguished institution," remarks Professor
Edward S. Joynes, in recalling this period, "but such students,
such studying, such zeal for learning, I have never
we were honorable and proud, proud of our university
and her fame, of her professors and of ourselves as her
students. In our minds, we were not merely the University
of Virginia, but the University. Our habitual walk
across the Lawn was an unconscious strut, so proud and
great did we deem our university to be, and ourselves as
its students. And now looking back after sixty years
of large experience, it is my best judgment that, at that
day, there was no institution in America comparable, in
its scholarship, its standards, its influence on personal
character, with the University of Virginia."
There was one deficiency mentioned by the author of
the article in the Literary Messenger which had occasioned
much concern to the Alumni, the Visitors, and the
Faculty alike, during many years. We have seen that the
subject of history had been taught in a restricted though
suggestive form by the professors of ancient and modern
languages, and belles-lettres by the professor of moral
philosophy. The treatment in either instance was necessarily
brief and desultory. In 1841, the Society of
Alumni urged the Board to establish a School of History
and Literature in order to quiet the just criticism
which its absence had caused; but the income of the University
at this time was decided to be too small to justify
so expensive an addition. In June, four years later, the
Faculty were requested by the Board to draw up a report
that would indicate the proper course of instruction
to be adopted for the projected professorship. It seems
that the Visitors, having been again prodded by interested
alumni, were now ready to go so far as to say that
they were sanguine of establishing the new chair at their
next annual meeting (1846). The scheme of study
which the Faculty submitted on this occasion did not receive
was a majority report and a minority report; and these
reports, apart from their ability and information, are interesting
as throwing light on the intellectual methods of
two of the most distinguished men who have been associated
with the University of Virginia, for one was drawn
by Gessner Harrison, and the other by John B. Minor.
Harrison, as the spokesman of the majority, advised
that the course for the new professorship should be
marked out only in a general way. He thought that the
mere ground to be traversed by members of this class was
much less important than the acquisition by them of a
correct impression of the purposes of historical knowledge,
and of the proper spirit in which historical inquiries
should be prosecuted. They must be trained, he said, to
test the truth of history for themselves; and they must
learn how to group, classify, and generalize without material
assistance from any one. It was right habits of
mind rather than the bare facts of history that were most
to be desired; not so much the amount of information to
be accumulated, as the manner in which it was to be collected.
Past events, he declared in substance, were so
multitudinous that no single teacher would find it possible
to give a detailed narrative of them all, even if he should
restrict his lectures to modern times. The professor,
therefore, should take a comprehensive view of his vast
field, and choosing the leading facts only, should draw
from them those permanent lessons, those general laws,
that guide and control the destinies of nations. As to the
department of literature,—which was also to be introduced,
—he should require of his pupils practical exercises
in writing, speaking, and reading the English language;
should lecture on the characteristics of the classic
authors in each branch of letters, and show their personal
at length the general features of successive literary eras,
and the orderly development of English literature from
period to period. It seems that Dr. Harrison did not
emphasize so sharply the mental discipline that would accrue
to the students from these literary courses as he had
done in dwelling on the benefits that would follow from
the courses in history.
In drafting the minority report, Professor Minor, on
the other hand, expressed the opinion that the whole field
of study in both history and literature should be mapped
out with the same analytical exactness which he used in
presenting the subject of law. The independent knowledge
of the facts embraced in that field was, in his judgment,
as important as the improving mental effect of acquiring
that knowledge; and bare generalizations, for
sake of the spirit rather than of the substance, were not,
from his point of view, sufficient. These two reports,
which are among the most thoughtful documents having
their origin with the Faculty, were sent to the Board; but
action on them was deferred. Lack of the necessary
funds still stood in the way of the establishment of the
chair.
R. M. T. Hunter was at this time a member of the
House of Representatives, and also a Visitor, and on
June 24, 1846, in anticipation of the meeting of the
Board, and the election of a professor of history and
literature, he wrote to Cabell that he had recently
sounded Caleb Cushing, the distinguished publicist, as to
whether he would accept the new chair; and that Cushing
had expressed his willingness to do so, should it be
associated with the Presidency of the University.
Would Cabell find out whether the Board were favorably
inclined towards Cushing? But the Visitors, whether
refused to choose an incumbent at that time. We learn
from a letter written by William C. Rives, in April, 1847,
to George Frederick Holmes, an aspirant for the chair,
that the explanation of their action was still the lack of
means to pay the salary that should go with the position.
Two years later (June, 1849), however, they decided to
hold an election for the professorship at their next annual
meeting, and the chairman of the Faculty was directed
to give four months' notice of this intention by a
detailed advertisement in the public journals; but, in February,
1850, Cabell informed Professor Millington, of
the College of William and Mary, who was advocating
Holmes's candidacy, that the creation of the chair would
again have to be postponed for an indefinite period. It
seems that the General Assembly had again required that
all the thirty-two State students should be boarded at the
University's expense,—a provision that not only left no
resources to defray any additional charge, but also prolonged
a burden that had been found difficult to carry
even with the exercise of scrupulous economy.
It was not until 1856 that this repeatedly deferred professorship
was at last established. In the March of
that year, the Legislature repealed the act which limited
the number of chairs to ten; and that body was also wise
enough, on the same occasion, to revoke the regulation
which admitted State students to the institution without
charge for board. The road was, therefore, clear of the
obstructions that had previously been insurmountable.
At a called meeting of the Visitors held on May 26, a resolution
was adopted that added the School of History and
Literature to the number already in existence. In that
resolution also was laid down the line which the lectures
on the two great subjects belonging to the chair was to
more influenced in their conclusions by the majority report
of Professor Harrison than by the minority report
of Professor Minor, for it was to generalization that the
teaching was to be mainly confined. This was especially
true of the principal branch, in which the instruction
was to touch upon the broad, fundamental lessons of history;
the character of the epochs which had affected human
destiny most profoundly; the impression on the
moral and physical condition of man of the various systems
of religion and jurisprudence; the outcome of diversities
of race and climate; the principles of historical
criticism; the documentary sources of information; and
the proper methods of study. Perhaps, the most significant
features of the course in literature were (1) that all
the students were to be regularly drilled in English composition;
and (2) that the professor should have the right
to invite the members of his class to deliver lectures or
read essays upon any literary subject which he might
designate. It was specifically stated that the studies to
be embraced in the new chair should not abrogate any
of the branches of instruction which had previously been
pursued on the historical side of the Schools of Ancient
and Modern Languages, and the literary side of the
School of Moral Philosophy. The new professorship
did not become operative until October, 1857.
VII. Courses of Instruction, Continued
The duty of teaching both Latin and Greek grew more
and more onerous for one instructor as the number of
students increased. It was said, before the chair of
ancient languages was divided, that it was as taxing in its
requirements as any two other professorships in the University;
and that as much application was necessary to win
philosophy, and chemistry united. Down to 1856, there
seems to have been no assistant assigned to Harrison
either in Latin or in Greek. However great the labor
which was thus imposed on him,—the correction of exercises
alone, he said in 1851, left him no time for study,
or for making any written contributions to the knowledge
of his subjects,—the students, who, from year to year
sat under him never had cause to complain of neglect;
and it was a signal advantage to them too that they, as
they passed from the junior to the senior section, were
still under the tuition of the same accomplished teacher.
"It was quite a novelty to the young men who came from
other colleges," we are told by Professor Francis H.
Smith, one of his pupils, "to find that, in the lower class,
they met the same learned man they afterwards listened
to with increased homage in the higher and more difficult
division." What with the addition to his professorial
duties, and the constant drafts upon his time and
thought as chairman, it became finally imperative that he
should receive aid in carrying on the two courses. At
first but one assistant was allowed him, and as he considered
one inadequate, he, in June, 1855, formally recommended
that his chair should be divided. The Board, deciding
that they had no power to do this, offered him the
services of a second assistant. Edward S. Joynes was appointed
as his subordinate in the instruction of the Latin
classes, and William Dinwiddie, in the instruction of
the Greek.
In 1843, the number of students enrolled in the School
of Ancient Languages was only thirty-three; but, by the
session of 1855–56, the attendance had grown in volume
to two hundred and fifty-nine. Not even an instructor
with two assistants could thoroughly teach such a large
the original professorship embraced. On May 26, 1856,
the Board of Visitors determined to divide it,—the Latin
language was assigned to one chair, and Greek and Hebrew
to the other. "As a tribute to Professor Harrison's
merit, his eminent reputation, and his services to the
University, and the cause of classic learning in Virginia,"
—to use the words of their resolution,—they allowed
him the privilege of selecting whichever of the new professorships
he should prefer, and he chose the chair of
Latin. In addition to the fixed salary of one thousand
dollars, he was permitted to appropriate to himself all the
fees accruing from the members of his class. There
was, at this time, as we shall see, a maximum salary, and
the exception thus created in his favor caused some irritation
among the other members of the Faculty. The assistants
were not reappointed, and all the duties of the
new chairs were performed by the incumbents.
The system of instruction which Harrison had followed,
with so much distinction to his school, was continued
without any relaxation of energy as he grew
older. An occasional voice, however, was now heard
that he gave too much scrutiny to the philological aspects
of the language,—the skeleton of it as it were,—and
too little to nourishing among his pupils a taste for the
classical spirit. In opposition to this view, it was said by
Dr. Broadus,—and correctly so,—that Harrison was
successful in accomplishing the "main and primary objects
of his course"; that, if the literature of the ancients
was not much attended to, it was because "all the time
afforded was taken up with what was of more permanent
importance"; that his method was "the method followed
in all the great schools of England and Germany"; and
that it was the method which had produced in England
and DeQuincy."
The programme of study adopted by the new professor
of Greek, Basil L. Gildersleeve, embraced (1) the Greek
language, (2) the Greek literature, and (3) the history
of Greece. His classes were divided into junior and
senior. A conspicuous feature of his system of instruction
was the written exercise, and his extended comments
on the corrections. An examination for admission to the
senior class was required unless the student had been a
member of the junior. During the session of 1859–60,
a post-graduate department was created, which gave advanced
scholars an opportunity to study such of the Greek
classics as were considered to be unsuited, in form or subject,
to be taught in the regular courses. There was also
a course in the Hebrew language.
In the School of Modern Languages, Professor Kraitsir,
as we have mentioned, had offered to teach,—in addition
to French, Spanish, Italian, and German,—the Provençal,
Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Icelandish, Dutch,
Bohemian, Polish, Russian, and Magyar tongues. His
successor, Schele de Vere, was certainly not so accomplished
a polyglot, but was probably more industrious, for,
in the course of every week, he, at one period, delivered
thirteen lectures. He was the first professor, for many
years, to resume the use of the ground-floor of his pavilion
as a lecture-hall. In the interval between 1850
and 1857, he was assisted, in succession, by three subinstructors,
two of whom,—Ernest Volger and A. Von
Fischerz,—were of foreign birth. There was, in this
school, about 1858, an attempt to return to another feature
of Jefferson's original plans: it was decided that its
students should be required to speak as well as to read
the languages which were taught in it. Three assistants
French, another in German, and a third in Italian and
Spanish. The class was to be carefully drilled in sections,
and no member, after the session of 1859–60, was to be
permitted to graduate without having given proof of his
ability to converse easily and correctly in these Continental
tongues. The experience of a single session
brought out the inconvenience of this new provision. It
was found that the students' attention was too much diverted
from those parts of the course which were of more
permanent value, and in June, 1859, the regulation was
repealed. In the following year, the lectures by the professor
of modern languages on history and literature, in
connection with this school, were discontinued. Lectures
on history were considered to be more appropriate to the
chair now occupied by Professor Holmes. But in March,
1861, the Faculty recommended the renewal of the lectures
on Continental literature, as they thought a satisfactory
acquaintance with it should be a prerequisite to graduation
in the School of Modern Languages.
The number of classes in the School of Mathematics
was, during the Fifth period, 1842–1861, reduced from
six to five. At first, Professor Courtenay's syllabus of
the lesson for next day was written in chalk on the blackboard
in the lecture-room; but, at a later period, it was
printed in large type on white cotton sheets, which, one
after another, in the progress of the course, were suspended
on the board for the students to copy. No textbook
was used. There were three lectures a week. In
1849, Courtenay asked the Board to purchase a set of
instruments for use in giving lessons in practical surveying;
and four hundred and thirty-five dollars was appropriated
for that purpose. No important alteration in
the School of Mathematics was made by Bledsoe after
decade, the studies of the junior class were confined to
algebra, synthetic geometry, trigonometry, and surveying;
those of the intermediate class, to nautical astronomy,
navigation, and descriptive geometry; and of the
senior, to differential and integral calculus. There were
also lectures on the history and philosophy of mathematics
and on the general laws of equilibrium and motion,
both of fluids and solids, with a variety of applications
to physical astronomy.
During the session of 1844–5, the number of classes
in natural philosophy were increased from two to three:
there were the junior and senior classes in natural philosophy
itself, and, in addition, a class in geology and
mineralogy. In the latter course, particular attention
was directed to the physical structure and mineral properties
of our own country; and the mineral zones were
described at length by means of maps and sections. In
the studies of the senior class, a comprehensive view
was given of general physics. The philosophical apparatus
used in this school had, by 1851, become very
incomplete in each division; indeed, there were several
important branches which could not be treated experimentally
for lack of the required instruments—such, for
instance, as the phenomena of polarization and double
refraction. There were also no means of illustration
in the department of mineralogy. By the session of
1858–9—Francis H. Smith having succeeded William B.
Rogers—many of these deficiencies had been removed,
and the ground covered by the lectures very much enlarged.
Astronomy was now included in the course.
When George Tucker resigned the professorship of
moral philosophy, the chair was offered to Professor
Thomas R. Dew, of the College of William and Mary,
as an acute defender of the institution of slavery; but
he declined. William Maxwell and Dr. James L.
Cabell were candidates for the vacancy. The latter
had always felt a keen distaste for his anatomical duties,
"a kind of labor," he remarked, "which, in all other
medical schools, is performed by young men just advancing
into business." Rev. Wm. H. McGuffey was
the successful applicant. Under his charge, the course
at first was divided between three classes: the junior,
which was engaged with the study of rhetoric, belles-lettres,
and philosophical criticism; the intermediate,
with the study of political economy and the ethics of
society; and the senior, with that of mental philosophy,
logic, theoretical and practical ethics. During the session
of 1857–8, the number of classes was cut down to
two,—in the senior, thereafter, were taught mental and
moral philosophy, logic, belles-lettres, and criticism; and
in the junior, political economy and the ethics of society.
The course in chemistry,—which was a department
of the School of Chemistry and Materia Medica, and
could be studied jointly with the latter subject, or separately,
—was, like the School of Natural Philosophy,
very much hampered, as late as 1851, by the lack of
apparatus; indeed, the professor in charge of it was
forced to borrow from his colleague most of the instruments
which he was required to use. There was not
a single perfect one for experiments in caloric; and there
were no means of exhibiting the sources, kinds, relations,
and effects of electricity; and no arrangements for
showing the various modes of producing galvanic currents.
A great improvement in the facilities of the
chair followed the opening of the Annex, since a laboratory
and a lecture-room were assigned to the school in
filled this important professorship. He was relieved of
the duty of teaching materia medica and therapeutics,
—which subjects were taken over by the lecturer on
anatomy,—and in their place, Smith was required to
deliver a more extended course of lectures on agricultural
chemistry, and also to give instruction in pharmacy.
During the session of 1853–4, this school, then
in charge of Professor Socrates Maupin, was known
as the School of Chemistry and Pharmacy. Maupin's
academic chair was designated "chemistry" and his
medical chair as "chemistry and pharmacy."
A department of applied chemistry was created in
1858. It was first suggested by Professors Maupin,
Cabell, and Davis; and the resolution for its establishment
was submitted to the Board by William J.
Robertson, one of the Visitors. The new department
was associated with the School of Chemistry; its field
of study embraced qualitative and quantitative analysis,
and the employment of chemistry in the arts; and its
students must either be members of the regular class
of chemistry, or have pursued elsewhere a course in its
elementary branches. In the latter case, they were at
liberty to matriculate in the department of applied
chemistry only, if they wished to do so. The instructor
was selected by the professor of chemistry. The first
was David K. Tuttle. It was his duty to keep the
laboratory open, and to remain there eight hours daily
during five days of the week. This valuable course
was in active operation when the War of Secession began.
VIII. Courses of Instruction, Continued
In the sturdy and convincing defense of the University
of Virginia, made by its alumni in 1845,—when
of the violence of its student body,—those advantages
claimed for the medical school in the Fourth Period,
1825–1842, upon which we have already touched at
length, were again detailed as still in full existence.
These may be briefly repeated: they were (1) a session
of nine months instead of the four adopted by other
colleges; (2) a series of only twelve lectures a week,
which left each member of the class time to apply himself
to his studies privately, and also to be present at
the dissections; (3) thorough daily examinations, in addition
to those held for graduation; (4) the bestowal
of a diploma after one year's attendance, should the
merit of the candidate be up to the standard; (5) the
inexpensiveness of a stay at the University as compared
with the costliness of living in urban medical colleges;
(6) the student's ability to join an academic course
with his medical, should he wish it; and (7) the easy
acquisition of cadavers.
The Faculty admitted that they still could offer no
clinical facilities; but they asserted that, in towns where
these facilities did exist, the large classes crowding
around a bedside could see but little in the crush; and
that, without a previous knowledge of anatomy, physiology,
and pathology, it was not probable that intelligent
information could be acquired by such hurried observation.
All medical education, they said, must rest primarily
on a scientific footing. The practice of medicine
depended upon general principles embodied in the fundamental
sciences of anatomy, chemistry, and physiology,
pathology and therapeutics. The propriety and necessity,
therefore, of creating a broad foundation before
the superstructure should be reared was not to be disputed.
Could this foundation be laid in urban schools,
of medicine were delivered simultaneously? The Faculty
confidently answered in the negative. They still
positively claimed, as one of the peculiar advantages of
their medical school, that it united in its methods the
plan of private instruction with the plan of public lectures;
and that the length of the session put it in the
professor's power to follow a philosophical order of
studies, under which pupils had an opportunity to master
the substance of each elementary branch before their attention
was directed to its practical application.
In reality, both the Visitors and the members of the
Faculty were still smarting under the open and the covert
assaults alike which had been launched against the Medical
School by those enemies of the institution who
thought that they detected in the absence of clinical facilities
a very vulnerable spot for their darts. The repetition
now of the defense which had been made during the
Fourth Period, 1825–1842, proves that, from decade
to decade, the same criticism was thrown at the school.
There were still frequent suggestions that it should be
removed to Richmond and associated with the medical
college already in existence there; and it was even proposed
that the annuity of fifteen thousand dollars granted
by the State to the University, should, in that event, be
divided, and a part appropriated to this consolidated
school. At least one of the University's professors,
Dr. Warner, was suspected of intriguing for this consummation.
Dr. Cabell, in writing to his uncle, at that time
the rector, urged that the University should continue to
maintain its medical school even should a proportion
of the annuity be withdrawn for the support of the similar
school in Richmond.
During the session of 1847–48, John Staige Davis
the general supervision of the professor of anatomy and
surgery. His course of instruction was, in 1849–50,
enlarged, and he came then to be designated the lecturer
on special surgical and pathological anatomy, and
demonstrator of anatomy. A series of lectures on
zoology and comparative anatomy were, the same year,
added to the course delivered by Cabell, the professor
of anatomy and physiology, and, owing to this new burden
upon his time and energy, he was no longer required
to teach human anatomy. He was thereafter known
as the professor of comparative anatomy, physiology and
surgery. In 1853, Davis,—who was now lecturing on
anatomy, therapeutics, and materia medica,—was relieved
of the duties of the demonstratorship, and also of
the courses on pathological anatomy; but it was not until
1856 that he became the professor of anatomy, materia
medica, therapeutics and botany. The medical faculty,
beginning with the session of 1856–7, consisted of Henry
Howard, who had charge of the department of medicine;
James L. Cabell, of the department of comparative
anatomy, physiology, and surgery; Socrates Maupin,
of the department of chemistry and pharmacy; and
Davis, of the department of anatomy, materia medica,
therapeutics, and botany. The position of demonstrator
of anatomy was filled by B. W. Allen.
In June, 1857, the Board appropriated seventy-five
hundred dollars for the erection of an infirmary; and
Cabell and Davis were instructed to draw up the regulations
for its administration. The need of such an establishment
had been acute during many years, as there
were always cases of sickness within the precincts. In
many instances of dangerous illness, the members of
the medical faculty had carried their youthful patients
not be done continuously without exposing their families
to contagion. Under the rules adopted, each student,
when he matriculated, paid five dollars as an infirmary
fee, which, in case of his sickness, entitled him
to free prescriptions at the infirmary, to lodging and
board under its roof, if he was confined to his bed, and
also to the attendance of a nurse and physician without
charge. If he remained in his dormitory, the services
of the physician do not seem to have been gratuitous.
The patient could claim a reduction of fifty per cent. in
his hotel board-bill during the period of his detention
in the infirmary. The member of the medical faculty
chosen in succession to visit the sick, was known as the
health officer of the University of the day; but the ill
student was to be at liberty to summon a doctor from
beyond the precincts, on condition of its being at his
own expense. The house was placed in the care of
a matron. The fuel was supplied by the superintendent
of buildings and grounds, and special food for the
patient, if needed, by the hotel-keeper in charge of his
dormitory.
In 1857, the increase in revenue enabled the Medical
School to employ Henry Scharff to execute a series of
plates for the department of physiology and anatomy.
His labors were prolonged over six years, at the end of
which time, the finest collection of anatomical plates,
perhaps, to be found in the United States, was in the
possession of the University of Virginia.
Under Henry St. George Tucker, who succeeded John
A. G. Davis, the School of Law was divided into two
classes. The attention of the lower was directed to mastering
the elementary principles of municipal law, law
of nature and nations, science of government, and constitutional
and statute law, principles of equity, and maritime
and commercial law. It was arranged that the junior
course should embrace those subjects which form, not
only an essential part of a thorough vocational education,
but also a very useful branch of general culture.
The senior class was confined to the study of the theory
and practice of law as a profession. The acquisition
of the diploma of the school was, by an act of the General
Assembly, accepted as the equivalent of a formal
licence from the judges to appear in the courts. The
political interpretations, during Tucker's incumbency,
were marked by strict impartiality. Whilst he enforced,
with all the weight of his great learning and high character,
the necessity of maintaining the Union, on the one
hand, and of preserving the rights of the States, on the
other, he brought to the students' attention the ablest
dissertations that presented the different sides,—often
so antagonistic,—of the fundamental constitutional questions
which had so long disturbed the country. With
equal earnestness, he condemned that loose construction
of the organic law which led to the invasion of the
reserved rights of the States, and that rigid construction
which found its reaction in principles which sought a
remedy in disunion and convulsion, should that organic
law appear to have been violated.
The incumbency of the professorship of law by John B.
Minor, who succeeded Tucker in 1845–6, was characterized
(r) by more thorough methods of instruction;
and (2) by the employment of more exacting tests of
knowledge through examinations. The effect of this
strictness was soon discernible. Between 1841 and 1845,
when Tucker was in charge, there were one hundred
and sixty-five students enrolled in the school, and of this
in winning their diplomas. Between 1845 and 1861,
when Minor was the senior professor, thirteen hundred
and sixteen young men matriculated; and of this number,
ninety-four graduated; that is to say, only seven
per cent of the whole. In 1844–5, prior to Tucker's
resignation, the proportion was eighteen in ninety-eight,
—a figure which seems to have exceeded his usual number;
in 1852–3, after Minor's assumption of the chair,
the proportion was three in eighty-three, which seems
to have fallen below this teacher's average.[2]
The increase in the number of students entering the
School of Law after 1850 wasso great that it was found
necessary to appoint an adjunct professor. James P.
Holcombe was chosen.[3]
It was agreed between Minor
and Holcombe that there should be three classes,—the
junior, intermediate, and senior. There were to be embraced
in the junior course such studies as would not
only be useful for the general information which they
would impart, but also indispensable to the future practitioner;
in the intermediate, the theory and practice of
law was to be the topic; and in the senior, a liberal professional
culture was to be the only aim. The three
courses were assigned as follows: Holcombe was the
equity, and the law merchant; Minor, in the common
and statute law. In 1856, the school was divided into
two departments: in the one, common and statute law
was the theme; and in the other, equity, civil law, merchant
and maritime law, the law of evidence, the law
of nature and nations, and also the principles of government
and constitutional law. In the beginning, Professor
Holcombe received no remuneration beyond the fees
of his classes, and these only to the extent of two
thousand dollars; but after a few years, he was promoted
to a full professorship, and the fees of the school were
then shared equally by the two instructors,—subject,
however, to the restrictions upon which we shall touch
in a future section. Holcombe, who was an orator of
unusual power, held the extreme Southern view on the
rights of the States, and his lectures on constitutional
topics were not marked by the impartiality which had
distinguished those of the more judicial and conservative
Tucker. The moot court of the School of Law
assembled, at regular intervals, in the southeast room
of the Annex. In 1844, it was spoken of as the law
court; and one of its members sometimes delivered in
the chapel an address on some general theme. John
Randolph Tucker was among those who represented the
court on this public occasion.
A School of Engineering was, during the Fifth Period,
1842–1861, provided for by the enactments. As the
course was taught by two of the most burdened members
of the Faculty,—the professors of mathematics and
natural philosophy,—there is small probability that it
was either thorough or extensive in its character. To
the professor of mathematics was assigned the lectures
on graphical mathematics, the theory of levelling and
bridges, the laws of heat and steam, the sciences of geology
and mineralogy. Instruction in practical surveying
in the field was imparted by a draughtsman, who was also
called upon to give lessons in planning, in platting, in
typographical drawing, and in sketching. The number
of lectures required of each professor was one each week,
while tuition was given by the draughtsman twice a week.
The course,—if it existed at all during the sessions from
1850–1 to 1853–4,—was not of sufficient importance
to be mentioned in the catalogue. With the increase in
the number of young men studying mathematics and
natural philosophy, the professors of these schools probably
lacked time to give the necessary attention to the
minor school of engineering. During the session of 1854–
5, a course in this science in the field was taught by
Charles B. Shaw, who, having occupied the position of
State engineer, received permission to organize a class,
on condition that the hours for its meeting should not
interfere with the members' attendance on their principal
lectures.[4]
Elocution was only taught in the University during
the Fifth Period, 1842–1861, by private lessons. In
1842, an Italian who spoke and read the English language
very imperfectly, applied to the Faculty for a
licence, which was granted to him, under the impression
of the subject. The stranger soon proved himself
to be untrustworthy. It was reported that he was
holding himself out as an honorary professor in the University
of Virginia; and that he was endeavoring to profit
by that false character, beyond the precincts. He had not
been able even to organize a class, and, in consequence, had
been forced to content himself with delivering before
the members of the Jefferson Society a few gratuitous
lectures on physiognomy as well as on elocution. John B.
Ladd was, in 1844, licensed to teach the latter science
as he had given the Faculty proof of his capacity to do
so by actual readings and recitations. About 1855, Mr.
Johns received permission to deliver a course of lectures
on architecture to such students as were willing to
attend.
In spite of the recorded views of Jefferson in favor
of the establishment of a school of agriculture at the
University of Virginia, the Faculty failed to evince any
sympathy with the proposal when the introduction of
such a school was, at a later date, under discussion.
In 1842, they were advised by Senator Watson, of the
Albemarle district, to urge upon the General Assembly
the propriety of appropriating five thousand dollars for
the creation of this chair; but they declined to do so,
on the ground that such a professorship was not calculated
to advance the permanent welfare of the institution;
and that even if it were, the facilities for its
practical working could only be acquired at an expense
beyond the University's resources. The members of the
State Agricultural Society,—who were interested in the
suggested chair,—announced, in 1855, that they, as an
organization, were ready to endow it with an adequate
sum. Their purpose, they said, was to elevate the rank
high footing as that of the other superior callings in the
community. They appointed a committee of thirteen
to find out from the Board how far the latter were willing
to cooperate with the Society; and it was with the keenest
satisfaction that this committee learned that the
Visitors, unlike the Faculty when approached by Senator
Watson, would be glad to unite in the establishment of
the professorship.
It was not until March, 1856, that the General Assembly
removed the limitation upon the number of chairs,
which automatically permitted of the addition of the
agricultural professorship, should it be decided to be desirable
and practicable. No further progress in the
negotiation, however, was recorded until 1857. At the
meeting of the committee of the Agricultural Society in
February of that year, Philip St. George Cocke, of Belmead,
a son of General Cocke, of Bremo, offered to
endow a chair of agriculture with the sum of twenty
thousand dollars. The committee, with the necessary
document, called on the Board of Visitors, and presented
it for the purpose which the donor had in view.
Unfortunately, he had reserved the prerogative of nominating
the professor,—first, to himself during life, and
after his death, to the Farmers' Assembly. The Board
were constrained by these terms to refuse the generous
gift. "We have no right," they said, "to devolve upon
any other a power which has been given by the General
Assembly to this body alone. Even should the Legislature
authorize Mr. Cocke to appoint the professor for
the new chair, the interests of the University would be
damaged, for the unity of its government would be destroyed
by such a measure." The fund was, in the
end, diverted to the Virginia Military Institute, as the
In June, 1859, the Board, at the instance of Colonel
John B. Baldwin, one of their number, determined to
establish a professorship of physical geography and agricultural
science. The course in the former was expected
also to include the study of meteorology and climatology
as being particularly useful to those persons who intended
to reside in the country. The lectures on agricultural
science proper were to touch upon every side of the subject
not already treated in some branch of instruction at
the University; and it was to be so thorough as to be
of substantial assistance to the student who had planned
to become a planter or farmer in the future. The chair
was to be on a footing of equal dignity with the other
chairs. Matthew F. Maury, the celebrated pathfinder
of the seas, was elected to fill it, but was unable to accept
the invitation. This professorship never advanced beyond
the stage of a nominal creation.[5]
Number of graduates in law previous to 1858–9:
| July, 1829 | 2 | July, 1838 | 8 | July, 1847 | 8 | July, 1856 | 8 |
| July, 1830 | 10 | July, 1839 | 7 | July, 1848 | 6 | July, 1857 | 5 |
| July, 1831 | 1 | July, 1840 | 13 | July, 1849 | 9 | July, 1858 | 5 |
| July, 1832 | 4 | July, 1841 | 9 | July, 1850 | 7 | ||
| July, 1833 | 5 | July, 1842 | 26 | July, 1851 | 7 | ||
| July, 1834 | 9 | July, 1843 | 25 | July, 1852 | 3 | ||
| July, 1835 | 2 | July, 1844 | 19 | July, 1853 | 3 | ||
| July, 1836 | 9 | July, 1845 | 14 | July, 1854 | 3 | ||
| July, 1837 | 9 | July, 1846 | 4 | July, 1855 | 8 |
The total number was 248, of whom 53 were enrolled from other States
besides Virginia.
His first session was 1851–52. His subjects in the beginning were
equity and commercial law only.
| 1843 | 1856–7 | 1860–1 | |
| Ancient Languages | 33 | 259 | 375 |
| Modern Languages | 29 | 241 | 188 |
| Mathematics | 42 | 252 | 186 |
| Natural Philosophy | 30 | 172 | 155 |
| Chemistry | 13 | 248 | 178 |
| Medicine | 39 | 109 | 90 |
| Moral Philosophy | 22 | 184 | 166 |
| Law | 41 | 200 | 135 |
"The lecture-rooms about 1843," says Frederick W. Page, who was
a student of the University in that year, "were all in the Rotunda, except
the medical. The chemical lecture-room and laboratory were in the
basement. The west room above the basement was used by Mr. Courtenay
and by Mr. Tucker, the professor of moral philosophy; the east room by
Judge Tucker, Dr. Harrison, and Mr. Kraitsir. Professor William B.
Rogers, of the School of Natural Philosophy, had the west wing (gymnasium).
The chapel was the east wing. Medical lectures were given
in the Anatomical Hall."
IX. Examinations and the Honor System
The method of examination during the Fifth Period,
1842–1861, underwent no alteration beyond the adoption
of what was known as the Honor System, which, in
the beginning, was confined to the precincts of the classroom.
It was admitted by most persons that the existence
of the uniform and early rising laws had created
a spirit of resentment and insurrection among
the students; and this feeling had been only aggravated
by the progress of time. No man had perceived this
more clearly than George Tucker, who showed his detestation
of petty supervision in general by refusing to report
a student for wearing a pair of boots, or drinking
a glass of wine. Henry St. George Tucker was fully
in sympathy with his kinsman,–partly, perhaps, because
the two had a keen sense of humor. Both of these superior
men were something more than mere teachers,
whose views had tended to narrowness through long
confinement to college precincts. George Tucker had
been a lawyer and litterateur, and also a member of Congress,
before his appointment to the chair of moral philosophy.
Henry St. George Tucker too had been a distinguished
practitioner at the bar, and a still more distinguished
judge. Both had been important figures in
a larger world; and, in consequence, had acquired a
liberality in their outlook which was far beyond that commonly
observed.
Judge Tucker detected at once after his induction as
chairman a poisonous moral influence, not only in the
uniform and early rising laws,—which had caused so
much antagonism, and resulted in so little benefit to the
University,—but also in that system of suspicious surveillance
which had prevailed in the examinations since
the abolition of the oral tests and the adoption of the
written. He was not satisfied with his share in revoking
the uniform and early rising ordinances, but very
soon submitted the following resolution, which time was
to prove to be epochal in its character: "In all future
written examinations for distinctions and other honors
in the University of Virginia, each candidate shall attach
examinations a certificate in the following words, 'I,
A. B., do hereby certify on honor that I have derived no
assistance during the time of this examination from any
source whatever, whether oral, written, or in print,
in giving the above answers.'" This pledge was afterwards
extended to imparting as well as to receiving aid
under the same circumstances.
It is not at all assured that the rule thus proposed
was Judge Tucker's exclusive conception; but it was
certainly first adopted at the University through his
influence. It has been often asserted that it was suggested
to him by the modified system of a like character
which had prevailed at the College of William and Mary.
When the grammar school in that college was abolished
in 1779, and the small boy eliminated, the need of a
very stringent form of discipline vanished. After 1784,
each matriculate was required to take the pledge, in the
presence of the assembled students and members of
the Faculty, that he would respect all the ordinances,
but especially those that tended to sustain the moral
reputation, and advance the prosperity of the institution.
Judge Nathaniel Beverley Tucker said afterwards
that this venerable seat of learning, in adopting this
general rule, "had set an example to all other colleges
as a school of honor because it had substituted candid
appeals to the better feelings of the student, and a frank
reliance on his honor for espionage, severity, and the
restraints of the cloister."
In a general way, this statement was perfectly accurate;
but in a general way only. When we examine
the honor regulation of the old college, it seems to have
occupied a position that lay somewhere between the
regulation at the University of Virginia which required
would observe the ordinances, and that other regulation,
introduced by Henry St. George Tucker, which, at a
latter date, required the same student to sign a pledge
that he had neither given nor received assistance in the
course of his examination. The pledge enforced at the
College of William and Mary was really nearer, in its
general character, to the pledge of the University matriculate
than to the one which the University student attached
to his examination papers,—the only substantial
difference was that the pledge at the ancient college was
taken in public in order to increase its solemnity, whilst,
at the University, the matriculate's was taken in the
privacy of the proctor's office. Apparently, there was
no ordinance in operation at the College of William
and Mary which exactly resembled in tenor the resolution
introduced by Henry St. George Tucker. This
resolution did not profess to set up a universal code of
good conduct, such as was expected of the matriculate
in the College of William and Mary,—its single aim
was to ensure upright action in the examination room
alone by reliance on the student's sense of honor. It
restricted to a single occasion that principle of correct
behavior which the Faculty of the old seat of learning at
Williamsburg, and Jefferson at the University of Virginia,
had endeavored to put in general practice in all
the relations of scholastic life, whatever the time or the
event. The latter was merely a general objurgation;
the former was a direct, concrete, and specific application
of the honor principle, and as such was essentially
original in its character.
During the years anterior to the adoption of the Honor
System at the University, fairness in the examinations
had been sought by enforcing the most rigid methods
who were present in each instance was said to be
worthy of the eyes of the proverbial lynx; a majority
of its members were never permitted to withdraw from
the room at one time; and they were expected to maintain
an unbroken silence among the students in attendance,
to restrain them from leaving their seats, and to
interpose should they endeavor to communicate with each
other or with persons outside the apartment. No student
coming to the examination was suffered to bring
with him a portfolio or a book. This constant supervision,
with its restrictive rules, seems to have provoked
a spirit among some of the young men that found a keen
satisfaction in sly efforts to get around it. The sense
of obligation felt by most to act fairly was probably
weakened by the fact that the uprightness of all was
tacitly questioned by the suspicious attitude of the supervisors.
It followed that, previous to 1842, there were
some instances of cheating during the progress of the
examinations. In the intermediate for 1832, so many
students, placed in the highest grade by the excellence
of their papers, were found to have won that position
by "unfair means," that every one who had been raised
to it was compelled by the Faculty to prove that his
success was not to be attributed to improper assistance.
At one time, it was customary for the examinations
to be attended by friends of the young men who were
taking part in it. The committees, impressed with the
abuse of this privilege, asked for authority to shut these
intruders out, and to punish every student in the room
who was detected in a fraud. One of those discovered
cheating at the final examinations this year (1832) was
expelled; and three who had graduated were, for the
same reason, deprived of their honors. It seems that
from entering the eastern lecture-room for the purpose
of assisting the young men then under examination there,
had been covertly pushed aside on this occasion, and aid
given to the four afterwards found guilty. In 1839,
two members of the class in mathematics reached the
first division in the examinations by the like dishonest
means, and they were, as a punishment, reduced to the
fourth. The same penalty was inflicted on a student
who had been detected cheating in Dr. Emmet's examination.
The Faculty announced, in 1841, that they would refuse
to confer a degree on any one, who, they had
satisfactory reason to know, had committed a fraud of
this nature. Only a few days before the Honor System
was formally adopted, a student who had given aid in
an examination in the School of Moral Philosophy, was,
on that account, not allowed the privilege of reexamination
for which he had asked Dr Howard also reported
two instances of the like cheating about the
same time. These young men were punished by refusing
to give them their certificates of proficiency. The
leniency of the penalty shows that there was a lurking
impression that, if any student could obtain assistance,
the act of doing so was not so dishonorable after all,
simply because he had not bound himself by an oath to
receive or confer aid. The act was admitted to be
wrong in itself, but, should it be successful, the examining
committee were thought to be open to blame because
they had failed to prevent it The instances of
cheating on record are not very numerous, but they would,
perhaps, have occurred more frequently had the committees
refrained from exercising such strict oversight.
It is quite possible that the Honor System was adopted
classes grew, the difficulty of preventing the use of unfair
means by unscrupulous students in examinations also increased.
The cases of cheating brought to light gave
warning that, should the vigilance be relaxed for any
reason, the trustworthiness of the examinations would
be jeopardized. The adoption of the Honor System
was designed at the start, not to remove at one stroke
all the perplexities of the situation,—this must at first
have been thought impossible,—but simply to create an
additional means of minimizing those perplexities. Why
had this supplementary lever never been used before?
"The human character," Jefferson had said, "is susceptible
of other incitements to correct conduct more worthy
of employ than fear, and of better effect."Why had
not this impressive utterance been recalled just so soon
as the examinations passed from the oral form to the
written? Why should it have been remembered only
after half a generation had elapsed? The sentiment
which these words proclaimed was the foundation stone
of the Honor System. Unhappily, there had, during
many years, prevailed such irritation and such exasperation
in the relations of the young men and the professors,
that it was very difficult for those among the latter
who had been long connected with the University,—and
these formed a large majority,—to conceive that it
would be a genuine guarantee of honesty to leave the
students to the dictates of their own consciences. It
was natural enough that the Honor System should have
been first proposed by a man who had only recently become
a member of the Faculty, for when the resolution
was submitted by Tucker, he had been associated with
the institution too short a time to be biassed by the
suspicions which had been aroused in the breasts of his
of wantonness and lawlessness on the part of their pupils.
It was one of the peculiarities of the spirit behind
these acts that it had its springs most often in a perverted
sense of manliness and independence. The young men
seemed to think that, as students of the University, they
stood upon a footing of equality with the members of
the Faculty; and that they had a positive right to be
insubordinate as a means of protecting themselves against
supposed tyranny. It was not always the headiness and
intemperance of youth that caused them to boil over so
constantly. Rather, it was most frequently a distorted
idea of what they considered was due to their own manhood.
When they fell to rioting, they rioted boldly
and in a large way. The sense of chivalry, however
perverted in all on occasions, remained firm and vigorous
in the hearts of the great majority; and it was in
this responsive soil that the Honor System at the University
of Virginia was first planted. That institution
was an institution for men and not for boys. The preposterous
claim which the students made so often to the
right of independent action,—as in the case of the military
company of 1835,—demonstrated that they grasped
this fact, although in a confused way. The system could
not have taken root in a community of mere youths.
It would be very erroneous to suppose that the Honor
System, from its adoption in 1842, was relied upon as
the only guarantee of honesty in the examinations.
These continued, during many years, to be hedged about
by numerous restrictions. Indeed, throughout the Fifth
Period, 1842–1861, they were still conducted in harmony
with the original rules: (1) only those students who
were to stand the examination were to be permitted to
enter the room; (2) these were to be forbidden the use
by the special committee in charge, and they were
to be supplied with paper, but not with ink and pens;
(3) all communication between the members of the
class under examination was to be frowned upon; (4)
each member of that class was to appear in the designated
room within ten minutes after the bell rang; (5) each
was to forfeit his right to be examined should he leave
the apartment without the committee's consent; and (6)
each was required to append to his examination papers
the pledge prescribed by the Tucker resolution. The
entire list of these restrictive regulations was always read
to the assembled class; and a copy was also handed to each
member.
It is quite probable that, from the start, each student
felt under a strong moral obligation, not only to observe
the terms of his own pledge, but also to see that every
other student was faithful to his. Under the influence
of this very natural attitude of mind, the enforcement
of the system in time passed from the members of the
Faculty to the members of the student body. Indeed,
that body, in time, grew jealous and resentful of even
the smallest suggestion of interference by the Faculty
in inflicting punishment for an act of fraud in the examination
room. It became ultimately the duty of every student
who had detected a fellow student to report this fact
to such members of the class as he should select for
consultation; and a full investigation was made by them
as a self-appointed committee. If the charge was apparently
proved, the culprit was asked to defend himself;
and if he offered no satisfactory explanation, he
was warned to leave the precincts. Throughout the
Fifth Period, 1842–1861, however, a student who was
accused of violating his pledge possessed the right of
such instance, seven witnesses were summoned by that
committee, and all the circumstances thoroughly sifted
and the young man acquitted.
In 1860, a student whose unfairness in his examination
had been exposed, was forbidden by the Faculty, and not
by the young men, from returning to the University, the
ensuing year. This case demonstrates that the Honor
System did not reach its full development until the remarkable
period that followed the war. It was not
until then that it could be correctly asserted that the function
of the presiding professor at an examination was
that of a chairman rather than that of a vigilant, and
even a suspicious, overseer; not until then could it be said
of him, as has been recently said with perfect accuracy,
that his presence was not to restrain, but to testify to his
interest in the occasion, and to lend it the dignity of his
impartial countenance. Many years passed before the
right of appeal was restricted to the presidents of the
several academic and vocational departments; but a warning
from the students to their cheating classmates was
doubtless as effective before 1860 as it was after 1865;
and there is no evidence that the right of appeal to the
Faculty, which then existed, was often exercised at any
time subsequent to the adoption of the system. The
guilty student usually left in silence, and often so hurriedly
as to be unaccompanied by bag or baggage.[6]
We learn personally from Professor Francis H. Smith, still surviving
(1920), that when he entered the University, which was only a few
years after the adoption of the Honor System, he found the principle of
that system already deeply rooted in the scholastic life of the institution.
X. Degrees
During the first years that followed the establishment
of the degree of master of arts, the round of studies
candidates who succeeded in winning it was larger than
was thought to be desirable. The honor was frequently
carried off at the end of two years, and by mere youths.
The earliest step to make its attainment more arduous
was to require graduation in at least two instead of in
simply one of the modern languages. At first, the choice
of these two was optional, but in 1859–60, the selection
of French and German was made obligatory. The
second step was to require the candidate to pass, in his
closing year, an examination on all the courses embraced
in the studies of the previous years. In those instances
in which he had spent as many as four in traversing the
whole field, his knowledge of the ground first covered
may well have grown somewhat dim in memory. His
labor in refreshing this knowledge, in addition to that
expended upon the studies of his final year, was calculated
to test severely his mental and physical powers.
During the first session that this provision was in force,
only one candidate for the degree appeared; during the
second, there were three; and during the third, there
was again only one. But as the standards of the secondary
academies advanced, the number of candidates increased.
The examination in the studies of the previous years
was held in the Faculty's presence, and seems to have
been oral alone. It took place in 1852, in May, and in
1858, in April, and occurred about eight o'clock in the
evening. Professor Edward S. Joynes has left a vivid
description of the awe which almost overwhelmed him
in passing through this ordeal while the entire number
of the academic professors were looking on. A less
severe test was the essay, which was required to be
handed in by the first of June. This paper was to be
extraordinary merit in its composition. In 1856, twelve
essays received the approval of that body, while two
were rejected as falling below the mark.
The degree of master of arts was sometimes won by
graduation in courses accepted as substitutes for the
regular ones. In 1845, Matthew Harrison was successful
in the examinations in all the schools embraced in the
degree except modern languages. It seems that he had
already carried off a diploma in the School of Law, a proficiency
in political economy, and a distinction in the German
tongue. His application for a degree was referred
by the Faculty to the Board, who, after some discussion,
approved it. In 1850, Charles Sharp, of Norfolk, was
recommended to the same body for this degree, although
he had, in a fit of depression, withdrawn his name for
graduation in the School of Mathematics. The shortcoming
in the scope of the degree of master of arts was
thought, in 1856, to consist of the absence from it of
extensive courses in English, comparative anatomy and
physiology, zoology, botany and geology, international
law, constitutional law, and political economy. It was
not until 1860 that the School of History and Literature
was added to the schools required for its acquisition.
Down to 1856, the number of masters of arts did not
exceed ninety-eight. Beginning with one in 1832, George
N. Johnson, the annual list had, by 1856, expanded to
ten. Between 1832 and 1842, the average number of
each session was about seven; between 1843 and 1847,
nearly two; between 1850 and 1856, about seven again.
In 1859, there were again ten. Previous to the session
of 1858–9, there were one hundred and seven masters
of arts in all. Among those who succeeded in winning
the degree in the interval between 1832 and 1856, were
Maupin, John Staige Davis, Francis H. Smith, Edward
S. Joynes, Henry Tutwiler, Crawford H. Toy, Frederick
and Lewis Coleman; lawyers of reputation like Robert C.
Stanard, William Wirt Henry, Charles Marshall, and
James Alfred Jones; famous clergymen like John A.
Broadus and R. L. Dabney; and distinguished journalists
like James C. Southall.
In 1848, the Faculty were impowered by the Board to
bestow the degree of bachelor of arts. This degree was
jocularly described as a consolatory sop thrown to those
candidates who had failed to win the higher prize of
the mastership. It was different in character from the
degree of the same name which was awarded in the college
with a curriculum. Not only was it higher in its
standard than the latter, but there was no requirement
that the courses combined in it should be pursued in
regular order. The candidate could begin and end wherever
he should prefer to do so. It was described by the
Board as an intermediate degree. In order to obtain
it, it was necessary to graduate in at least two of the
three scientific schools: mathematics, natural philosophy,
and chemistry; or in at least two of the three literary
schools: ancient languages, modern languages, and moral
philosophy; and carry off a distinction at an intermediate
or final examination in the junior class of each of the
two preceding schools in which he had not aspired to
a diploma. No general examination was imposed upon
the candidate for this degree; but he was expected to
send in an essay in English to demonstrate his knowledge
of his native tongue.
The Faculty seem to have been more resolute in holding
the candidate for the degree of bachelor of arts
rigidly to the regular course than the candidate for the
in 1850. R. V. Gaines succeeded in graduating in chemistry,
moral philosophy, and Spanish; he had also won a
proficiency in Anglo-Saxon and political economy; but
he did not expect, in his last year, to obtain a distinction
in Greek or mathematics, although sanguine of winning
a diploma in natural philosophy, in Latin, and in
at least one of the modern languages. He was not permitted
to become a candidate for the degree of bachelor
of arts, as his programme did not conform to the course
that had been prescribed. There is an instance of an
aspirant for the degree of master of arts receiving, after
his failure to pass his general review in mathematics and
chemistry, at the end of his final year, permission to accept
the degree of bachelor of arts. He had graduated
several years before in these two schools, but the fact
that his information about their subjects had grown obscure
was thought to be sufficient to deprive him of his
diplomas,—a proof of the inflexible standard adopted
in awarding this degree. The candidate was consoled
by the statement that, in the review of these two studies,
the knowledge which he had retained was equal to that
required of the candidate for the degree of bachelor of
arts, and for that reason, this degree was conferred on
him. Forty students won the baccalaureate degree anterior
to 1861; and a large proportion of this number
were afterwards awarded the degree of master of arts.
XI. The Professors
In July, 1841, there were three vacancies in the circle
of the Faculty. When the Board, during that month,
held their annual meeting, they selected professors for
the Schools of Law, Mathematics, and Modern Languages.
The chair of law had been occupied from December
Howard, who had been chosen temporarily to succeed
the murdered Davis. Henry St. George Tucker, as
already mentioned, had been offered the position in 1825,
but declining then, now accepted a second tender. He
seems to have been influenced in this course by the fact
that his sons had arrived at an age when they needed
collegiate training. "The expense of their tuition," he
wrote Cocke, in July, 1841, when informed of his election,
"will be very heavy if I remain as I am, while they
will be trivial if I remove to the University." Furthermore,
the duties of his office as a member of the Court
of Appeals called him away from his home and family
about eight months of the year; should he accept the
professorship, he would be able to stay with them without
intervals of absence. He was apprehensive, however,
lest the pavilion assigned him should not be spacious
enough to accommodate his entire household comfortably,
for that household was composed of seventeen
persons besides servants; and he was also expecting an
addition of two more, whose support had fallen on him.
Would he be permitted, like Dr. Emmet, to occupy a
larger house beyond the precincts? If so, he said, he
would be willing to accept the incumbency of the chair.
A satisfactory reply was returned, and he began his duties
with the opening of the session of 1841–2.
Tucker combined to an extraordinary degree the qualifications
required for success in his new position. He was
not simply a distinguished practitioner at the bar: he
had already won an extended reputation as a teacher in
the private law school which he had established at Winchester,
had written a commentary on the laws of Virginia,
which was held in just esteem by the profession;
and had presided with great learning and easy dignity
was remarkable even in that superior social age. Moreover,
like most of the prominent Virginians of those
times, he was deeply versed in polite letters; and like
the vast majority of his fellow Virginians, too, he was
in favor of every man deciding for himself how far he
should enjoy all the pleasures of life provided that he
did not cross the bounds of moderation. "I drink not
a drop," he wrote Cocke in May, 1842, "and, for some
months, have not offered a drop to a student's lips;
and although I have never joined a temperance society,
yet I throw no obstacle in the way of others, but, on
the other hand, encourage it as convenient to us here,
where many are apt to be found not duly influenced by
a sense of propriety, and requiring, therefore, to be
fortified by pledges." He was opposed, he said, to
taking this pledge himself, because he was unwilling to
surrender into the hands of others that untrammeled freedom
of personal carriage which he had always considered
it a duty, as well as a right, to retain.
It was an extraordinary tribute to Tucker's reputation
for temperate judgment and discretion that he should
have been appointed by the Board of Visitors chairman
of the Faculty at the meeting at which he was elected
professor at law. He was reappointed in July, 1842,
and also in July, 1843, and but for the failure of his
health, his tenure of the position would have continued
indefinitely. He seems to have taken up and performed
the duties of his chair with that unfailing fidelity, thoroughness,
and geniality which characterized every phase
of his fruitful and varied career "Four acts of the
drama," he wrote Cocke, "are past, during which I
have had my full share of good fortune, and a larger
portion of public favor than I was entitled to. With the
regret an opportunity of putting off an occupation which
eminently requires the unimpaired vigor of an active intellect,
and of finishing my course by the pleasing and useful
employment of imparting what I have acquired by my
labors to the ingenuous youth of the rising generation. I
have this year (1841–2) been very fortunate, a large proportion
of my class being far above the ordinary character
and talent of our young men. I am most happy in
finding the greater part very diligent and attentive, and
the whole very respectful, and indeed, devoted to me."
John C. Rutherfoord, of Goochland county, afterwards
distinguished in political life, a pupil of Judge Tucker,
testifies to the correctness of this statement. "I have
a great attachment for the Judge," he wrote his father
in March, 1844. "He is not only a Chesterfield in manners,
but a gentleman in every feeling of his heart."
This was the opinion and the attitude of his entire class.
Although constrained by ill health to resign in July, 1845,
after an incumbency that lasted only four years, he had
stamped his views upon the whole framework of the
University by the leading part which he had taken in
abolishing the uniform and early rising ordinances, and
in proposing the introduction of the Honor System in
the examinations.
In July, 1845, John M. Patton, one of the most conspicuous
members of the Virginian bar, was appointed
by the Board to succeed Judge Tucker; but he was unwilling
to accept; and John B. Minor was, on the 29th
of the same month, chosen in his place. Minor was
now in his thirty-second year. The University of Virginia,
at this time, was languishing under a cloud, owing
to the disgraceful riot which had recently occurred.
There was then less to tempt the lawyer in full practice
at any time since the establishment of the school. It
was fortunate that this should have been so, for, in Minor,
the institution secured for its Faculty a man, who, although
not yet enrolled among the greatest members
of the profession in Virginia, was destined to become the
greatest teacher of the law that the State of his nativity,
perhaps the entire South, has produced.
From the hour of his first admission to the bar, he
had displayed all those qualities which afterwards so
conspicuously distinguished him as an instructor. It is
said that, even as a young lawyer, he exhibited extraordinary
powers of analysis; that he refused to ask for
or accept any relaxation in the stiffest requirements of
pleading; and that he showed familiarity with the most
obscure and abstruse rules and forms of practice, but, at
the same time, was equally well informed about the broad
general principles of jurisprudence. It was affirmed of
him even then that he seemed to move in an atmosphere
of law and to live by labor. The draft of his lectures
from the beginning was remarkable for a rigorously logical
and scientific arrangement in imitation of the searching
methods of Hale and Blackstone. "His system,"
said a distinguished graduate of his school, "revealed the
law to the mind's eye as a topographical map of a country
cast in bas relief. He seemed to cut the law into thin
slices."[7]
All the principles of modern law were diligently
and confidently traced by him to the common law,
—the form might have changed, but the spirit itself remained
unaltered. He carried this admiration of the
common law to the verge of fanatical conservatism.[8]
rarely, perhaps never, obtained his approval,—he
only looked upon such innovations as diminishing, to that
degree, the essential beneficence of the whole system.
His industry seemed to have no halting point. Year
after year, he chalked on the broad blackboard of his
classroom the long daily syllabus; and hours after the
University households had gone to bed, his lamp was to
be seen shining through the window of his study, where
he was adjusting the heads of his next lecture, making up
a file of examination papers, writing advisory letters to
former members of his class, or drafting a thoughtful
report for the Faculty. His oral lectures were always
remarkable for their clarity of exposition, and sometimes
for pungency, not to say, causticity, of expression, when
the subject justified personal comment in that vein.
His lofty attitude towards the moral side of the profession
which he taught reached far in its elevating influence.
In those times, the most important figure in every Southern
community was its most respected lawyer. To shape
the character of the leading members of the Southern bar
was to make a broad and profound impression upon the
whole trend of Southern life. Minor's pupils were
drawn from every town and every county in Virginia, and
from every large center in the other States of the South,
and from many of the cities of the West and North.
They afterwards became, not only the legal counsel of the
legislators. They had the foremost part in drafting the
laws, and the foremost part also in moulding public sentiment.
Upon their conception of personal duty and civic
responsibility depended largely the physical well-being
and the moral health of the myriads of people who looked
to them as guides and exemplars. It was upon this great
body of men, the intellectual flower of the South, sitting
in relays under his eye, year after year, during fifty years,
that Minor stamped his lofty standards of professional
obligation, his passion for thoroughness, his austere convictions
of right, and his never ceasing hatred of moral
foulness.[9]
He was as intolerant of relaxation in principle as he
was of innovation in law; and he evinced the religious
feeling that lay at the root of his character by his readiness
to assume any form of personal inconvenience or additional
labor to foster the religious life of the community.
He was a vestryman of his church, the superintendent of
a Sunday school for the slaves, the teacher of a students'
Bible class, and, under his own roof, never omitted family
prayers from day to day. In his character, there was
combined an extraordinary fund of learning, a perfect
firmness and clearness of moral principle, a highly trained
intellect, an almost unapproached capacity for work, and
a spirit responsive to every dictate of civic and religious
duty.
James P. Holcombe, Minor's associate, was a descendant,
on both sides of his house, of military officers of the
Revolution. While still a lad, he was so inflamed by the
adventures of the boy Franklin, as recounted in the famous
autobiography, that he ran away from home in imitation
friend of his father, was found buried in the pages of that
fascinating book as he walked, dusty and sorefooted,
along the highway. "Where are you going?" he was
asked in astonishment. "To the West to make my fortune,"
was the ingenuous and cheery reply. It was only
by threats that he could be moved to return home. The
desire to wander, however, still lurked in his breast. But
it was not as a tramp that he ultimately emigrated,—
having married early in life, he and his bride made the
journey to Ohio in a coach-and-four placed at their disposal
by his father-in-law. During the time that he
was practising law in Cincinnati, his parents left their
home in Lynchburg, and settled in Indiana in order to
rear and educate their other sons in a State that was free
from the institution of slavery. Before turning their
backs on Virginia, they had not only liberated their own
bondsmen, but had also refused to accept a large inheritance
because it consisted of that form of chattels. Such
was the fibre of the stock from which Holcombe, the most
ardent and eloquent advocate of Secession in the Faculty
of the University of Virginia, was sprung! Such was the
atmosphere in which was trained the future member of
the Secession Convention and the Confederate Congress!
When he was first proposed as a candidate for the former
body, he said to the Board of Visitors: "The steadily
increasing number of my students furnishes the most
satisfactory evidence that, notwithstanding much misrepresentation
as to the character of my instruction, it commands
the confidence of the community at large. I have
acted on the persuasion, shared by men of all parties, that
the peace, prosperity, and civilization of the Commonwealth
are at stake; and that, under such circumstances,
no patriotic citizen should hesitate to take any place in
the Republic, suppose that he can render most service."
The spirit which had led him, in his boyhood, to steal
away from a safe and comfortable home, in his search of
great adventures, now prompted him to launch his fortunes,
at the very start, on the dangerous flood of the rising
Confederacy. The brooding peace of the arcades,
the calm dignity of the teacher's platform, the varied
charms of literature, the bonds of intellectual friendship,
—all were left behind, in the spirit of a mediaeval knight,
as he withdrew from the precincts to put his great talents
at the disposal of the new-born nationality. There
was a generous impulsiveness about the whole character
of the man which seemed to attach him more naturally to
the cause of Secession, with its romantic hazards, than
to the drab duties of the lecture-room, however numerous
the opportunities there of discoursing upon questions
which were then dividing the people of the whole country.
Numerous instances, in illustration of his extremely conservative
habit of mind, might be mentioned. Two, fairly typical of the rest,
will be sufficient. First, he was an outspoken opponent of the Married
Woman's Property Act, and to the last, he condemned its passage by
the General Assembly of Virginia—often in words so caustic and sarcastic
that they have lingered in the memory of the present writer, at
that time a student under him, for a period of forty years. Secondly, he
stoutly denied the moral and legal right of the Visitors to alter the regulation,
established by Jefferson, which awarded to each professor the
tuition fees of his school. A precedent had been set at the University's
inauguration, which, in his opinion, should, for that reason, have been
retained indefinitely.
Judge James C. Lamb, in an address in memory of Professor Minor,
estimated the number of men who had attended his classes at six thousand.
XII. The Professors, Continued
In 1841, J. J. Sylvester was called to the chair of
mathematics made vacant by the death of Bonnycastle.
Key had warmly recommended his appointment. He was
a graduate of St. John's College, Cambridge, and at the
time of his election, professor of natural philosophy and
astronomy in the University of London. Young as he
was, he had already won a great reputation by his extraordinary
achievements in mathematical science. "He
is regarded here," Stevenson, the American Minister to
the Court of St. James, wrote to Cabell in October, 1841,
"as one of the first mathematicians of the age, and you
may rely on it, if he has a fair chance, he will distinguish
himself and do good service to our old State."
Unhappily, Sylvester, who was a Jew by birth and in
morbidly sensitive, he was inclined to nurse his
self-esteem to the point of thinking himself infallible;
and when aroused to anger, his sense of discretion always
failed to put any restraint whatever upon its outburst.
In spite of his acknowledged eminence, he was chosen
by the Board for one year only; and this, quite naturally,
was a cause of mortification to him. "I would not have
accepted a place nearer home on such terms," he told
Stevenson; and this statement was repeated by him in a letter
to Chapman Johnson. "I should certainly never have
consented," he said, "to receive an appointment similarly
limited in any institution nearer home, where there existed
more sure means of becoming acquainted with my personal
reputation and general character, and weighing the
full value of the testimonials and other documents which
I have been able to procure in support of my claims."
Johnson replied in a spirit of independence. Stevenson,
it seems, had assured Sylvester that the probational tenure
was customary, and without personal significance; but
Johnson was not so considerate. "The professor elected
for one year," he wrote, "was not always appointed permanently
even when he had given satisfaction. So far
from feeling themselves committed to a permanent appointment,
the Visitors adopt the manner of a temporary
one as a prudent precaution to enable them to judge upon
better information how far the interests of the institution
will be promoted by making the appointment permanent."
Sylvester was so much discouraged by the tone of this
letter that he was only prevented from recalling his acceptance
by the receipt of kindly messages from George
Tucker and Joseph C. Cabell. His extreme sensitiveness
very often took the form of race consciousness, and he
his excellent post in the University of London by
the expectation that the social position of a learned Jew
would be better in the United States than it was in England.
But before leaving the English shores, he heard,
with painful concern, that his appointment had been censured
in the Richmond journals because of his Hebrew
origin. It is plain that he set out for his destination
with a feeling of justifiable soreness, caused partly by his
temporary nomination, and partly by this bigoted reflection
on himself in the Virginian newspapers. He
reached the University in November, 1841, and his arrival,
having been preceded by many rumors and conjectures,
created a sensation; but he had no reason to complain
of any lack of cordiality. "The students," we are
told by John C. Rutherfoord, who was present, "briliantly
illuminated the arcades in his honor, and made it
the occasion of universal rejoicing."
The first impression of Sylvester was a pleasing one.
"At his inaugural address," says Professor Rogers, "he
was terribly embarrassed; indeed, quite overwhelmed.
He has a good deal of hesitation, is not fluent, but is very
enthusiastic, and commands the attention and interest of
his class." He had been filling his chair barely three
months when he fell into a wrangle with one of his students,
whom he had seen reading a newspaper while his
lecture was underway. So soon as the class was dismissed,
he had called up the delinquent, Ballard by name,
and sharply rebucked him. Ballard was so disrespectful
as to order the professor peremptorily "to stop his jaw."
Sylvester, in a high state of excitement, was walking up
and down the platform while these remarks were banded
between the two; and finally, in a rage, he commanded
the young man to leave the room, which he refused to do,
had no right to assert any further control over his actions.
The Faculty, on receiving the Professor's indignant demand
for Ballard's expulsion,—which should have been
complied with,—took the same view as the refractory
student, but concluded to refer the dispute to the Board
for decision.
While it would seem that Sylvester had been unable to
prolong the pleasant impression which he had created at
first, yet, at the same time, there was probably grave exaggeration
in Ballard's statement "that he had not conducted
himself like a gentleman since his connection with
the University began." It was indisputable that there
was a provincial prejudice against him as a Jew and a
foreigner. Kraitsir complained,—with much less reason,
undoubtedly,—that he too was the target of the
same illiberal hostility because he was a Hungarian, and,
perhaps, also because he was a Catholic. Key and Long
had been conscious of the same inimical attitude, though it
was not so pronounced in their instance as in the cases of
Sylvester, Kraitsir, and Blaettermann,—all three of
whom were open to just criticisms for radical personal
defects, which could not be brought against the two well-bred
and socially accomplished Englishmen. Apparently,
none of this feeling was aroused by Bonnycastle and Dunglison.
On February 24, 1842, Sylvester resigned because
he was very properly dissatisfied with the Faculty's
failure to sustain him in the exercise of his rightful authority
over an insulting student of his class. But the
Board seems to have approved the Faculty's action, although
they vaguely disclaimed "any intention to impute
to the professor any blame in that matter."
In 1843, Sylvester was a candidate for the professorship
of mathematics in Columbia College, and he wrote to
that would remove the cloud that rested over
his chances of success, in consequence of the report of his
quarrel with Ballard. "We desire, in justice to him,"
was the reply, "to correct any misconception on this subject
which may now be operating to his disadvantage.
We, therefore, beg leave to state that his separation from
the University was entirely his own voluntary act, occasioned,
as they conceive, by dissatisfaction at the course
his colleagues thought it proper to adopt towards a student
whom he had reprimanded for inattention in a lecture-room,
and whom, in their view of the circumstances,
they were unwilling to punish to the extent he required."
Such were the incidents that accompanied the avoidable
loss to the University of Virginia of one of the most extraordinary
mathematicians of modern times.[10]
Pike Powers completed Sylvester's unfinished term, and
was succeeded by Edward H. Courtenay as the permanent
incumbent of the chair. Courtenay possessed all the
genial qualities which Sylvester lacked. "How kindly
just he was," says Professor Francis H. Smith, "how
mild and gentle both inside and outside of the lectureroom!
A master of his subject, a profound and patient
instructor, who can forget the pathetic and even tremulous
tones in which he spoke of the asserted failure of
Taylor's Theorem, or the smile that lighted up his face
when he mentioned the properties said to be enjoyed by
the rectangular hyperbola."[11]
Professor Charles S. Venable,
another of his pupils, shared this impression of the
amiable humor of the man. "He had," he says, "the
very difficult questions, and when in his notes, he announced
that some statement was obviously true, we always
found that an uphill road lay before the younglings
who had to refind it." He was without an enemy, and
was as much respected and beloved by the Board and
his colleagues as by the students. When he asked to be
excused from reelection as chairman in 1845, the Visitors
positively refused to accede to his request. "We believe
you," they said, "to be peculiarly well qualified, and have
abundant reason to know that no other member of the
Faculty would, at this time, be as acceptable. The general
voice on all sides calls loudly for your appointment."
Courtenay's native efficiency had been invigorated by
an officer's training, for, at the age of sixteen, he had
graduated at the head of his class at the Military Academy
at West Point; and he had been advanced to a full
professorship in that great school by the time that he was
twenty-six. Afterwards, he had filled the chair of mathematics
in the University of Pennsylvania. Elected to
the same chair at the University of Virginia, without any
solicitation on his part, he had, in the absence of an
assistant, been compelled to give himself up to class duties
at the sacrifice of all leisure for original investigation
and composition. He lightened his labors, as we have
already mentioned, by stenciling the syllabus of his lectures
on large rolls of cotton cloth, which were used in
succession.
The subsequent history of these rolls illustrates the
makeshifts which were employed by the Virginians in the
lean years of the war. They were sold by Professor
Courtenay's executor, and ultimately found their way into
the possession of Dr. Fleming, of Hanover county, a
large slaveholder. When the spectre of impoverishment
Dr. Fleming was at a great loss how to prevent his youthful
negroes from reverting joyfully to the complete nudity
of the African jungles. Apparently, there was no
stuff except hickory and oak leaves with which to clothe
them, for all the sheep and oxen had been consumed by
the armies, and the old garments were now too tattered
to be patched. The presence of the rolls in the garret
luckily leaped to his mind; the mammies were set busily
to work; and soon the pickaninnies were tumbling about
the yard with half the problems of geometry and calculus
conspicuously imprinted upon their backs. It was said
at the time that an observant traveller passing that way
could have found no difficulty in furbishing up his whole
mathematical education by studying the wonderful display
of figures on the persons of these little grinning and
animated blackboards.
Among the candidates for Courtenay's vacant chair,
which was filled temporarily by Alexander H. Nelson,
was Thomas J. Jackson, the renowned Stonewall of Confederate
history. His testimonials commended, with palpable
sincerity, his courage, energy, scholarship, and devotion
to duty.
Albert Taylor Bledsoe was elected to succeed Courtenay
in June, 1854. As between Jackson and himself, at
that time, the choice offered small room for hesitation.
He, like Jackson, was a graduate of the Military Academy
at West Point, and while there, had not only been a
close comrade of both Davis and Lee, but had won unusual
reputation as a mathematician; indeed, it was actually
said of him that he had solved a problem of
Archimedes which no one except himself, throughout the
centuries, had been able to solve. He remained only
two years in the army; then resigning, became, at first,
theology. During a short period, he served as the assistant
of Bishop Smith, of Kentucky; but balking at the
essential doctrine of baptismal regeneration, he turned to
law; and when competent to practise, opened an office in
Springfield, Illinois. While a member of this bar, he
was constantly thrown into the company of Stephen A.
Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. Annually, the practitioner
who had won the largest number of cases during
the preceding twelve months was presented by his associates
with a basket of champagne. On at least one
occasion, Bledsoe carried off this exhilarating prize.
But the prospect of this and more substantial awards
from the profession, did not keep him loyal to it permanently;
at the end of ten years, he was, as mathematical
professor, engaged in teaching in Kenyon College; and
from that institution, passed in succession to Miami University,
the University of Mississippi, and the University
of Virginia. Although he was, in all these important institutions,
the chief mathematical instructor, his taste at
bottom was for metaphysical studies. His power of
abstraction reached a phenomenal height. When in that
state of mind, only a direct appeal by name could rouse
him from his reverie, and this he always resented.
"Give me a blow on the head with a hammer," he would
say as he writhed, "and it would be much more merciful."
"He would go to his meals," we are told by his
son, "eat them mechanically, and never once come to a
sense of where he was or what he was doing." In tenacity
of memory, he was the peer of Macaulay. Left
without a copy of an elaborate index to one of his works,
prepared by himself, but lost in transportation to the
publishers, he restored it from the tablets of his recollection
without the omission of a single detail.
Such were the mental qualities of a professor who, by
some humorous stroke of perverse destiny, found himself
in the uniform of a colonel in the Confederate army not
long after hostilities began. Davis told him that his
brains in the closet would be of far more value to the
cause than his sword in the field, and he was, in consequence,
appointed assistant secretary of war; but even this
position was not suitable to his talents; and again by
Davis's advice, it seems, he gave himself up to the composition
of a volume on the constitutional right of secession.
In order to secure the necessary authorities for this
work, he was compelled to make his way to London
through the blockade; and on his return, he issued the
once famous treatise, Is Davis a Traitor? Subsequently,
he found congenial and fruitful employment as editor
of the Southern Review. His estimate of a new volume
was sometimes expressed with unconventional curtness.
"Your book and letter have been received," he wrote one
author. "You say that you have not looked into the
subject for twenty years. After reading your book, I
should not suppose you have." "Your book has in it
many new things and many true things," he wrote another,
"but unfortunately, none of the true things are
new, and none of the new things are true." Bledsoe's
religious views were so far from orthodox, that when,
during his last years, he wished to be called again to the
pulpit, the Methodist denomination alone was willing to
offer him an opportunity to preach. His success in that
character was moderate, as his enunciation was defective,
and his sermons, though profound in thought, were too
heavy to win popularity.
Schele de Vere, who succeeded Kraitsir as professor of
modern languages, though a Swede by birth and a Prussian
by allegiance, was a Frenchman in appearance,
polished in manners, finical in dress, and precise in language,
he bore on his cultivated personality the hallmark
of the Parisian boulevard. "He was regarded at the
University of Virginia," says Professor Francis H.
Smith, "as the arbiter of good form; what he endorsed
was questioned by no one." "We were sure," remarked
one of his pupils, "that we had only to copy his dress to
be certain of being in the fashion." The members of his
class, we are told, jokingly asserted that he would excuse
many linguistic shortcomings in any one among them who
flaunted a red cravat. His silk hat in winter, and high-priced
straw hat in summer, were accepted within the
college precincts as the last expression of elegance.
In early life, Schele had resided in Silesia not far
from the Polish border, and this gave him an opportunity
to learn the Slavic tongue, and having once mastered
that language, all other languages, he said, were easy to
acquire. His first lessons in French were given by a
Breton nurse, and, in consequence, his accent was made
defective by a slight burr. Though clear, deliberate, and
distinct in utterance, his intonation was, from this early
contact, more peculiar than his foreign birth would otherwise
have explained. As a young man, he had travelled
extensively before completing his studies at the Universities
of Berlin and Bonn; and he had afterwards seen active
military service in both Prussia and Algiers. In
1843, influenced by the high reputation enjoyed abroad
by Longfellow and Ticknor, he emigrated to Boston, and
during his stay there, although only a private instructor in
the Italian, French, and English literatures, he was on a
footing of intimacy with the members of that distinguished
and charming circle. "I have heard much of
him from the Literati of Cambridge and Boston," wrote
one word which was not highly creditable to him as an
accomplished scholar, and to his character as a refined
and amiable gentleman."
It was by Longfellow's advice that he became a candidate
for the professorship of modern languages in the
University of Virginia, and he was recommended for
that chair, not only by the poet himself, but also by
Abbott Lawrence and Josiah Quincy. He was supported
too by the Prussian consul-general at Baltimore, a proof
that he looked upon himself as a subject of Prussia.
This must have been generally known, for, after his election
in September, 1844, the Richmond Whig, a journal
hostile to the University, referred to him "as Mr. Maximilian
Rudolph Schele de Vere, of Prussia, who had been
chosen in preference to a distinguished American." Immediately
upon his arrival, he showed his refined social
instincts by seeking out the highly cultivated country gentry
of Albemarle,—the families of Edgehill, Castle Hill,
Blenheim, and Carlton, among others,—and in the end
married a daughter of Alexander Rives, and after her
death, her sister.
Schele entered with enthusiasm into the duties of his
chair. These were of a very difficult character because
there was little preparation in the Continental languages
given at that time by the academies which contributed
students to the University of Virginia. The majority of
his pupils were admitted to his school without any information
of value as to the structure of any one of these
languages, and without any training in speaking them.
But he was not discouraged by the arduous labor which
this fact imposed on him. How extraordinary was his
capacity for work was illustrated, in 1848, when his
mother's situation in Berlin was rendered precarious by
able to go to her assistance in time, without curtailing
the usual length of his courses, he crowded thirteen lectures
into every six days, the students cheerfully volunteering
to double their tasks to make it possible for him
to leave for Europe, at an early date. "After an unsatisfactory
tussle in taking notes under a rapid talker," says
Professor Francis H. Smith, "it was very pleasant to
pass into the modern language lecture-room, and listen,
pencil in hand, to the clear and not too fast utterance of
the teacher, who frequently paused of purpose, and yet
naturally, to pass to the blackboard and write down an
illustrating word or sentence, thus giving a slow writer
ample time to jot down every word both spoken and
written. His bearing (in the class-room) was a model
of propriety."
John Staige Davis was five years old when his father
was appointed professor of law in the University of Virginia.
So precociously intelligent and industrious was he
as a student that he became a master of arts in his sixteenth
year; and to this crowning success in the literary
and scientific schools, he, at the end of another twelve
months, added the diploma of a doctor of medicine. A
master of arts and a doctor of medicine several years
before he reached his majority,—such was the record
that he carried to Philadelphia, where his professional
studies were completed. After a short experience of
country practice, he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy
in the University of Virginia. He had been
absent from its precincts only two years altogether; and
there he was to remain until he breathed his last in 1885.
"He had no superior as a lecturer," declares the resolution
passed by his colleagues at his death, "and he
was fully abreast of the latest advances in medical science
and full of sympathy, he won the confidence and
affection of his patients; at the bedside of the sick, he was
always easy, bright, encouraging, and inspiring. "Duty
was his guiding star," says Dr. Herbert Claiborne, who
had known him from boyhood. "No interest, no
pleasure, no appeal, could induce him to swerve one
inch from that course which he had decided to be right
for him to follow." On occasion, at his class' expense,
he could be witty, sarcastic and pungent. "But he
never referred by word or act to any of these flings,"
says an old pupil, "but he met us afterward in the same
urbane manner that characterized his life, just as though
nothing beyond the ordinary had occurred." Davis was
lithe in figure, alert and nervous in movement, and mobile
in feature. His vivid temperament was reflected in the
vivacity of his eye, and in the mercurial expression of his
face, which responded with the quickness of a flash to
every inner mood and emotion of the man.
In March, 1888, Dr. Archer Atkinson, of Baltimore, presented the
University of Virginia with a photograph of Professor Sylvester, which
was received by the Faculty with an expression of high appreciation.
XIII. The Professors, Continued
It was the fortunate lot of Basil L. Gildersleeve to be
born in Charleston,—that city of stately residences and
churches, long-descended families, courtly manners, and
conservative spirit. No doubt, the mellowness and refinement
of this atmosphere left its impression upon the
sensitive and receptive mind of the precocious boy. At
four years of age, he could read, and at five had perused
the Bible from alpha to omega, a staggering feat which
he had probably been stimulated to undertake by an austere
father of Calvinistic convictions, who, originally
from the North, had married a lady of Carolinian blood,
and become a loyal citizen of the South, and sympathetically
identified with its interests. But luckily there was at
wind of dogma to the shorn lamb by leading him, as he
grew older, into the romantic pastures of Shakespere and
Scott. Hand in hand with this intense enjoyment of the
charm and beauty of the English classics, went his study,
under his father's highly competent tutelage, of Caesar,
Cicero, Virgil, and Horace. By his thirteenth year, he
had turned Plato's Critic into English prose, and Anacreon
into English verse; and he was far enough advanced
in his knowledge of the Greek tongue to understand the
Greek Testament. In 1845, his family removed to Richmond.
At that time, there was among the principal families
of the Virginian capital, a remarkable relish for
good literature, which, like the social tone of Charleston,
may have quickened the growth of his natural tastes.
It was during his stay there, as a teacher in a private
school, that he first saw Poe, whose appearance he has
described in graphic language. His education was continued
in Princeton, and completed in the Universities of
Berlin, Bonn and Göttingen,—in which latter institution,
he won the degree of doctor of philosophy.
With all his pedagogic skill and stores of philological
learning, Professor Gildersleeve has, throughout his career,
retained his primal bent as an accomplished man of
letters. He has been the humanist first and the linguist
and grammarian afterwards. Beneath the stiff crust of
the student, the flexible artist has shown himself at every
turn. In which province has he been most admirable,
English or Greek or Latin scholarship? About his literary
utterance, the finest spirit of each of these three
great literatures has seemed to play, with such interfusion
that it has been impossible to say where one began and
the other ended. He had, as a teacher, the capacity to
with living verdure and sparkling waters by the mirages
which his literary subtlety was able to spread over them.
No student ever sat at his feet without being more vividly
conscious of the flame-like spirit, than of the dry bones,
of those classical tongues. He had a power of literary
suggestion that refined and ripened the taste of his pupils
at the very time that he increased their stock of philological
information. No one stickled more firmly for accuracy
in form than he; and yet no one was more insistent
upon the soul that gave that form its significance. His
sense of beauty and proportion was never dimmed, or
paralyzed, or overwhelmed by the accumulation of knowledge.
"The charm of the Hellenic spirit," says Professor
Thornton, his most eloquent biographer, "its swift
mobility, its magic flexibility, its governed freedom, its
unerring rectitude, entered into his thought and his work."
That work reached beyond the bounds of pedagogy, even
of the highest order, and entered the field of universal
literature. It has been justly said of him that, had he
passed his life in London, with his genius concentrated on
English composition alone, the achievements of his pen
would have given him a conspicuous place among the foremost
writers of his age.
The physical character of the man seemed in unison
with those sarcastic and sardonic powers which he could
voice so sharply whenever in the mood to do so. The
general impression was one of darkness,—a very thick
black beard and very black hair, in the midst of which setting,
the ball of the eye seemed phenomenally white, and
the eye itself singularly keen and penetrating, with a lurking
expression of humor that deepened or lightened in
response to the appeal of the passing moment. The perceptible
during the war, added to the highly individualized aspect
of this great teacher.
George Frederick Holmes was born under the British
flag, and remained a British subject until his death, although
most of his life was passed in America. Son of
an English judge-advocate of Demerara, he was sent to
school and college in county Durham, and there won the
reputation of being a prodigy of miscellaneous knowledge
for one of his years. This reputation he never afterwards
lost. Drifting to Canada at the age of seventeen,
and subsequently to the United States, he turned for a
livelihood first to law, and was admitted to the bar of
South Carolina; but his interest in his profession was always
that of a student, and not that of a practitioner.
"I do believe," wrote a friend at this time, "that you are
but a wandering star out of your proper orbit. There is
a vacant chair somewhere, and you will yet be screwed
into it." The prediction came true, but after a long
interval of discouragement. In succession, he was a professor
in Richmond College and the College of William
and Mary, and president of the University of Mississippi.
All these positions were held by him before he had arrived
at his thirtieth year; but not one seemed to be entirely
congenial to his tastes. As a pedagogue, he continued
to be what he had been as a lawyer: the indefatigable
but recluse scholar. He was more employed, during
these years, in writing articles for the reviews than in arguing
cases or delivering lectures. His learning, however,
won influential friends, whatever the occupation of
the hour,—such friends as John R. Thompson, William
Gilmore Simms, Francis Lieber, William C. Preston,
John Tyler, B.M. Palmer, men, who, with extraordinary
the young Englishman a profound love of letters.
After several years passed in southwest Virginia,—
during which, as lawyer, teacher and farmer, Holmes
contributed copiously to various periodicals, although so
far removed from libraries, museums, and scientific institutions
of all sorts,—he was chosen to be professor of
history and literature in the University of Virginia; and
from this time, he seems to have found the stability which
was lacking in his previous career. "I remember with
great distinctness," says Prof. W. R. Abbot, "the profound
and favorable impression which his lectures made,
especially upon the better and more matured students.
He furnished to my friends the theme of conversation
during their leisure hours; and really seemed to me to
have raised somewhat the tone of their discourse amongst
themselves." The story is told of him, in proof of his
extraordinary learning, that a dispute having arisen between
him and a colleague on some topic that fell within
that colleague's particular province, the latter wrote for
information to the head of one of the great English universities,
and received the reply: "The only thorough
and authentic discussion of that subject was written by a
man named Holmes, who, I think, holds a professorship
in your university." This story gives the best index to
his quality. He was not so much the professor or the
writer as he was the encyclopaedic scholar. This was his
central characteristic. The various occupations which he
adopted in the course of his life seemed to be something
apart from his erudition; or, at least, secondary to the
vast accumulation of general knowledge which he personified.
When George Tucker resigned the chair of moral philosophy,
to Thomas R. Dew, who then enjoyed throughout the
Southern States a great reputation for ability and scholarship.
When he declined, Rev. W.H. McGuffey, of Ohio,
was chosen by the Board. McGuffey, although not the
first clergyman elected, was the first to become an actual
member of the Faculty, for Rev. James Knox had not accepted
the offer which was held out to him by Jefferson.
Though a complete departure from the tacit policy of the
institution hitherto, McGuffey's selection seemed to be
singularly appropriate to the character of the chair. He
was a Presbyterian of the straitest sect, but nevertheless
of so little religious exclusiveness that he was willing to
preach as often in the pulpits of other denominations as
in his own. In a letter to Cocke, written in December,
1845, he mentions incidentally that he had recently delivered
sermons in the Methodist and Baptist churches
of Charlottesville.
Beyond the precincts of the University, his series of
books for children had made his name known to thousands
of households; but within the precincts, he justly
enjoyed a vivid reputation as a metaphysician and lecturer.
Perhaps, his subjects did not allow much room
for rhetorical entertainment, but sometimes he would
rise to such a height of eloquence that applause would
break out, like a sudden storm, among his listening pupils.
The manner in which he would receive this evidence of
approbation would depend on his mood at the moment.
"Asses," he exclaimed on one occasion of this kind,
"show their approval by their bray, and their disapproval
by their heels"; or he would gently warn the members
of his class that they had violated the rules. Professor
Crawford H. Toy seems to have thought that his old
preceptor was lacking in a sense of humor. Perhaps
power of sarcasm. "I once asked him," says one of his
students, who was probably a doubting Thomas, "if a
certain philosopher did not hold so and so." "Some
fools, Sir," he replied, "were of that opinion." Then
pausing for a moment, he leaned forward with a smile,
"and some fools are still of that opinion," he added.
Another of his students who was overcome, either by the
heat of the season, or the subtleties of logic, went to sleep
during a lecture, and while gently slumbering, created a
diversion by a very abrupt and explosive snore, which
at once woke him up. "I congratulate you, Sir," said
the professor in the blandest tones, "upon having given
vent to the only intelligible utterance you have ever made
in this class-room."
It was said of McGuffey that he possessed an extraordinary
power to stimulate his pupils to think and reason
for themselves. "He never seemed so happy," remarks
Judge R.T.W. Duke, Jr., one of these pupils, "as when,
with his class around him, in his lecture-room, he threaded
the mazes of psychological inquiry, pouring a flood of
illustration on points the most obscure and perplexing,
now luring on by the beauties of his imagery, now arousing
by the glowing fervor of his style, now going back on
his course to encourage those whose sluggish minds had
been unable to follow him, mingling incident and anecdote,
humor and pathos." It was noted that the number
of his graduates was, proportionate to his class, the largest
in the University list. "How did this happen?" he
was sometimes asked. "I have always been of the opinion,"
he would wisely reply, "that the test of a good
teacher was evidenced by the knowledge his pupils exhibited.
I teach my men to know their subject; and I
would deem myself a failure, if a larger number of them
grander," we are again told by Judge Duke, "than the
continued attack he made on atheism and infidelity. His
blows rained on the citadel of infidelity like the blows of
Richard Coeur de Lion on the walls of the castle of
Front de Boeuf." The doctrine of predestination also
aroused his combativeness in spite of his staunch Presbyterianism.
As much as he delighted in syllogism and syllogistic
reasoning, his powers as a lecturer are said to
have expanded most in his discourses on the philosophy
of rhetoric, and the elements of criticism. His lectures
upon the Elizabethan literature never failed to arouse the
responsive enthusiasm of his pupils, which they vented in
rounds of applause that seemed to shake the very walls
about them.
If we omit the youthful Gessner Harrison from view,
Francis H. Smith received the highest personal compliment
that, previous to 1861, was paid to any candidate
for a professorship in the University of Virginia. Harrison,
as we have seen, was elected to the chair of ancient
languages so soon after his graduation as a doctor of
medicine that he had no time to take any step to set himself
up in his calling. He mounted from a seat in the
class-room to the rostrum at a bound. Smith, on the
other hand, had, before his appointment, been performing
the obscure and modest duties of an assistant to the
professor of mathematics. Through these duties, he had
acquired some experience as a teacher in a subordinate
way, and thus, unlike Harrison, had had an opening for
demonstrating his mettle in that character. If the higher
testimonial of capacity could be claimed for Harrison because
the Board were willing to elect him before that
capacity had been really tested, could a loftier confidence
have been shown in Smith than to choose him, a mere assistant,
in some of his qualities, was the most extraordinary man
who has been associated with the University of Virginia in
all its history, and whose reputation was never more brilliant
than at the hour of his resignation?
Cabell, like Harrison, had been elected a professor before
he had begun the practice of his profession, but, during
several years, had been detached from the University;
and it was repeatedly asserted, at the time, that this election
was the result as much of his uncle's influence,—although
not directly brought to bear,—as of his own merits,
whether as a man or as a student. He soon proved
himself to be, as we know, one of the most gifted and
useful instructors among the members of the Faculty, and
thus fully justified his uncle's approval of his candidacy.
Up to a definite point also, Harrison's election was to be
attributed to the impression made by Long's confidence in
his ability and scholarship; but the youthful Smith seems
to have been promoted to a full professorship by the
weight of his extraordinary attainments alone. He soon
exhibited, to a very conspicuous degree, his possession of
that rare strain of eloquence which had made his predecessor
so famous. It was said, before many sessions had
gone by, that he was the most oratorical and polished
lecturer in the accomplished corps of teachers, and in his
case, as in Rogers's,—whose life had been a fountain
of inspiration to him,—this talent was united with the
most accurate and solid knowledge of the subjects upon
which he lectured. That talent found expression in a
fine voice, the choicest language, a mobile face, and an
impressive manner.
It was remarked of Professor Smith by one of his
pupils that he never employed brusqueness and sarcasm
as weapons, and never endeavored to embarrass his pupils
ignorance. The topics embraced in his several
courses seemed, at times, to assume the complete mastery
over every one of his faculties. "He would become so
buried in thought," says Dr. Culbreth, in a sympathetic
portrayal of him, "as to lose sight of his immediate surroundings.
During the hour before lecture, especially towards
its latter portion, while the class gradually assembled,
I have often seen him so thoroughly absorbed in the
preparation of apparatus and syllabus that he was lost
apparently to the outside world. He might happen to
see one of us enter, but the sight was semi-conscious, as he
seemed almost possessed of a charm or spell. It was
during such a mental hold that we always expected beautiful
expressions and descriptions, masterly oratorical efforts,
and usually there was no disappointment." And
another biographer, writing of him in his serene old age,
when he was the only professor left within the precincts
who belonged to this early coterie, says, "He has lingered
amongst us like a figure of eternal youth. His attainments
and deep learning, the beauty of his Christian character,
the sweetness of his disposition, the gentleness of
his manner, are united with the sternest sense of rectitude
and the highest principles of honor."[12]
Robert Rogers was followed in the professorship of
chemistry by J. Lawrence Smith. Smith occupied this
chair during too brief a period to leave a permanent impression
upon the social and scholastic life of the University.
He, in turn, was succeeded by Socrates Maupin,
who enjoys the distinction of having filled the chairmanship
of the Faculty,—a position calling for great administrative
talent,—longer than any one of that body
who was selected for this responsible office before the
diplomas of both a master of art and a doctor of medicine,
and afterwards, during many years, was the professor
of chemistry in the medical college at Richmond.
His possession of uncommon force of character, ability,
and acquirements, was demonstrated, in a conspicuous
manner, by his advancement to the chairmanship of the
University of Virginia the second year after his appointment
to a professorship in that institution.[13]
Gessner Harrison withdrew, in 1859, with the intention
of founding a classical school of his own. This
school, but for the intervention of the war, would have
been certainly successful, owing to the high reputation
which he enjoyed throughout the South. He had filled
the chair of ancient languages, and, afterwards, the chair
of Latin, for more than thirty-one years. His association
with the University of Virginia,—as was said of him
on the occasion of his resignation,—"had extended
through all the stages of its youth, and he had stood by
it in adversity, and had rejoiced with it in prosperity."
In the opinion of the Faculty, as expressed in a formal
resolution, "he had done more than any other man for
the cause of education and sound learning in his native
State." His fructifying influence as a scholar had, in
reality, reached throughout the South, and he was, perhaps,
the most venerated figure in the collegiate life of
that region previous to the breaking out of the war.
In June, 1859, Lewis H. Coleman, headmaster of the
Hanover Academy, a preparatory institution of the highest
repute, was chosen as Harrison's successor. This
remarkable man was connected with the University too
short a time to leave the stamp of his acknowledged talents
and acquirements on the School of Latin. Responding
to the call of the Confederacy, he gave up his professorship,
and after rising to conspicuous rank in the army,
died in consequence of a wound which he had received at
the Battle of Fredericksburg.
While still a very young man, Maupin had been provisional president
of Hampden-Sidney College. In the resolution adopted by the
Faculty of the University of Virginia at his death, they praised his tact,
firmness, and moderation. "It was due largely to him," said they, "that
the prostration during the war was not a final and remediless blow" to
the institution. "His services," they add, "were of incalculable value in
restoring its fallen fortunes." They further dwelt on his "extraordinary
aptitude for affairs, his clear perception of complex transactions, his rare
sagacity and promptness of decision, his varied knowledge of the practical
interests of society."
XIV. Assistants and Salaries
During many years, the incumbent of the chair of
modern languages was the only member of the Faculty
who was allowed an assistant. From the beginning, opposition
was shown to such an innovation, on the ground
that many students would thereby be deprived of the benefit
of their professor's knowledge in important departments
of his school. The increase in the attendance, and
also in the number of subjects, made the addition at last
imperative. It was undoubtedly as practicable to lecture
to five hundred young men at one sitting as to one
hundred, if the area of the class-room was sufficient to
accommodate their person; but it was not possible for
the instructor, however assiduous, to require so many to
recite constantly, or put to them all, except at long intervals,
the interrogatories necessary to test their information.
The tax on the professor's time was particularly
heavy in the Schools of Ancient and Modern Languages,
and in the School of Mathematics, as these schools called
for extraordinary labor in the correction of exercises during
the recurring intervals between the meetings of the
classes.
In 1851, assistants were chosen for the courses in mathematics,
had complained very pointedly that the mechanical side
of his duties left him no leisure for the prosecution of his
private studies, with a view to the improvement of his
pupils. "Without such aid," exclaimed Schele de Vere,
"it is impossible for me to do justice to my class." This
statement does not seem exaggerated, when it is recalled
that he was delivering thirteen lectures weekly at this
time; and that, during the same interval, he also corrected
two hundred and eighty exercises. The professor
of mathematics was compelled to examine one hundred
and sixty. The assistants were nominated by the Faculty
with the Board's approval. They remained under
the close supervision of their principals; had no share in
the administration of the University; and were only expected
to maintain order in their classrooms. They had
the use of books from the library exempt from the usual
fee, and received a salary of seven hundred dollars annually.
Their meals and lodgings were obtained without
the precincts.
At the close of the session of 1856–57, a system of
licentiates was adopted for the Schools of Latin, Greek,
and Mathematics. These positions were at first reserved
for distinguished graduates [14]
; but, in the following year
the appointment could be secured by any one who should
submit satisfactory testimonials of fitness and character;
and such a one was permitted to form a class for private
instruction in any school he might select; but all his pupils
must be drawn from that school, and his tuition must
be in harmony with the teachings of its professor. It
was expected that the licentiates would show extraordinary
zeal and industry, as upon their record would depend
their hope of further progress in their profession, either
of equal standing. In turn, it was anticipated
that the professors would be stimulated by the assiduity
and fidelity of their subordinates. At first, the latter
were denied the right to ask for a larger fee than ten
dollars for each pupil, but, afterwards, the amount was
permitted to be fixed by private agreement.
We learn from a statement made by Professor William
B. Rogers that, during the interval between 1841 and
1845, the average salary of the professors was twenty-three
hundred dollars. That salary fell short of the
amount received by most of the instructors of Harvard,
Columbia, West Point, Princeton, and the Universities
of Pennsylvania and South Carolina; and was about
equal to the professional income of the second-rate lawyers
and physicians of that day. By 1850, the financial
condition of the University of Virginia had improved so
much, in consequence of the increase in the number of
students,—which in its turn was due to the rise in agricultural
prices,—that the Board of Visitors concluded
that they would be justified in conferring a more liberal
reward on the members of the Faculty for their services.
It was determined that three thousand dollars would be a
sufficient maximum for this purpose; and should the fees
of a school for a single session exceed that figure, the surplus
was to be retained by the proctor for the enlargement
of the library, the purchase of additional philosophical
and chemical apparatus, and the accumulation of specimens
for a museum. Harrison alone was to continue
to receive all the fees of his pupils, however far the total
might run beyond the maximum adopted. This privilege
was granted to him in consideration of his extraordinary
services; but naturally such an act of discrimination in
of his colleagues.
In 1854, it was provided that, should the fees of a
school rise above $2,250, the amount in excess should be
retained for general use.
Under the modified rule of remuneration, whether of
1850 or 1854, most of the professors acquired a larger
salary than had fallen to them before the change; and the
alteration was, therefore, regarded by them with approval.
Indeed, this alteration had been suggested by the
Faculty as a whole, and the resolution proposing it is said
to have been drafted by that body acting through the
majority of its members. John B. Minor, a stickler for
the precedent established by Jefferson, took the ground
that the fees, having, from the beginning, been designed
for tuition, were the earnings of the several professors,
and could not be legally given up by themselves, or legally
taken away by the Board. He seems to have been sustained
in this view only by those of his colleagues whose
schools were so well attended as to afford them a large
surplus; the majority of the Faculty, being benefited by
the rule, were apparently indifferent to this interpretation
at that time; and it was not until 1856, when all
prices had been swollen by the production of vast quantities
of gold in California that, as a body, they again began
to show their former restiveness. A memorial was
addressed by them to the Board of Visitors during that
year, in which emphasis was laid upon the decline in the
purchasing power of the definite amount which was allowed
them. They were now confronted, they said, with
the great advance in the cost of food and the other necessaries
of life which had followed in the wake of the prevailing
agricultural prosperity,—one of the results of the
some relief, they should share in this prosperity,
because it was reflected in the University's financial condition.
It was with this expectation, they added, that
they had assented to the adoption of the fixed remuneration.
No claim was now put forward that the Visitors
had acted illegally in retaining all fees in excess of a maximum.
The Board appears to have returned no reply to this
very reasonable petition; and in the following year, it was
repeated in a spirit of even deeper earnestness. For the
first time now the assertion was embodied in writing by
the Faculty that the professors were not employees of
the University, but partners, whose rights, like those of
an inducted clergyman of the Anglican church, were
vested rights, which the Visitors could not modify, even
should the interests of the institution appear to demand
it. This extreme, not to say intemperate, position would
not have been taken but for the prevailing high prices,
which were bearing down intolerably upon all persons in
receipt of salaries. The professors asserted that, although
no member of their body lived in an extravagant
way, yet those among them who had large families were
compelled to borrow to defray their expenses, and those
who had small, could only make buckle and tongue meet
by drastic economies. The cost of living for all of them
had risen from sixty to seventy per cent., and the last
hope of saving even a petty sum for their wives and children
in the future had been abandoned altogether. It
was impossible, they declared, to maintain the dignity of
their position on an annual income of three thousand dollars;
nor was it, in their opinion, any justification for the
limitation to that figure to say that, should they resign
as a body, their places could be easily filled by persons
granted. They recommended that the fixed salary
should be abolished, and that, instead, a tax should be
imposed on each school in proportion to its receipts, by
which means the professors' incomes could be increased,
and yet kept within reasonable bounds.
This suggestion seems to have been adopted. The
proportion of his fees to be allowed the professor of
modern languages was fixed at fifty per cent.; of Greek, at
sixty; of mathematics, at forty-five; of natural philosophy,
at sixty-five; of moral philosophy, at fifty-five; of
chemistry, at forty-five; of medicine, anatomy, and comparative
anatomy, and physiology and surgery, at ninety
respectively; and of law, at seventy. It was provided
that no member of the Faculty should be paid from the
fees of his school a sum less than two thousand dollars.
In 1859, the Board decided to return to the rule of a
fixed salary. No professor was to receive more than
$2,250 from the fees of his school; and should they exceed
that amount, the surplus was, as formerly, to be retained
for the general uses of the University.
XV. The Library
A very irksome deficiency of the library had always
lain in its impoverished supply of contemporary publications
of merit. In 1841, there began a more persistent
attempt to fill up this partial vacuum by systematic purchases
from year to year. The thirty-one titles added to
the collection in the course of that session included the
works of such historical writers as Ranke, Napier, Thiers,
Michelet, Milman, Daubigny, Macaulay and Bancroft.
During the ensuing session, an order was dispatched to
London for a considerable number of volumes relating
to philosophy, poetry, and geography. Further valuable
duplicates in its possession; thus, in 1845, several
books of uncommon merit were acquired by this
means from the shelves of Professor George Tucker.
The income from Mr. Madison's bequest was also now
expended in a way to make up as far as possible the existing
shortage. This income amounted to about four hundred
and fifty dollars annually. The books which he
had bequeathed specifically to the University had not even
yet been recovered; and as late as 1853, steps had to be
taken by the Board to enter suit to carry out this provision
of his will. The first agent and attorney, James
W. Saunders, had apparently been unable to press the
claim to a successful consummation by private negotiation;
and it was not until 1854 that it was finally settled.
Mrs. Madison was then dead. William J. Robertson
was the second attorney of the University; and he
brought such sharp pressure to bear that the administrator
of the estate agreed to give up such volumes as Mr.
Wertenbaker, with the consent of the estate's representative,
should select. In June, 1854, many years after
Madison's demise, the books were transported to the
University and there assorted and catalogued. In the
meanwhile, the Jefferson Society had presented to the
library the large number of volumes which it had accumulated
since the date of its first organization.
In 1851, there was much complaint on the professors'
part of the library's inability to buy even a limited number
of the works, relating to their subjects, which were
appearing from year to year in both England and America
It was asserted that there was not to be found on
its shelves a single new volume bearing on Anglo-Saxon
or English, such as the School of Modern Languages demanded.
Nor were there any volumes in the collection
professor of natural philosophy reported that only a
small number touching the topics of his school had been
added to it. In fact, the share of the appropriation falling
to that school was barely sufficient to permit of subscriptions
to a few scientific journals and transactions of
scientific associations, and was not enough to purchase
even occasionally the costly standard works that were so
much needed. There had been a few additions bearing
on the subjects of moral philosophy, criticism, and
political economy, but not a single volume on psychology
and aesthetics. The books relating to law were not
two thirds of the number that the class required, while
the works of general reference were so small in number
that no treatise on the most elementary theme could be
prepared with accuracy. In order to diminish, if not
wholly to remove, these hampering deficiencies in the library
as a working organization, the Visitors determined
to appropriate for its benefit all the fees remaining after
the professors' salaries had been paid.
Insignificant as the amount reserved annually for the
library was, it could not always be secured. In February,
1854, Wertenbaker reported that $1,472.34 was the aggregate
sum still held back; and in addition, the interest
due from the Madison fund had not been received. This
now amounted to eight hundred and twenty-nine dollars
The cost of the Annex, at a somewhat later date, diverted
a large proportion of the funds usually expended
for books; but, in 1856, the Board appropriated $2,427.17
to make up the total sum which had been withheld
from it; and they directed that this money should be used
in the purchase of such works as might be needed to supply
the professors with material for instruction in their
respective classes. At the same meeting of the Visitors,
to be expended annually in enlarging the collection
for the same general purpose.
The matriculation fee had, by this time, been increased
from fifteen dollars to twenty. This new source of income
assured thereafter a return to the library of $2,700
annually,—at least down to the beginning of the war.
It aggregated, during the four sessions, about $12,300,
which was nearly four thousand dollars in excess of the
income accruing between 1840 and 1856. The larger
proportion of this sum was divided in equal shares for
the respective purchases for the twelve schools, while
the remainder was reserved for augmenting the number
of miscellaneous volumes, including periodicals of all
kinds. The appropriations for the session of 1856–7
were as follows: special, $2,427.87 and annual, $500.00;
interest from the Madison bequest, $90.00; and the
library fees paid by the students, $2,900. These sums
made up a total of $5,917.87. During the three sessions
beginning with 1856 and ending with 1859, the
largest amount set aside for a single school for the purchase
of books was $1,500.63; for periodicals, $431.87;
and for binding, $90.25. In 1857, the number of volumes
embraced in the collection was twenty-five thousand;
and in 1859, thirty thousand.
Professor Gildersleeve, who had been appointed the
chairman of a committee to draw up a plan for cataloguing
the library, recommended that an alphabetical arrangement
should be adopted; and that, in the case of a
rare edition, the bibliographical history of the volume
should be recorded. The resources of the collection as
to the several schools were also to be entered in a classified
index; and a book plate too was to be used. Previous
to 1853, the library was closed except for an interval
that year, it was thrown open during two hours in the
forenoon, and also during two hours after twelve o'clock.
In 1857, the door was unlocked at 8.45 a. m. and closed
at 5.45 p. m., with an interruption of two hours at midday.
Three years subsequently, the library was kept
open seven hours, with a similar interval of exclusion.
During the progress of the twenty-two years lying between
1835 and 1857, William Wertenbaker remained
the librarian without intermission. He also served as
clerk of the proctor, secretary of the Faculty, and postmaster
of the University. Hitherto, the total income of
the institution had been so small as to make necessary a
consolidation of smaller offices, but, by 1857, that income
had swelled to $51,000, and a subdivision of these offices,
always desirable, became, for the first time, practicable.
The combination of duties borne by Wertenbaker, which
was steadily growing more onerous with the increase in
the number of students, was one of those earliest broken
up. It was ordered by the Board that thereafter the
librarian,—who was to be elected annually,—should be
librarian only; and that, in choosing him, preference was
to be given the candidate who should wish to make a
study of library methods with the view to a permanent
profession. The catalogue in use had been prepared
thirty years before, and it was expected that the new incumbent
would carry into effect the recommendations of
Professor Gildersleeve's committee. Thomas B. Holcombe,
a brother of Professor Holcombe, was chosen,
and held the office until 1862. In 1860, he petitioned
the Faculty for permission to close the room at noon on
Saturday. In order to make up for the time that would
be lost by such a change, he asserted his willingness to
throw open the doors at eight o'clock in the morning, instead
was to spend his Sundays in Lynchburg, where he had
kinsmen and friends. "My health and spirits," he said,
"urgently require some relief of this sort." It seems
that, only by closing the doors at noon on Saturday, would
he be able to avoid travelling on the Sabbath, which his
religious scruples made repugnant to his feelings.
XVI. Publications
As the projectors of all the magazines issued at the
University during the Fifth Period, 1842–1861, claimed
that these periodicals were as much designed for the intellectual
improvement of the students as were the lectures
in the various schools, it seems to be appropriate
to include them in the group of those scholastic influences
upon which we have been dwelling under recent heads.
The Jefferson Monument Magazine was first issued apparently
in October, 1849. It was under the supervision
of a board of five editors, one of whom represented
the body of the young men at large, another the
Jefferson Society, and one each the Washington, Philomethean,
and Aesculapian Societies. The practical object
which it had in view was the collection of a fund to
be used in erecting a memorial to the founder of the University;
but like its predecessors, it also possessed a distinct
literary purpose. "Shall we," exclaimed the editors,
"who boast our college the head of all Southern
literary associations, confess ourselves unable to support
a paper worth reading? Either we are able to do it or
we are not. In the first case, we convict ourselves of
laziness, and in the second, of intellectual torpor."
The contents of this magazine point to the existence
of neither condition. They are remarkable for their variety.
Indeed, there was not a field of literature,—
did not intrude. There were reviews and criticisms;
poetry that smacked strongly of the stolen spices of Byron
and Moore; addresses that had been delivered before
the Faculty and students by newly elected professors;
speeches in the moot court; essays on such abstract
subjects as military glory and the age of chivalry; discussions
of historical events like the murder of the Duc
d'Enghien; disquisitions on scientific discoveries; and articles
relating to the moral and economic aspects of slavery.
In one instance at least, a writer on the latter controversial
topic took the extreme position that the institution was a
"blessing," chiefly because it was supposed to have solved
the dangerous problem of the proper relations of capital
and labor. No cunning Ulysses and no crafty Diomed
were to be allowed to crawl in and break it down. It
was held up as the only bulwark that could arrest the
tide of socialism and atheism.
The Monument Magazine seems to have breathed its
last with volume second, which closed with the number for
June, 1851. The editors complained up to the end that
it was difficult to obtain contributions for its pages. The
criticisms that were leveled at the periodical were sarcastically
resented. "There are some people," they remarked,
"who would decline to be pleased, however meritorious
our exertions. They twit us because they declare
we fall below the Edinburgh Review. Because they have
lounged in the pages of Macaulay, and taken an occasional
peep into the North American Review, they consider
themselves to be men of sufficient acumen to pass
judgment with accuracy." The editors were constrained
to admit that there existed, in the minds of many persons,
a prejudice against the memory of Jefferson, against
the University which he founded, and also against the
faithfully to show honor to both. This prejudice, they
very truly declared, they had resolutely combated. Although
this periodical had only a short span of life, it
was successful in accumulating two hundred and fifty
dollars for consummating the main purpose for which it
was established.
The desire to be represented by a magazine was so persistent
among the students that so soon as one expired
from starvation, another confidently started up to take
its place. The next periodical was first known as the
University Magazine. It seems to have been thought,
in contravention of the old proverb of too many cooks
spoiling the broth, that an increase in the number of editors
might save the new enterprise from the fate of its
unlucky forerunners. A board of seven was now appointed,
and they were selected from the membership of
the various associations, in the hope of creating thereby
a broader support for so risky an undertaking. There
were two from the Philomethean Society, two from the
Washington, and two from the Jefferson, and in addition,
one from the ranks of the students at large. Again, the
primary object of this new magazine was stated to be the
cultivation of skill in composition among the young men.
To have the periodical written and not to have it read,
was proclaimed to be the central aim of its existence.
"By contributing to it," the editors said in their salutatory,
"you can sift, try, develop, and combine your
knowledge on all subjects; you test your ability by comparison
with the productions of others; you are rewarded
for your articles on their merit, and, therefore, there is
no room in your breasts for envy, bickering, and heart
burning; you can bring to bear a deep influence, intellectual
This appeal seems to have been successful. The college
magazine did not again suspend previous to the
earthquake of the war, although it changed its title at
least twice in the course of that interval. In 1856, it
was known as University Literary Magazine; but two
years later, it assumed the name of Virginia University
Magazine, and by that name it continued to be designated
down to a modern day. The University of Virginia
became very prosperous after 1850, and the college
periodical so far shared in this rise of fortune as to acquire
the ability to offer, in 1856–7, a valuable medal for
the most meritorious article published in its pages, in the
course of each session. Holmes, Minor and McGuffey,
who, as a committee, first performed the duty of picking
out this article, laid down, for the benefit of aspirants,
the following drastic conditions of success: grammatical
accuracy, propriety and precision of utterance, force and
grace of expression, correctness of sentiment, aptness of
observation, command of knowledge, felicity of illustration,
cogency of argumentation, vigor and originality of
reflection, and orderly arrangement. After reading the
numbers for 1857–58, this committee frankly declared
that they had noticed in the contributions printed therein
an absence of settled method,—with its accompanying
confused and indeterminate reasoning,—the employment
of low or colloquial expressions, and the disregard of
grammatical accuracy and neatness of statement. These
were really weaknesses characteristic of youthful writers,
and they continued to be shown more or less in all
subsequent issues.
The most perplexing condition confronting the editors
They announced, in 1858, that a "bushel of poetry" had
been delivered to them; and they suggested that those
contributors who imagined themselves to be inspired
should dismount from their tortured Pegasus, and take
to prose writing on foot. "We have received," they
added, "ballads and sonnets as plaintive as the odes of
Sappho and as sanguinary as the songs of Tyrtaeus, love
ditties, breathing of the tender passion, equal to those of
Moore or Anacreon; others descriptive of spring landscapes
more beautiful than the gorgeous pictures of
Claude of Lorraine." In 1859, the magazine was criticized
by the Yale Literary on the ground that it reserved
so little space for college topics. The defense which its
editors offered was that it was designed exclusively for
the improvement of the students in English composition,
and that the restriction of its contents to University events
"would be a temptation to make something out of nothing."
The first winner of the magazine medal was John
Johnson, of South Carolina, who became the earliest
president of the Young Men's Christian Association of
the University, and one of the final orators of the Jefferson
Society. During the War of Secession, he served
as an engineer in the attack on Fort Sumter, and wrote a
remarkable history of the defence of Charleston. In
1859, the medalist was J. McD. Graham, and in 1860,
Leigh Robinson. A second medal was established in
1859. This was to be paid for with the annual income
from the invested proceeds of Mr. Everett's lecture delivered
that year at the University. He had generously
presented this sum to the magazine to create an award
for the best essay published in its pages on American biography.
The board of editors was appointed at the beginning
latter's expiration, for the Easter. Between 1856–7 and
April, 1861, twenty-one Virginians were to be found in
the membership of this board, one Kentuckian, two Alabamians,
two Missourians, and one student from the district
of Columbia. During the session of 1860–1, the entire
body was made up of Virginians. Among the editors
in the beginning were many young men who became prominent
in after life, such as Archer Anderson, Rodes Massie,
James Dinwiddie, Douglas Forrest, W. M. Radford,
and Holmes Boyd.
XVII. Riot of 1845
Before giving the history of those measures of reform
which were bodied forth in the permanent organization of
the Temperance Society and the Young Men's Christian
Association, it will be necessary to describe the spirit of
unrest which finally exploded in the serious riot of 1845,
but which rapidly declined thereafter until it entirely
disappeared.
It was said, in 1842, that much of the lawlessness which
was rampant among a clearly defined section of the students
at that time was really due to the failure of parents
and guardians to compel their expelled sons or wards to
leave the neighborhood of the precincts. Many of the
young men, after their dismissal, remained in the town
during several weeks, as if to show their spite, and while
there, constantly provoked breaches of the peace, not
only in that community, but also in the University itself,
for they stole to their friends' dormitories after dark,
and inflamed the feeling against the Faculty, which was
always smouldering. The authorities of Charlottesville
were indirectly responsible for this disorderliness, for
they refused to exact bonds of all dismissed students
the licenses of the low drinking shops situated near the
precincts. The Legislature too remained stolidly indifferent
to the solicitations of the Board when a remedy
was sought in the passage of a local prohibitive act.
So great became the contempt for the ordinances in
1842, that the Faculty cast about for some device to check
so radical an evil. Toward the close of the scholastic
year, they divided the students in residence into four
classes: (1) those who, during the session then expiring,
had been guilty of so many offenses that their return
in the following autumn was to be emphatically forbidden;
(2) those who, having been a degree less callous to
the laws, were to be refused readmission except on condition
of giving a special pledge of good conduct; (3)
those who, being still less delinquent, were to receive a
warning that they must be more circumspect, should they
again matriculate; and (4) those whose behavior had
been so unexceptionable that no ban or restriction of any
kind was to be put on their future action, should they wish
to return. Even the use of this sifting method did not
winnow out all the undesirable young men among those
who had been in attendance already; and it was of no
service whatever towards singling out the goats among
the first year students, the most numerous of all.
About the year 1844, a college band, known as the Calathumpians,
was quietly organized. It was at first composed
of exemplary students, bent, as one of their number
expressed it, on "fun, frolic, and childish folly."
They paraded up and down the Lawn at irregular intervals
during the first week, without disguise, and were content
simply to serenade the different professors. They
were guilty of no act of disorder or impropriety; but the
Faculty looked on their conduct, innocent as it was, askant,
sinister students were likely in time to take advantage of
such an association to show their malice, or to unrein a
spirit of recklessness, that was sure to end in disreputable
excesses. Their anticipations proved to be correct. A
dissipated set crept in, and so warped the harmless purpose
of the organization that it was disbanded at the instance
of the original members. The first attempt to
damage public property broke it up. A new band was
quickly formed, which consisted of the most mischievous
section of the students, although there were still some
members who disapproved of the riotous behavior of
their comrades. In February, 1845, three young men
were suspended for raising a scene of disorder at one of
the college hotels. The Calathumpians immediately assembled,
and disguised with masks, made an attack with
sticks and stones on the home of the chairman, and also
on the hotel itself. The Faculty promptly and wisely
instructed the proctor to find out the names of the culprits
for the purpose of presenting them to the grand
jury. This firmness seems to have had a repressive effect
for the time being.
Early in April, the Calathumpians reassembled with
horns and drums, and as they passed by the pavilion of
Professor Robert Rogers, several in their ranks struck
one of the windows, which caused Mrs. Rogers instant
alarm. Her husband was for the moment absent, and
on his hasty return, he went out in front of the house and
hid behind a pillar. When the parade marched back, he
rushed forward and picked up one of the students bodily
and bore him struggling into the hall. There was no attempt
at interference with this energetic act, for Rogers
threatened to shoot any one who should interpose. On
the night of the 14th, the disturbances were resumed by
at the doors of the pavilions; many of the blinds of the
windows were smashed in; and much of the glass was
shattered. The ladies and children of the professors'
households were, in consequence, violently frightened.
If there was a sentiment among any division of the students
in condemnation of this lawlessness, it did not show
itself on the surface.
These outrages were repeated on the night of the 16th.
The disorder was then rendered more alarming by the
presence of rowdies on horseback, who rode up and down
the alleys and arcades firing pistols as they went. The
same disorder, only more aggravated, continued on the
nights of the 17th, 18th, and 19th. It was especially unrestrained
on the latter night, which was Saturday. All
sorts of missiles were then thrown at the already broken
glass in the windows of the pavilions, and the doors and
blinds facing the arcades were again battered with sticks.
It was said that, on the following morning, several of the
houses had the aspect of having been bombarded by a
mob. Even the solid structure of the Rotunda bore
perceptible traces of damage. Two of its doors had been
forced open and many of its windows had been broken in.
Both on the 18th and 19th, the Faculty, who had acted
with extraordinary calmness under provocation, made a
public appeal to the students as a body to assist in stopping
the disorders, and in arresting those who had been
guilty of the worst outrages. This appeal was received
with indifference. The young men were either deeply implicated
themselves in the riots, or they had friends who
were, or they were too timid to come boldly forward. It
was thought at the time that those most involved threatened
personal injury to all their fellow collegians who
should assemble to condemn their conduct. In reality, if
they were not numerous enough to turn the balance,
even if they had attempted to do so.
On Sunday, the 20th, it was reported that the civil-authorities
were about to intervene. A meeting of the
students was now held, at which it was resolved that all
those present would decline to give testimony if summoned.
The rumor was correct: the Faculty had
reached the conclusion that there was a determination on
the part of the controlling majority of the rioters to
bring the session to an abrupt end, and that only the
magistrates and the sheriff of the county could put a stop
to the disorder. They had arrived at this opinion only
after much hesitation, for there appeared to them to be
grave objections to taking such a step. In the first place,
as Dr. Cabell asserted at the time, so long as there was
any prospect of arresting the disturbances by other means,
he and his colleagues were averse to employing a remedy
which almost always involved some respectable but misguided
youths with the more reckless and unprincipled
ones; and in the second place, they considered it to be inexpedient
to raise, except as an unavoidable resort, such
an issue with the General Assembly as was certain to
follow the demand for a civil tribunal to inquire into the
causes of the riot. Indeed, the application to the officers
of the law was always a tacit confession of impotence
which the Faculty, very naturally, were reluctant to make
as tending to lower their prestige with the students and
the public alike. In reality, however, its effect when once
made, was less damaging to the University than would
have been the continuation of the disorders, through the
college authorities' inability to suppress them.
As early as Friday, April 18, the Faculty had summoned
the executive committee for consultation, and it
of the law was sought. On Monday morning, the
21st, the justices convened at the University, and an
armed guard was posted around the Rotunda. Quiet
was at once restored. Early the same morning, the proctor
sent a written notice to twenty suspected students to
appear before the magistrates. Many of these quickly
vanished from the precincts. The opinion of the majority
of the young men was that no future action should be
taken since the disorders had ceased; but as the termination
of these disorders had been brought about by apprehension
alone, this new but politic attitude very properly
received no consideration from the Faculty. A member
of the Charlottesville bar, Alexander Rives, an able but
eccentric man, without invitation from any one, hurried
up from town, and through his influence, the students
announced that a meeting of their body would be held at
four o'clock that afternoon. In the meanwhile, they
promised,—as if they alone were in control of the situation,
—that they would refrain from all disturbances.
The object of this resolution was to defer the expected
arrival of the militia. At four o'clock, about seventy
students assembled, and after an address by Rives, who
had held no communication with the Faculty or the executive
committee, they formally pledged themselves to
commit no further breach of the peace. They then dispersed,
under the impression that the militia would not
be ordered out at all, but in this they miscalculated, for,
within a few hours, a force of two hundred men, under
the command of the sheriff, marched full armed upon the
ground. The magistrates had previously adjourned until
the afternoon, in the hope that, in the interval, the absolute
submission of the offenders would be announced.
When the militia appeared, a sentiment of indignant
guilty ones fled? and had not those who staid behind declared
their intention of refraining from further disorder?
The same night they assembled for the second
time, and passed a supplementary resolution which pretended
to a complete mystification over the Faculty's refusal
to accept their promise to remain quiet as a sufficient
atonement. Not satisfied with this disingenuous utterance,
they went on to condemn the Faculty itself as practically
responsible for the shattered condition of the pavilions,
for had they not provoked the patience of the
forbearing students to the breaking point? Moreover,
in calling in the militia, had they not cast a slur on the
honor of them all? It was estimated that one hundred
and twenty-six young men, of the one hundred and ninety-four
enrolled, now withdrew from the University, and this
was quite probably the number that had been implicated
in the riot. The Board of Visitors assembled on Wednesday,
April 23, and approved of the Faculty's action
in seeking the assistance of the civil authority; and
they emphatically instructed that body to summon this
assistance thereafter just as soon as the first damage
should be done to the property of the institution. The
regular course of lectures had been resumed the day
before, and on the night of that day, the armed guard
had also been withdrawn.
Professor John B. Minor, who was present at the
University during this prolonged riot, has recorded his
impression that it was conducted by the students in a
spirit of "remorseless violence." So far from being
provoked by any severity on the Faculty's part, it was
the opinion of Professor William B. Rogers that, if
any fault was to be found with that body, or its chairman,
it was because they had shown too little promptness
spirit. The Board of Visitors, in their perplexity while
looking around for a device to discourage future lawlessness,
considered again the possibility of establishing
a special court near the University, which would take
cognizance of all serious disorders within the precincts.
Judge Tucker was asked to draft a report on the subject
for the consideration of the General Assembly, but
his health giving away, the project was not further
pressed. No doubt, the Legislature's disapproval of
it was anticipated. The Board had to content itself with
instructing the rector to endeavor to obtain the passage
of an act that would forbid a dismissed student from
approaching within five miles of the bounds; but this
too terminated in smoke.
XVIII. Moral Effect of the Riot
The protracted riot of 1845, coupled with the murder
of Professor Davis, struck an almost fatal blow
at the moral prestige of the University, and inflicted
grave damage on its material prosperity. The number
of matriculates fell off in 1845–6 to one hundred
and thirty-eight as compared with one hundred and
ninety-four during the session of 1844–5. It soon became
debatable whether the General Assembly would
renew the annuity of fifteen thousand dollars. The animosity
to the University which lurked chronically in
many minds because of political or religious prejudices,
seized upon the notorious course of events there as a
weapon for blackening its prospects beyond recovery.
Unscrupulous comments, private and public, to its detriment,
were made. The indignant loyalty of the alumni
was soon inflamed, and they assembled and appointed a
committee of seven to draft a paper that would set
out the most promising means of restoring the popular
confidence in its work. This committee consisted of
men of great ability and high reputation, like William C.
Carrington, Thomas H. Bocock, Franklin Minor, John B.
Young, J. C. Reynolds, and Edmund Ruffin.
The address which they composed is, from every point
of view, one of the most remarkable documents recorded
in the University's history. It contained the following
salient statements: First, the annuity received by
that institution was not raised by straightforward, honest
taxation, but was simply a meagre transfer from
the accumulation through petty fines, escheats, and forfeitures.
This was the very best that the wealthy State
of Virginia was willing to do for public education! How
ignoble in contrast with the policy of South Carolina,
Alabama, and Louisiana, far poorer communities, which
contributed not less than thirty thousand dollars each,
by a voluntary yearly levy, to the support of their colleges!
The annuity of fifteen thousand dollars, if converted
into a direct tax, would signify an imposition of
only one and one quarter cents on each person in the
Commonwealth, and yet even this infinitesimal charge
was begrudged by the members of the General Assembly!
Would the people approve of the withdrawal of
this pittance from their highest seat of learning, a seat
that had been built at a cost of five hundred thousand
dollars? Up to 1845, not less than $422,800 had been
paid into its treasury by students who had come from
other States, all of which had gone to swell the pecuniary
resources of the community.
Second, the University had not only diffused a vast
fund of general knowledge by the education of a host
of young men, but it had, during many years, been training
and academies. Third, it was not correct to say that
the institution was administered for the benefit of the
sons of the rich alone. The majority of the students
were really the sons of persons of moderate fortune,
and many of them had been compelled to earn, by their
own labor, the money with which they defrayed their
expenses. Fourth, the salaries of the professors were
smaller in amount than the remuneration of the instructors
employed in other colleges of equal prominence.
Fifth, the proposed erection of a spacious chapel on
the grounds had refuted the charge of indifference to
religion so often brought against the institution; and
a further proof of the injustice of this accusation was
to be found in the fact that a chaplain was comfortably
supported by the voluntary contributions of the professors
and students; and also that a Bible Society was
maintained, with a large and zealous attendance. Sixth,
the alumni of the University were known to be the
staunchest friends of public education which the State
possessed.
Finally, the committee asserted that the riot was not
caused by any defect in the administration of the institution,
but by "some peculiar and merely temporary
conjunction of circumstances, against which no legal enactments,
no possible circumspection of authority, could
always guard." They mentioned that one of their number,
while a student at Harvard College, had witnessed
an assault by the young men there on a regiment of
militia, who were drilling near their playground. Did
this damage the college itself in the esteem of the people
of Massachusetts? On the contrary, public opinion
there warmly sustained the Faculty when they decided
that it would be wisest to expel whole classes as a
petitioned the General Assembly to pass an act
that would compel every dismissed student to give bond,
should he remain within ten miles of the precincts; and
they recommended too an increase in the number of the
Visitors; and also suggested that an investigation of the
University's condition should be made at once by the
Legislature, as the surest means of combating idle reports
and disarming covert attacks. No substantial advantage,
in the opinion of the committee, was to be
gained by removing the institution to Richmond, as some
of its ill-wishers had proposed. The police restrictions
in a city might discourage open lawlessness among the
students, but the opportunities for vicious indulgence,
and the temptations to neglect their tasks, would be very
much increased in number by such a transfer.
Several partisan journals exerted all their influence to
fan the controversy that quickly followed the riot. A
letter in the Whig, said to have been contributed by
Alexander Rives, very gratuitously attributed the languishing
condition of the University to (1) the smallness
of the Board of Visitors, "because, in case of an
appointment," it said, "it was easy to mould their decision
to the detriment of the institution"; (2) the very ordinary
qualifications of some of the men elected to
vacant chairs. There was no real ground for either of
these assertions, which had their origin apparently in
personal spleen.
XIX. Commotions after 1845
When the session of 1845–6 began, the Faculty refused
to permit the students to illuminate the arcades,
as their experience had demonstrated that this was always
the first step to disorder; and that it was certain to
would probably not subside during the remainder of the
academic year. But this spirit did not need at this
time any preliminary excitement to cause it to spring
into existence. It was always smouldering ready to
flare up without provocation.
At one o'clock, on the morning of December 15, a
large body of students, blowing horns, ringing hand-bells,
and beating pieces of metal, began a parade under
the arcades; and they did not retire to their rooms until
near dawn. The precincts, in the meanwhile, were kept
in a state of pandemonium. A few weeks afterwards,
a similar crowd, late at night, rolled a large barrel full
of tar on to the Lawn and set it on fire. As the flames
shot up, pistols were fired, crackers exploded, and a
concert of yells raised. The proctor, alarmed for the
safety of the buildings, succeeded in extinguishing the
fire, but he had barely reentered his house when a second
barrel, standing on another part of the Lawn, was touched
off. The students who were responsible for the second
conflagration had blackened their faces with cork, covered
their heads with blanket caps, and turned their
coats inside out. The noises were now repeated with
increased violence, but no injury was done to the property
of the University. On the following night, between
twelve and one o'clock, the same company of
young men began to march around the precincts. Again,
there was a discordant uproar caused by the tooting of
horns, the ringing of hand-bells, and the shrieking of
voices. The disorderly procession passed down the
Lawn on the west side, then up the Lawn on the east
side, and debouching into one of the alleys, moved on
to Charlottesville. It did not halt until the portals of
the Monticello Hotel were reached, and there the rioters
was aggravated by the fact that the investigating
committee appointed by the General Assembly were
asleep in the house, and in addition, the Board of Visitors,
—who had been convening daily at the University,
—were stopping under the same roof. Two students
were recognized and afterwards dismissed for their
share in this disorder. In protest, their companions, on
the nights of January 27 and 28 (1846), repeated the
violent scenes that had occurred on the night of the
21st.
Panicky rumors now spread about the country. General
Robert Wallace, a member of the Virginia Senate,
wrote in trepidation on the 30th to Cabell, "I hasten
to say to you that there is positive news from the University
of a terrible outburst among the students. The
young gentleman who gave this news has left the University
on that account, and states that he expects it
was destroyed last night. Is that noble institution
doomed to destruction"? It was believed by the people
of Richmond for a time that all the pavilions and dormitories
had been burnt by the students enraged by the
punishment of the two among them who had been detected
in the riot.
Again the Faculty shrank from summoning the civil
authority to their assistance. On the 29th, the day
following the worst disorder, Dr. Cabell wrote to his
uncle, Joseph C. Cabell, "We do not contemplate a
resort to that particular remedy which produced so much
excitement last year; namely, an armed guard, nor in
fact a guard at all, but only, if the disorder continues,
to have a few who are strongly suspected arrested and
others summoned; and we will take care to summon
only those whom we know to be badly disposed and mischievous.
application of which will, in all probability, be attended
with some notoriety, except as a measure of absolute
necessity." Cocke attributed the protracted turbulence
to the abnormal arrangement of the buildings, which
brought the students and professors into such close juxtaposition
that causes for mutual exasperation were certain
to arise from time to time. "The young men found
ready to hand the most extraordinary facilities for giving
annoyance," he said, "and also for escaping undiscovered
after inflicting it. The idle and spiteful could
not resist the temptation to indulge their evil dispositions
when they saw how easily they could evade the
consequences."
On the other hand, the members of the Legislative
committee, who had been awakened by the riotous students
in town, were inclined to lay the chief blame for
the disorders on a presumptive inefficiency in the general
administration. A more rigid enforcement of discipline
by the Board and Faculty was, in their opinion, demanded.
Their spokesman, when presenting the report in the
House, expressed the philosophical opinion that such
disturbances were to be expected in the South, as the
heat of the climate tended to make its people irritable
and excitable in temperament. But he had to acknowledge
that the disorders at the University could not thus
be fully explained. They were, he thought, probably
due principally to the impatience and restiveness of a
high-spirited youth subjected suddenly to the restraints
of law, after having known only the mild bonds of parental
authority. It was possible also, he added, that
many of the young men were unequal in preparation or
capacity to the exacting standards of their classes, and,
in their failure and discouragement, had discovered
A lull now fell, but on April 11, 1846, the spirit of
disorder again flared up. On that date, a travelling
circus gave an exhibition in Charlottesville, which drew
to the scene a large number of the students. There
are two accounts of what followed that have survived.
The most probable seems to be this: a menagerie formed
an important part of the property of the showmen, and
the most thrilling incident in the performance was the
ride of one of the keepers in a car to which a lion was
hitched. The route was laid off through several communicating
cages occupied by other wild beasts. A rope
was put out to hold the spectators back, and they were
asked to remain silent and orderly while the driver was
making the dangerous passage. As the car was moving
slowly along, John A. Glover, a student from Alabama,
who was leaning against the rope, threw a lighted cigar
between the bars at the lion in harness. His act jeopardized
the life of the showman, now defenseless amidst
the alarmed and roaring animals; and in a frenzy of
uncontrollable rage, he leaped through the door of the
cage, seized a tent pin, and struck the foolish Glover to
the ground.
According to another account, several students insisted
on remaining very near the cage, although repeatedly
warned that it was necessary for them to retire
a few feet. The threats of the proprietors were of
no avail, and finally, they brought an elephant up to
clear the way with his ponderous feet. The collegians
struck the huge beast; its keeper resented the act; and
his fellow-showmen came to his assistance. Large
bludgeons, shod with iron, began to whirl about the
students' heads; their friends rushed to their aid; and
at once there was a mêlée, in which several of the young
on the left temple which knocked him unconscious. He
was taken to the Eagle Hotel, and there, after languishing
several hours, died. When news of the affray was
brought to the University, the students there were thrown
into a state of violent resentment, and a large body,
heavily armed, set out in haste for Charlottesville. The
showmen, anticipating their coming, had endeavored in
a hurry to send off their property to escape destruction;
but without success. The students, throwing themselves
upon the tent, slashed it to pieces; the wagons were overturned;
and only the cages containing the fiercer animals
were left untouched. The showmen barely escaped with
their lives by mounting their horses, and flying at the top
of their speed.
After the session of 1846–7 opened, it was noticed
that a spirit of unusual serenity spread through the University
precincts. "We are enjoying great quiet as yet,"
remarked Professor William B. Rogers, with a wise
reserve, in a letter written to his brother on December
6. "The professors have been giving the students a
succession of very pleasant parties, and the utmost good
feeling thus far prevails with nearly all the young men.
The only symptom of mischief that has occurred was
the explosion of a log loaded like a cannon on the Lawn
last night, a little after supper time." But the most
congenial season for disorder was the spring, and in
April, 1847, it broke out again, but fortunately in a less
violent form than was customary. In this instance, a
number of students endeavored to stampede a political
meeting which Shelton F. Leake was addressing in town,
and not being successful to the extent desired, they created
a riot in the street as they were returning to the University.
A few nights later, Professor Minor was the
he had ventured to report two cases of intoxication which
he had noticed. Horns and cow-bells were the principal
musical instruments flourished on this occasion, and
they continued to sound as the performers marched off
in disorder, in the direction of the town, under the cover
of the darkness of midnight.
When the session of 1846–7 drew to a close, ten
students notorious for their recklessness were forbidden
to return in September. In the band thus branded was
one whose given name was Dean Swift. Another became
in after life a lawyer and statesman of national
reputation. During the session of 1848–9, not a single
collegian was either suspended or dismissed, and there
was a complete absence of turbulence. Cocke characteristically,
and perhaps correctly, attributed this state of
placidness to the unselfish exertions of the Sons of Temperance
in suppressing, with more or less success, the use
of intoxicating spirits among a very large proportion of
the young men. The session of 1850–51 was marred
by a fierce conflict with the town authorities. Some of
the students had been arrested on the streets for violating
the local ordinances, and when information of their
detention reached the University, the entire body of collegians
set out on a half run to Charlottesville to rescue
them from the grip of the law. A pitched battle with
the now aroused but generally somnolent police and a
hastily summoned posse, began as soon as the confines
of Vinegar Hill were crossed; but it seems to have ended
without a signal victory for either side. Mr. Ficklin,
the mayor, who had rushed to the scene, was struck in
the face with a stone. As his Honor was an old man,
the student who gave the blow had the chivalry afterwards
to reveal his identity and to offer a written apology
of Professor Harrison, where the culprit was present with
the members of his class, and accepted the apology with
old-fashioned formality.
Several students were charged with disorderly conduct
on the night of June 27, 1859, because they had climbed
up to the top of the dome. One of them explained the
occasion of their doing this by testifying that it had been
proposed in his room by several friends that they should
first raise a flag on the apex of the building, and afterwards
sit together comfortably and sociably on the arrow
of the clock. Having disguised themselves, they mounted
through the trap-door, and indifferent to the peril of their
situation, carried out their purpose, remaining on the dome
for an hour. Affrays with deadly weapons were still
so much apprehended as late as 1859, that the Board
of Visitors, by the Faculty's advice, required the students
when admitted to sign a written pledge that they
had given up to the proctor every dirk and pistol in
their possession. The spirit of turbulence had, however,
been steadily waning since 1850. Had the number
of disturbances augmented in proportion to the increase
in the number of students matriculating, the condition
of the University would have disclosed a very
great decline in orderliness. On the contrary, the remarkable
expansion in the attendance seemed to create
a strong sentiment among the young men as a body in
favor of law and peace, and in condemnation of tumult
and violence. This sentiment was confirmed and fostered
by the steady growth of certain moral influences,
which we shall now undertake to describe. We have already
referred to the adoption of the Honor System and
the impression which it made on the conduct of the students
in their scholastic life.
XX. Temperance
William Wertenbaker, who, as we have seen, became
almost as fanatical in his advocacy of prohibition as
General Cocke himself, writing to the latter in 1842,
informed him that as many as one hundred and fifty
citizens of Charlottesville had underwritten the pledge;
and that there was a popular demand there for a library
of books relating to temperance. Cocke was asked to
supply a list of the best. Not satisfied with the harvest
among the hitherto incorrigible drinkers in town, Wertenbaker
suspended on the walls of the proctor's room
a placard containing the oath of abstinence, with room
reserved for signatures; but only sixteen of the young
men were thus lured into the fold. During the previous
year, a meeting of the professors and students had been
held to organize a society. At least four of the instructors
had then joined; but there were several who, in
spite of temperate habits, were not ready to go so far.
"It was vain to endeavor to convince a person who takes
a glass of wine or ale for dinner regularly," remarked
Wertenbaker, who had these delinquents in view, "that,
in doing so, he commits a moral wrong, but if he can
be prevailed upon to abandon the practice, it will not
be long before he may be made to conform." On the
occasion of the meeting, Professor William B. Rogers
delivered an address remarkable for his characteristic
eloquence. A complete set of officers, with the exception
of the treasurer, was chosen from among the students.
The proctor was empowered to take charge of
the funds. W.P. Munford was elected president, and
among the vice presidents were J.J. Bullitt, of Kentucky,
and Edward J. Willis, of Virginia.
Rogers had formed a sanguine opinion of the prospects
movement for the University that has ever been made,"
he wrote his brother Henry in February, 1842, "and
I have no doubt that a large proportion of the students,
if not all, will eventually join. If so, we shall have no
further riots, or other serious violations of law, and our
places will be infinitely more desirable than they have
ever been. Besides, the effect on the community of such
a society being known to exist here will dissipate the
unjust prejudice which exists against us, and I look for
a large increase in numbers. I know that ninety-nine
hundredths of our troubles spring from drink."
In June, he was able to delight Cocke with the news
that the society, though it embraced "not a handful at
the commencement, had now enrolled more than one
hundred members." "By the influence of example, and
the moral weight of numbers," he added, "it has created
a wholesome public opinion in the University, which
controls the habits of nearly all connected with the institution."
He predicted that, before the end of the
next session, every student would have consented to
become a member; and he urged that the association
should be reorganized just as soon as the session opened.
Cocke was further elated by a letter from Dr. Cabell in
the same strain. "At a bridal party at Judge Tucker's
on October 19, 1842," he wrote, "nine-tenths of the
company refused to take wine and others partook of it
very moderately. I was sorry to see that the ladies were,
with a few exceptions, among the latter." Several days
afterwards, the Temperance Society was reorganized
with an address by Professor Rogers. Thirty-two students
and five professors signed the pledge. By February
24, 1843, seventy-eight signatures had been obtained
within the college precincts; but before the session
withdrawn.
It was admitted that there were several reasons for
discouragement: (1) no student could be persuaded to
rise to his feet at the meetings and speak in favor of
the cause; and (2) many of the most influential young
men in college were actually opposed to the success of
the society. A malicious desire to raise disorder when
its members convened was shown by outsiders, and the
enginery of ridicule and sneers was used by them to bring
the organization into public contempt. The influence
of Professor George Tucker, together with that of his
kinsman, Professor Henry St. George Tucker, was
also turned against the movement; and their hostility
was made all the more powerful by their temperate
habits and conservative opinions. Kraitsir also was inimical;
but his attitude was not unnatural and not unexpected,
as he had been born and reared in one of the
greatest wine-growing countries of the world.
Dr. Cabell, in January, 1844, wrote with bitterness
to Cocke that the county court, in spite of protest, had
recently licensed a low grog-shop a short distance beyond
the precincts; and he acknowledged that the efforts
of the Temperance Society, in other directions,
since the beginning of the session, had been accompanied
by little success. One year later, Wertenbaker regretfully
announced that the total abstinence organization
had not even been revived. It was now thought to be
wisest to abandon the old plan of holding public meetings
for the purpose of listening to set speeches in advocacy
of temperance. Instead, the professors favorable
to the cause were requested to enforce upon the
students of their respective classes, so soon as enrolled,
the urgent propriety of signing the pledge. This change
the society at this time was attributed to the following
facts: (1) the absence of that direct public sentiment
which the work of an aggressive temperance organization
would have created; (2) the opportunity for constant
indulgence offered to students by Collier's grogshop
in bowshot of the University bounds; (3) the tolerance
which the chairman showed for the disregard of
the ordinances against intoxication; (4) the presidential
election, which caused those who had betted on the successful
candidate to consider it ungenerous to fail to offer
a drink to those who had lost; (5) the influence of
a large body of students from States lying south of Virginia,
who had been in the habit of using liquor with few
restrictions.
"We must never suffer a session to pass," Wertenbaker
wrote in April, 1845, "without an organized society."
Cocke, like himself, was convinced that the
prosperity of temperance lagged at the University because
several of the most respected professors were
what he rather gratuitously stigmatized as "wine bibbers."
He had the Tuckers palpably in mind. In
August, 1845, he congratulated Cabell on the fact that
the chairs of at least two instructors who had expressed
emphatic disbelief in the practicability of prohibition
were so soon to be filled by a couple of the most distinguished
teetotalers of the age. "I confidently hope,"
he added,"that we are upon the eve of a new order of
things." The new instructors were Minor and McGuffey,
the successors of George and Henry St. George
Tucker. Only a few months afterwards, Gough, the
famous temperance advocate, was, at McGuffey's instance,
invited to deliver one of his eloquent exhortations
at the University, and under his influence, seventy
students signed the pledge.
Three very able and earnest professors were now cooperating
to bring about total abstinence in the institution.
These were Minor, McGuffey, and Cabell. By
1849, the organized Sons of Temperance were, with
their powerful assistance, making a sensible impression
upon the habits of the students. In 1856, a temperance
hall, as we have stated, was dedicated, with very imposing
ceremonies. Previously, the Sons had held their
meetings in the room of the moot court. Although in
sympathy with the aims of this association, the Faculty
had, in 1849, refused to permit an address on temperance
to be delivered in the chapel; and they also, in
1855, declined to allow General Samuel Houston to
speak on the same subject in the public hall, which had
now been completed as an apartment in the annex to
the Rotunda. They took this extreme position for the
reason that the use of these public rooms for such a
purpose, however laudable in itself, was not countenanced
by the provisions of the existing ordinances.
XXI. Religion
Down to a year as late as 1849, the University continued
to be looked upon by the public at large as governed
by influences more or less hostile to religion. We
are told by Edward S. Joynes that his mother was convinced
that "the institution was a centre of impiety."
The election of Sylvester, an English Jew, and Kraitsir,
a Hungarian Catholic, to important chairs,—which,
in reality, was an indication of a liberal and tolerant
spirit, such as Jefferson would have approved,—was
accepted by the denominations as evidence, at the best,
of indifference to the welfare of the Protestant churches.
The Watchman, the principal organ of, perhaps, the
most influential of these sects, alluded with bitterness
of Virginia, during whose reign only one man of religious
faith was able to obtain an appointment to a professorship
in the University." According to this journal,
there were "forty candidates for the vacancy caused by
the death of Bonnycastle, and yet the Board selected a
Jew to fill the place! There were forty-five candidates
for the vacancy caused by the resignation of Blaettermann,
and yet the Board chose a papist in his stead!
Could there be a more flagrant demonstration of contempt
for Protestantism than the Board had exhibited."
Now, this perverted assertion was made in the teeth
of the fact that Jefferson had invited all the denominations
to establish their respective seminaries near the
precincts; had offered to throw open to them every facility
for culture, from the library to the lecture-room,
which the University possessed; and had cheerfully
granted to every student the right to attend the religious
services in whichever of these institutions he preferred.
Moreover, there had been, during many years,
a succession of able clergymen who had given up their
lives to administering to the spiritual needs of the young
men residing within the bounds. All this was deliberately
ignored in the determination to make a damaging
point against the University.
How was this sinister attitude to be successfully combated,
was the question which perplexed the minds of the
Visitors and Faculty alike. Might this not be effected
at a stroke by the election of a clergyman to the first
vacant chair? When Rev. H. P. Goodrich, of Marion,
Missouri, enclosed his testimonials to Cocke, in 1842,
he remarked very pertinently, "I have long thought that
the University would not be injured by having a minister
among its professors, since some still persist in thinking
of this opinion was confirmed by the more happy course
of events after the election of Rev. William H. McGuffey
to the chair of moral philosophy, in succession
to George Tucker. McGuffey was an inflexible and
militant Christian, a man of the tough Covenanter fibre,
who would have cheerfully gone to the block rather
than have abjured his religious principles. The conspicuous
presence of this distinguished exemplar of the
sternest faith in a University professorship was calculated
to make a far deeper impression on the popular
mind than the more or less obscure presence within the
precincts of a succession of youthful clergymen, however
brilliant in intellect, or however zealous in the discharge
of duty. There was now a great religious teacher among
the members of the Faculty; and the reputation which
he had brought with him, when he assumed his professorship,
was to spread far and wide through the country,
doing much, in time, to relieve the institution of that
odium which old political animosities, and the now dying
spirit of violence among the students, had been
chiefly instrumental in creating.
McGuffey put his hand firmly to the plow of religious
reformation so soon as he entered upon his office, and
he never relaxed his hold until his death. "Our morning
prayers commenced soon after you were here," he
wrote to Cocke in November, 1848, "and are advancing
steadily. The hour for meeting is twenty minutes
before seven o'clock, which, at this season, is a little
after daybreak. 'Tis delightful to see over thirty young
gentlemen voluntarily, and without notice or obtrusiveness,
gathering in the place where prayer is wont to be
made, and there publicly but humbly uniting their voices
in praise to God for his goodness, and in prayer for his
the University, their country, and the whole
race of man."
During the following session, Rev. Wm. H. Ruffner,
then the chaplain, drew up a programme for a series
of discourses on the evidences of Christianity, to be delivered
in the University pulpit by the most eloquent and
most learned ministers of the Presbyterian Church.
The list embraced clergymen of such great distinction
in their day as William S. Plumer, Henry Ruffner, J. G.
Sampson, James W. Alexander, M. D. Hoge, T. V.
Moore, R. J. Breckinridge, B. M. Smith, and Stuart
Robinson. Their sermons, on this memorable occasion,
were afterwards published in a volume, which was long
cherished in the pious households of Virginia.
In spite of the popular association of the place with
this splendid tribute to religion, the shadow of its reputation
for atheism had not even yet been fully dispersed.
The sensitiveness of the Faculty to the suggestion was
revealed in the wording of the catalogue, for, in the
issue for 1853–4, the charge of irreligion against the
institution was warmly denied. When Bledsoe's book
On the Will was published in 1854, Dr. Cabell sent a
copy of it to Cocke, who was acutely interested in every
phase of moral advancement. "Who can say," he declared
in his acknowledgment, "but that Professor
Bledsoe may be one of the efficient instruments in the
hand of Providence to convert the University from a
school of infidelity into a school of the Prophets." It
should not be forgotten that Cocke was one of that large
body of reformers who are in the habit of expressing their
feelings and opinions in exaggerated language. When
he described the University as "a school of infidelity,"
he was about as accurate as when he spoke of George
they refused to frown upon the drinking of a social
glass of spirits. The infidelity, no doubt, largely consisted
in his own mind of the indifference of the University
as a community to prohibition, for how otherwise
would it be possible for him to speak with any
justice of an institution as a centre of atheism at the
very moment when it was supporting by voluntary contributions
a chapel and a chaplain, and encouraging the students
to attend Bible classes and hold morning prayers
from day to day?
The bare fact that attendance on the religious services
within the precincts was not made compulsory seems
to have led many people to infer that the authorities
were at heart not at all interested in the religious agencies
that really existed; but this was only a proof ofthe
popular ignorance of one of the great principles on
which the institution rested. As a matter of fact, the
atmosphere of the place had long been ripening for
the organization of the religious association which was
to leave such a deep impression on its life. In 1858,
the Young Men's Christian Association was formed.
Previously, there had been at work a zealous body known
as the Society of Missionary Inquiry, the object of which
was to nurture the growth of religious feeling among
the students, and the people occupying the region of
country that surrounded the University. What were
described as "group prayer meetings" had, for some
time, been held in the boarding houses and in the dormitories.
A Sunday School for the slaves was conducted
by Professor Harrison, and schools of the same general
character were taught by students, who, for that
purpose, visited the population of the Ragged Mountains
weekly. Nor were the inmates of the county
spirits. Discourses were also delivered in both
places by the young men who were candidates for the
ministry.
All these efforts, beneficial as they were, were chiefly
individual. A combination of action, a concentration
of influence,—in short, unity,—was necessary to bring
about the most fruitful results. Before, however, a
concerted step could be taken, a typhoid epidemic broke
out among the students and twenty of those stricken
died. A feeling of great depression, in consequence,
spread, and during its prevalence, a revival was started
in the Baptist church in Charlottesville, under the inspiration
of one of the most eloquent pulpit orators of
that day, John A. Broadus, then in the flush of his brilliant
youth. This stimulated the religious aspirations
which were finding a voice in the group prayer meetings;
and in addition to the impulse thus imparted, there was
a growing revolt against the dissipated habits that still
tarnished the conduct of so many of the collegians.
The spirit of the hour, inflamed by these different influences
joined together, began to grope about for some
form of organization that would give it a more powerful
and effective expression. The temperance society
had only aroused an intermittent loyalty; the debating
societies were designed for purely intellectual collision;
and the secret fraternities looked only to social enjoyment.
There were no class brotherhoods, as the institution
was made up of independent schools. In the
absence of any satisfactory existing body, what is most
accurately described as a branch of the modern and
universal Young Men's Christian Association was projected
for the single practical purpose of concentrating
all the dispersed forces, and thus of welding them into
the aims of the proposed fellowship and the duties of the
chaplaincy. The saintly Dabney Carr Harrison, its
incumbent at that time, and one of the martyrs of the
Confederate cause a few years later, has been often
spoken of as the father of the movement at the University
of Virginia, so earnest was his sympathy with
its intended purposes, so active was his participation in
its inauguration. His advice was constantly sought, and
his wise counsel was always followed.
The local association had its practical origin in two
memorable conferences, held on the 5th and 12th of
October, respectively, in the lecture-room of the professor
of moral philosophy. One of these was presided
over by James M. Garnett, the other by H. H. Harris.
A committee was selected at the first meeting to draft a
constitution; and after a debate, a name was chosen for
the organization, which was the same as that already
designating the similar bodies, which, in London, Montreal,
Boston, and Washington, were now employed in
improving the religious condition of young men. The
fame of these sister bodies, in consequence of their extraordinary
success, had already spread all over the
world. A constitution, modeled on those of the London
and Boston branches of the general association, was
adopted at the second conference. There were ninety-two
signatures. On October 19, the following officers
were elected: John Johnson, president; W. P. Dubose
and three others of equal prominence, vice presidents;
L. M. Blackford, recording secretary; Thomas Hume,
Jr., corresponding secretary; W. Holliday, librarian;
and J. William Jones, treasurer. Among these early
members were many who were destined to win distintion.
Twenty, before leaving the University, became
ministry as their vocation; and among the latter were
several who, in consequence of their conspicuous eloquence,
learning, and piety, were advanced to bishoprics,
—such were Thomas U. Dudley, George W. Peterkin,
and Beverly D. Tucker, in the Episcopal church, and
J. C. Granberry, in the Methodist. Among the untitled
clergy of high reputation were Randolph H.
McKim, D. F. Forrest, A. W. Weddell, W. P. Dubose,
and John Johnson.
It has been claimed from the beginning that the branch
of the Young Men's Christian Association organized at
the University of Virginia was the first in the world
to be incorporated within the precincts of a college.
This has been disputed by the University of Michigan,
which has persisted in asserting the priority of its branch
in date of formation. It is admitted that, many years
before either of these two universities came into existence,
a religious society had been established by the
students of Harvard; and the Philadelphian Society also
had been founded in Princeton College in 1825. As we
have seen, a Society of Missionary Inquiry had been at
work in the University of Virginia itself before 1858,
and a similar body, at the same time, in the University
of Michigan. In the February of that year, a more
compact association was organized in this western institution,
while it was not until the ensuing October that
an association of the same character was set on foot in
the Virginian seat of learning. When it was proposed,
however, to designate the Michigan association as a
branch of the Young Men's Christian Association, the
suggestion was emphatically rejected. On the other
hand, that name was, as we have mentioned, specifically
adopted by the corresponding body at the University of
in the University of Michigan assumed the title
of Students' Christian Association, an indication in itself
that it had no intention of joining the general organization;
indeed, it positively refused, as late as 1877,
to become a partner in the intercollegiate religious movement;
and many years were still to pass before it would
consent to affiliate with the other branches of the general
corporation. In character, it hardly differed from
the independent Philadelphian Society of Princeton,—
as a body, in fact, it stood quite as aloof as that long
established association had always done. On the other
hand, the Young Men's Christian Association of the
University of Virginia was established primarily as a
part of a world-wide combination of young men to bring
spiritual solace, not only to students pent up in college
precincts, but to all the destitute people within the
reach of such beneficent labors.
The area of the University itself and the outboarding
houses was laid off into sections, each of which was
put in charge of a group of the association's members.
It was the duty of these several groups to interest all
the students living within the bounds of their respective
districts in the aims of that body, to lead as many as
could be persuaded, to join it, and to ensure the further
spread of moral and religious influences by inducing a
larger number to be present at the prayer meetings.
They were the trustees also for the distribution of any
funds which might have been contributed for the improvement
of the religious state of the University or of
its immediate neighborhood. Indeed, the work of the
organization was, from the beginning, prosecuted with
an enthusiasm as practical as it was exalted. The
average attendance at the prayer meetings,—which felt
two hundred students weekly. At least fifty members
were soon engaged in giving gospel instruction in the
Sunday schools of Charlottesville, the Bible classes of
the University, or the meetings for prayer in the outboarding
houses. Two additional members,—one of
whom was the president of the association,—spent several
hours of each Sunday afternoon in impressing on
the negro servants of the professors' families, the simpler
truths of Christianity.
But the work of the organization was not confined
to the University and Charlottesville. Five or six missions
in the surrounding region were supplied by it with
Sunday school teachers and leaders in formal worship.
"Several of us," we are informed by J. William Jones,
afterwards so distinguished as a Baptist minister,
"walked seven miles to the mission in the Ragged Mountains.
I remember that two of us agreed that we would
go every Sunday regardless of weather, and occasionally
we walked out in the snow half a leg deep. Knowing
that the teachers would be there, the scholars came in
all sorts of weather." An earnest and unbroken support
was given to these zealous labors of the association
by all the professors, but preeminently by Harrison,
Minor, Cabell, Davis, McGuffey, Francis H. Smith, and
Bledsoe, whose capacity for exposition, so highly trained
by their exertions as lecturers, were now enlisted in making
the Bible classes peculiarly interesting and profitable
to the young men who attended. In 1860, a readingroom
and library was opened at No. 14, West Lawn,
and a separate catalogue was drawn up of all the religious
books in the University collection, with a view to
causing their handling to be more convenient and frequent.
During the nineteen sessions,—anterior to the War
of Secession,—which began with that of 1842–3, there
were fourteen chaplains employed by the professors and
students of the University. Down to 1848, a term was
limited to one year, but after this date, it was enlarged
to two years. The most distinguished of these chaplains
in their after careers were W. H. Ruffner, the farsighted
founder of the modern public school system of
Virginia; John A. Broadus, one of the loftiest pulpit
orators produced by the South, and of a ripe and varied
scholarship; Dabney Carr Harrison, as noble a pattern
of the Christian and soldier as ever appeared upon
earth; and J. C. Granberry, who, as minister and bishop,
long occupied a position of deserved eminence in the
Methodist denomination. Leonidas Rosser too acquired
by his burning zeal and eloquence the reputation
of being one of the most successful revivalists of
his time.
In 1843, the chaplain found a residence in the pavilion
now in the possession of the Colonnade Club, and,
in 1848, this building was set aside, certainly in part,
for the use of this officer; but the extent of space open
to him there must have been incommodious, for, in 1851,
the Board of Visitors authorized the erection, by voluntary
contributions, of a parsonage, provided that the
site chosen for it should have first received the approval
of the Faculty. It was not without hesitation that this
permission was granted. Indeed, it was accompanied
by a voluminous report in explanation of the action of the
Board, which proves that fear of public criticism on the
score of bringing Church and State together, even in
this mild form, still lingered in the minds of the most
sensible and influential citizens. Cocke,—always actively
interested in benevolent causes,—sent out a circular
for an individual subscription of one hundred dollars.
It was hoped that thirty at least would agree to
contribute that sum, for this would have assured a total
amount of three thousand dollars, which was calculated
to be sufficient for the construction of the desired edifice.
Dr. Cabell, it seems, had been the first to suggest
the erection of the parsonage, but when Cocke acknowledged
that his applications had turned out to be disappointing,
—not one in five having obtained a favorable
response,—the professor, in his dejection, advised a
discontinuance of the canvass. Cocke, however, was not
disposed to accept defeat. "I have supposed that you
will give something to the University when you die,"
he wrote J. C. Cabell. "In my will, I have provided a
legacy of fifteen hundred dollars for it. Why may we
not add such part of our donation as would make a
sum sufficient to build the parsonage and execute our
own bequests before we go hence?" "Come down to
Bremo," he wrote later, as he wished to consult with his
friend in person, "and you shall have a plenty of the
best barbecued shoat and lamb, with the finest water."
The permission which the Board had given for the
erection of a parsonage was, in June, 1852, recalled,—
at least so far as the special terms embraced in it went;
but, apparently, at the same time, they authorized the
Faculty to receive donations. These were to be held in
trust by the Visitors for the building "of such houses
as would be necessary for the religious worship of professors
and students." By 1855, the parsonage had
been erected, but there remained an incumbrance on it
of three hundred dollars. The burden of this obligation
was generously lifted by W. B. Smith, of Cincinnati,
while visiting the West.
As yet no chapel appears to have been built. One
of the gymnasia had, during many years, been used for
this purpose, and it had furnished an apartment that
was superior in many ways to the room in the Rotunda
previously occupied. In this latter room, the lectures
on law, moral philosophy, political economy, mathematics,
anatomy, and modern languages had been and
were still delivered. As Professor Bonnycastle had
pointed out in 1837, it was only associated with the
interests and the tasks of the week, while the walls and
benches were defaced with names or trifling inscriptions.
Not a single suggestion hovered around the spot that
tended to prepare the mind for the solemnity of religious
communion. As early as April, 1841, all services
had been transferred to the gymnasium which had been
set apart as a chapel on Sunday morning and Wednesday
evening; and we find that, in 1848, it was also used
by the students for morning prayers. Two years later,
the Board having expressed an intention to convert the
apartment to other ends, the Faculty firmly protested;
but partially, at least, without avail, for the class in
natural philosophy assembled here in 1852 without putting
a stop to its occupation for religious worship on
Sunday. The number of students had now increased
so much that the gymnasium was probably found to be
too contracted for the church attendance. In October,
1856, a petition was sent to the Board to obtain permission
to use the public hall, at least temporarily,
should the chaplain, at any time, require more room for
his congregation.
Dr. Cabell was still sanguine that, by concerted efforts,
approval, expressed at their meeting in July, 1860, he
persuaded the Faculty to order Pratt, the superintendent
of buildings and grounds, to take up a collection for
that purpose among the six hundred students who were
now residing within the University precincts. The
edifice to be constructed was expected to seat at least
two hundred persons; and as it was considered to be
too costly to be erected by the contributions of the
students alone, Pratt spent a part of the summer of
1860 in canvassing the counties of the Valley. He
succeeded in thus obtaining the sum of five thousand
dollars. Sixteen thousand, however, was needed, as it
was proposed to join under the same roof a chapel and
a Society hall.
There seems to have been two plans suggested for
this edifice,—one by the superintendent of buildings
and grounds, and the other by Professor Schele. So
flattering was the prospect of raising the fund for its
erection that, in December, 1860, the executive committee
requested the Faculty to choose an appropriate
site; but before that body undertook to do so, they recommended
that the Board should submit the plans of
Pratt and Professor Schele to the critical examination
of a competent architect. It was not until February,
1861, that the site was selected. The spot preferred
was situated on the road that skirted the southern edge
of the Lawn. On the very eve of the war, there was
a motion before the Faculty to allow the money already
collected for the chapel or to be collected, to accumulate
until the University should be in a financial condition
to increase the sum to the degree necessary to erect one
of the wings then contemplated as an addition to the
Annex. It was thought, in the end, however, that it
addition would be suitable for religious services until
all the subscriptions had been paid. Hostilities between
the North and South had now begun, and the professors
were wise in hesitating to take so expensive a
step, with the outlook for the future of the University
so obviously overclouded with uncertainty.
The statistics that disclose to what extent the different
churches were represented among the students are first
recorded for the session of 1855–6. During the five
sessions beginning with September, 1855, and ending
with June, 1860, there were three thousand and sixty-seven
matriculates in attendance, and the proportion of
this number belonging to the several denominations was
as follows: Baptist, two hundred and forty-two;
Episcopalian, one hundred and sixty-nine; Presbyterian,
one hundred and forty-seven; Methodist, eighty; and
the other sects, sixty,—a total of six hundred and
ninety-six. This was about one quarter of the whole
number. The numerical growth between the first of
these five years and the last puts the religious advance
of the institution in a more favorable light than this
bare enumeration of membership for the whole of that
interval would appear to do,—the increase in the entire
affiliation jumped from seventeen per cent. of the
student body to thirty-three per cent. The most remarkable
enlargement was in the number of Episcopalian
communicants, which rose to four hundred per cent.
of the original number; in the instance of the other
denominations, the increase was about seventy-five per
cent. This religious improvement was primarily attributable
to the indefatigable and judicious activities
of the Young Men's Christian Association, whose influence
had grown with each year that passed.
XXII. Health
A minute report made to the Faculty in June, 1849,
reveals that the hygienic condition of the University was,
at that time, in the main, satisfactory; but it was admitted
that there were no wholesome means of disposing
of the refuse from the laundries and the kitchens of the
pavilions and hotels. The board of health was now composed
of at least two professors of the medical school.
Doctors Cabell and Davis appear to have been the first to
form it; and with the consent of the executive committee,
they continued, until the next meeting of the Board,
to put in force all the regulations which they considered
necessary to sanitation.
In the course of 1856 unmistakable symptoms of the
presence of typhoid fever within the precincts began to
show themselves. The students, very much alarmed by
the threatened epidemic, sent in a petition for a suspension
of lectures, to continue at least two weeks; but
as there were only seven or eight cases of sickness, the
Faculty decided that they would not be justified in granting
the request. In consequence, there was no interruption
of work; but the unsanitary condition which these
cases demonstrated led the Board in the following June
(1857), to adopt far more stringent regulations to
bring about a complete cleansing of the University area.
In the autumn of the same year, the Faculty placed the
proctor in charge of this task, and allowed him an additional
force of laborers to carry it out with the most
painstaking thoroughness. A weekly report upon what
had been effected during the previous seven days, was
rigidly required of him; and he was also instructed to
make a similar report on the condition of all the buildings.
This extraordinary zeal had its origin in an outbreak
of typhoid, which had darkened the latter part of October,
and was even prolonged into the next month.
Five deaths occurred before the 15th of November.
There was an abatement in the disease as winter approached;
but in February, 1858, the number of cases
again began to multiply. It was observed that the
fever was most prevalent on both of the Ranges. So
alarming became the rapidity of its progress, that, at
the Faculty's request, the Board convened in March.
Hitherto, the executive committee had permitted the
former body to use their own discretion in closing all
the rooms in the Ranges, should there be urgent reason
for doing so; but the inconvenience of removing so many
students would now be so heavy that this responsibility
was tacitly declined. In fact, the Faculty were opposed
to any interruption in the lectures, as, during that
period of the year particularly, the dispersion of the
classes was certain to prove very confusing and damaging.
The students, who had most at stake, from their occupation
of the dormitories condemned, petitioned the
Board to order a suspension, in spite of the Faculty's
reluctant attitude; but they were not successful,—the
Visitors sustained the professors in their position, and
adopted their recommendation to remove the tenants
of the Ranges, and to scour and fumigate the deserted
apartments. The young men were accommodated elsewhere;
and the dormitories in those parts of the precincts
remained vacant during the rest of the session.
Provision was now made for the proper nursing and
dieting of every sick student; for the better ventilation
of the different rooms; for the removal of all horses,
pigs, and cows from the University premises; and for
the daily inspection of the cisterns. By the advice of
and remodeled, so as to ensure an unbroken attention
to cleanliness and orderliness. But none of these
sanitary measures proved successful in halting the epidemic.
It continued to increase in violence, until, on
March 19, the medical professors, with the approval
of the entire Faculty, counselled the closing of the classrooms
as apparently the only way of bringing about
some abatement in the fever. Many of the students
had already turned their backs on the University,—
only, in some cases, to develop the distemper after their
arrival at their homes. Many were too ill to depart.
Fourteen died. The Board adopted the recommendation
of the Faculty,—the session was suspended until
May 1; but from that date, it was to be continued until
July 29, in order to make up for the length of time
that would be lost. On May 1, the young men returned,
and there was no further sickness during the remainder
of the term. It was supposed that the increase in the
attendance of students had been the principal cause of
this epidemic; and the Board, for that reason, actually
debated the advisability of limiting the number of matriculates
at the opening of the next session in September.
XXIII. Athletics
In 1841, James Roberts obtained the Faculty's permission
to teach within the precincts the arts of boxing
and wielding the broad sword; and in 1845, he was
succeeded by Francois Charlton, who was licensed to
give lessons in the additional art of fencing, and in using
the quarter staff and the cane in defense. These lessons
were restricted to three a week, and the whole
course to four months, at an annual fee of ten dollars.
But the most accomplished of all the instructors in
these exercises associated with the University of Virginia
before the War of Secession, was J. E. D'Alfonce.
He stood upon a more conspicuous pedestal than any
of his predecessors. A native of Poland, he was, like
so many individuals of that brilliant nationality, remarkable
for his talent as a linguist. Having been authorized
by the Faculty, in 1851, to give lessons in gymnastics,
he seems to have made at once a favorable impression,
not only by his skill and cunning in his own calling,
but by the possession of agreeable personal qualities.
At the start, he set up a private gymnasium at his own
expense; but in June, 1852, with the backing of his
pupils, he petitioned the Board to take over this establishment,
and refund him the amount of his expenditures
on its account. This was done with the understanding
that he should continue the director. A payment of
five hundred dollars was made for all his appliances,
and the proctor was ordered to receive for his benefit
ten dollars from every student who should wish to enjoy
the advantage of his instruction.
The Board now united in the offer,—which they appear
to have previously made,—of a site for his gymnasium
within the precincts. In 1853, he was permitted
to suspend the lessons which he had been giving on Saturday,
so that he might employ that day to his own profit
in some independent pursuit; and three years later,
he was licensed to become a private instructor in the
French language. This abnormal privilege raises the
inference that, at that time, his gymnastic classes had
dwindled so much as to bring in an insufficient income;
and this surmise seems to be confirmed by the recollections
of Professor Toy, who has recorded the fact that,
about 1856, most of the young men were satisfied, during
exercise to long walks. The gymnasium had now fallen
into disrepair, and in September of this year, the Board
appropriated one hundred and thirty dollars for its
restoration,—a practical proof of their continued interest
in the establishment, and also of their confidence in
the director.
But a more unmistakable indication still was the authority
which they granted the executive committee, in
1857, to construct, at a cost of fifteen hundred dollars,
a new gymnasium, in harmony with a plan submitted by
D'Alfonce and Pratt, the superintendent of buildings and
grounds. In the course of the following year, the former
offered to erect, at his own expense, on the University
lands a house for the accommodation of vapor
baths; and this was accepted, on condition that the privilege
should only be transferable to some person whom
the Board should approve; that the structure should be
taken down if the Board should object to its further
existence; and that, at the end of a fixed period, the full
title to it should pass to the University. The baths were
constructed in accord with these terms. D'Alfonce, it
appears, was compelled to use the water stored in the
cistern situated next to the gymnasium, since the flow
from the mountain reservoir was insufficient to supply
the voluminous amount which he required. He remained
at the University until the breaking out of hostilities;
became an officer in the Federal army; and, as we shall
see at a later period in our narrative, returned after the
war, and offered himself as a candidate for his old post.[15]
A spirited picture of the scene within and without
the gymnasium in the hours of instruction has been
drawn by Virginius Dabney, a brilliant student of that
period. "At 4.30 o'clock in the afternoon," he writes,
"we assembled on the grounds, and were soon marshaled
for our preliminary exercises. The professor pronounced
the first syllable of 'preliminary' with such vigor
as to warrant him in sending the four remaining leap-froggers
over each other as best they could. From the
opening to the close of the 'preliminary,' we were all
shouting with laughter, for the professor,—whose figure
may be summed up in one word, 'roly poly,' whose
stubby nose barely emerged, yet emerged with a twinkle,
from his round, rubicund, and jolly visage,—bubbled
over with a merry mixture of buffoonery and wit. He
was under the impression that he had been a lieutenant
in the Russian army, and his 'preliminary' exercises were
such as were used in giving suppleness to the limbs of
the Czar's recruits. They were endless in variety. It
was gloriously absurd to be one of three hundred men
squat like toads hopping along with ticklish gravity
towards some imaginary pond, to the sound of 'one, two,
tree, four,' of our vivacious military. Again, with
firmly planted feet, we stood as a guard of cavalry, and
lifted, with solemn precision, horseman after horseman
out of his saddle on the point of staves that masqueraded
as muskets. From these 'preliminaries,' we
passed to parallel bars, ladders and ropes; and at last,
clustering around our captain, cleared our throats for
supper with some enjoyable singing."
There was always a large section of the students to
whom these athletic contortions were not only not attractive
says the editors of the University Literary
Magazine for January, 1859, "has in it something so
mechanical, so business-like, that exercise ceases to be
a pleasure and becomes a labor. Where are the sports
that become a great university, and the vigorous youth
of a great State? Where are our cricket matches?
Would not the Rivanna support a boat club? The
classic Isis, and no less classic Cam, are not much larger
streams. We throw out the suggestion to our rowingmen."
It was but natural that many of the young men should
prefer some branch of sport in the open air,—some
form of recreation, indeed, that would allure them beyond
those doors behind which they were compelled to
spend so much of their time. To be required to remain
under a roof even when they were taking their pleasure
was a fact calculated to leave on their minds only a very
irksome and a very unrefreshing impression. During
that period, although occasional references to "baseball"
are found in the magazine, the only outdoor diversion
of importance was cricket, which was, perhaps, first
suggested by its popularity in the college life of England
rather than by its appositeness to the college life
of Virginia. It is true that football so-called was
played, but it seems to have been only a game in which
rubber balls were knocked about the floor of the gymnasium.
Apparently, no genuine game of that nature
took place at this time upon any part of the open area
of the University. A cricket club, however, was organized
in December, 1859, by a band of twenty-four
students, the first, it has been said, to be formed in the
Southern States. A field for the use of the players was
a round of three games came off weekly.
The success of cricket was so decided, that, at the
beginning of the session of 1860–1, the club was reorganized;
and it remained in existence until April, 1861,
when the opening of the war paralyzed so many of the
University's activities. The club had been maintained
in spite of depressing influences,—the first of which
was the frank indifference of the students as a body to
all sports; and the second, the unsuitableness of the
field on which the games were played. The editors of
the magazine, however, were persistent in urging the
formation of more clubs. "If there were numerous associations
of this kind," they wrote, in 1861, "our university
would improve in health and morals. Let us
add to the good already derived from the existing one,
the benefit of others, and when this is the case, the billiard
and bar-rooms will be less frequented." But even
if cricket had taken tenacious root at the University, it
would quite certainly, in time, have been abandoned for
baseball and football, two games, which, after the war,
acquired a hold, that, so far, has not been weakened.
Cricket has never been a popular game in America, and
there was small prospect of its retaining its grasp at
one institution when all the other institutions were encouraging
more active and exciting sports in the open
air.
The suggestion of establishing a rowing club was
confronted at once by at least three reasons for discouragement:
first, the distance to the Rivanna from
the precincts; second, the falls in that stream, and the
shadows from its banks; and third, its narrowness. The
students who favored the inauguration of this sport
the way of the success of the Yale rowing club? As
to the falls, the shells were so light that they could be
easily shouldered and carried around to deep water,
whenever that step should be necessary. As to the
narrowness of the course, it was debatable whether the
Quinnipick, the Cam, the Chiswell, and the Isis, were
more respectable in breadth. It was true that the
Rivanna was liable to sudden inundation, but did not
the Isis very frequently pour over Christ Church
meadow? and was that fact accepted as prohibitive of
the use of the oar on its normal surface? In December,
1860,—only a few months before the war broke
out,—the project of a rowing club, which had never
reached beyond a mere suggestion, was revived by the
editors of the magazine, for the general reason that
some kind of sport in the open air, beside a few games
of cricket, was imperatively called for. "We have a
quarrel with the system here in vogue," they exclaimed.
"The highest is not obtained. The harmonious development
of the student's whole nature,—moral, intellectual
and physical,—is not reached. It is not even attempted.
The physical man is wholly neglected.
Young life must need have ventilation, and if the ventilation
be allowed and encouraged in free and healthful
sport, the tendency and desire to go to dangerous
excess, and indulge in undue excitement, is greatly lessened."
All the outcroppings point to the fact, that, just previous
to the war, there was an impoverished interest
exhibited in all forms of outdoor sport, with the exception
of cricket; and that, in the instance of cricket also,
the interest was confined to a small number of students,
who turned to it as a vent for their energies.
The magazine for April, 1861, referred to the gymnasium of D'Alfonce
with some contempt. "It is a mere apology for a gymnasium,"
that periodical asserted. "It is so utterly unfit for its end that it is
entered by but a very few even at the beginning of the session, and towards
the latter part, by none." There is a strong probability that the
popularity of the gymnasium had declined because it was known that
D'Alfonce's sympathies leaned to the North.
XXIV. Amusements
John C. Rutherfoord, writing from the University to
his father, in 1844, said: "There is nothing to bring
the students together as a body, and one's daily associates
must necessarily be his nearest neighbors. I have frequently
admired the character, and wished to cultivate
the acquaintance, of students, who did not live near me,
but have not found it practicable; and have, under the
same circumstances, been forced to console myself with
only the occasional society of those, who, even before
coming to the University, were my most intimate friends.
I regret very much the state of things which, at this
institution, divides the students into a number of distinct
sets, and produces such a want of sociability among them
as a mass. You will hardly believe that there are students
whom I have seen, for the first time, on the last
day of the session."
The social condition thus thoughtfully described by
Rutherfoord seems all the more incredible when we recall
the smallness of the number of students enrolled at that
time. But this division into sets, with its accompanying
contraction of the institution's social life, has always been
one of its principal characteristics. It was undoubtedly
more perceptible in these early years than after the
disrupting influences of the war had begun to spread.
The young men of that period brought with them to
the University some of those aristocratic instincts which
lay at the bottom of Southern society; and there was
no class system,—such as was established in the curriculum
colleges,—to break down this formal barrier by
bringing them all into the affiliation of the freshman,
sophomore, junior, and senior years. It is true that such
a system would have raised up four divisions among
would have been as close as common studies and
constant intercourse could make it, through the whole
of four sessions. There were no such lines of demarcation
as these in the University of Virginia. Outside
the professional schools, there were no mutual interests
beyond those general and ill-defined ones which sprang
from the young men's presence within the same precincts.
The influence of the debating societies, which convened
only once a week, was more political than social, while
each of the fraternities was limited to a few members.
But if there were no very salient features to the social
life of the University at this time, there were several conspicuous
personal types, as we learn from an acutely discerning
and faintly sarcastic student of that period.
First, there was the "fashionable swell." It was estimated
by one observer, who seems to have had a liking
for precise figures, that his collar was three quarters of
an inch wide. Sometimes, he wore a necktie of the size
of a small ribbon, one half of which was solferino in
color, and the other half as black as the wing of a raven;
sometimes, it was a scarf as large as a shield, and as varied
in its hues as the rainbow. The sleeves of his coat
extended only to his wrist, leaving ample verge for the
display of a large cuff adorned with a pair of showy Etruscan
gold sleeve-buttons. The pantaloons that enclosed
his legs were described as "piglike." Was this because
they were always kept in a rumpled and baggy state about.
the knee, in harmony with what was known as the "British
wrinkle"? The kid gloves that covered his hands
were tinted to a delicate mauve. His hair was always
parted with the utmost nicety five-eighths to the right.[16]
The second type was designated the "sheepskin gentry."
"They have no thoughts," declared our satirical reporter,
"except about sheepskin. They have an insatiable
longing for sheepskin; they measure everything with
sheepskin tape. Their banner is of sheepskin. Their
last request and parting wish in death will probably be
that they may be shrouded in sheepskin. When two or
three diplomas have been obtained, they acquire amazing
dignity. They become patronizing to all. They are
given to cultivating the professors, repeat what the professors
said to them, and they run to class half an hour
beforehand and ask the lecturer a thousand questions."
The third type was styled "the man of leisure."
There were many students who were listed in this popular
category. They were ordinarily "good fellows," with
some literary taste, but so heedless in their conduct in general
as to bring themselves under frequent reprimands
and warnings from the chairman of the Faculty. They
always drew upon their talent for facetious irony in describing
a summons: "They had called agreeably to a
written invitation from that gentleman," they said, "and
had been disappointed by his failure to invite them to a
family dinner." They demonstrated, with mathematical
exactness, in their own opinion at least, that the professors
were "jackasses," for how was it possible otherwise
to account for the ordinance which required the delivery
of the first lecture of the day at an hour so disturbing to
their slumbers as half past seven in the morning? Many
of this type talked ostentatiously of their experiences in
Europe,—if they had made the foreign tour during the
preceding summer vacation,—and declared Byron's Isles
they had visited the ground in person. They were not
averse to calling on the ladies, although they complained
that the local beauty fell far short of what they had recently
seen in alien lands.
The fourth type was known as the "good-for-nothing
man," who usually thought himself to be a wit, but who,
in reality, was a bore of a monstrous calibre. The fifth
was the "mannerless man," who never stepped aside on
the pavement to afford sufficient room for any one coming
from the opposite quarter to pass; and who also
stared discourteously at the ladies; gulped his food at his
meals in his hotel dining-hall; cursed the servants on the
slightest provocation; clapped his hands in ironical applause
at breakfast and dinner; guffawed at supper;
bragged and swaggered in public; raised disorder in the
town-hall; battled with the police; and stirred up and
joined in riots within the college bounds.
Such in mere outline were some of the types who, according
to this contemporary observer, imparted to a
perceptible degree the flavor of their own characters to
the general spirit of the social life of the University.
But there was a large number of young men who were too
simple and quiet in their tastes and behavior to be brought
into any one of these lists. They too gave much of their
own seasoning to the social life within the precincts.
As we have seen, there was, before the introduction of
cricket, no outdoor sport to diversify the college routine
from week to week. We learn from the recollections of
Charles S. Venable, that, about the middle of the fifth
decade, driving and riding were the only recreations in
the open air to which the students were at all disposed to
turn; and the Faculty were not of a mind to encourage
them in either. When, in 1842, W. A. Kimbrough asked
own amusement, his petition was rejected; but it was
impossible to prevent the young men from secretly hiring
horses of the livery stables occasionally; and they sometimes
put the animals, thus temporarily in their possession,
to very improper uses. In the spring of 1845,
there was a spirited horse-race on the road leading from
Monroe Hill to the cemetery; this event occurred on
Sunday afternoon; and the borders of the improvised
course were crowded with students drawn thither by the
flying rumor that an exciting trial of speed was to take
place. There were several heats, which were rendered
all the more interesting to the shouting spectators by
the fact that they had betted ice-cream treats on the result.
Excursions across the mountains to Weyer's cave
were often made, either in the regular stage-coach or in
a hired vehicle, or, perhaps, on horse-back. Permission
to go on these jaunts seems to have been promptly
granted by the Faculty; but quite frequently leave was
not asked, as Saturday and Sunday, coming together,
gave many of the young men an opportunity to steal away
from the precincts without danger of their absence being
brought to light by roll-call.
Apparently, the Calathumpian band derived their liveliest
amusement from acts of lawlessness, but they were
sometimes satisfied to vent their spirits in tumultuous
parades or in mere noise. The indignant Faculty, in
1858, described one of the most blatant of these exhibitions
as that "senseless but offensive disturbance called
in University slang 'calathump.'"
Music was so much appreciated by the students, in the
interval between 1841 and 1848, that at least two masters
were then licensed to teach the art to all who should
apply. One of this couple was Mr. Bigelow, who had
many years. Mr. Deems was authorized to take Mr.
Bigelow's place as soon as the latter decided to abandon
this employment. In 1853, Mr. Robinson, who had been
warmly recommended, was permitted to instruct pupils
in singing. There was, at this time, no apartment situated
within the University bounds which was suitable
for the performances of regularly trained musicians; but
the town-hall in Charlottesville was often rented by travelling
companies. Two concerts were given there, in
1858, by Strakosch's troupe, which was very liberally
patronized by the students, although the price of a ticket
was exorbitant.
With the increase in the number of the matriculates,
the dancing classes grew proportionately larger, and the
skill of accomplished teachers was more prized than ever.
In 1841, Louis Xaupe was licensed to give instruction in
any private house beyond the precincts which the Faculty
should approve; but he was warned to restrict the number
of lessons to three each week, as it was necessary to
avoid diverting the minds of the young men from their
studies. In the following year, Mr. Michaux obtained
the same privilege, on the same condition, and Paschal
B. Hoffman, in 1846. Cotillions were very often given
in the hall of the Jefferson Society, and also in the dining-room
of the Eagle tavern in Charlottesville. No objection
to dances at the reputable hotels in town seems to
have been offered by the chairman, at this time, provided
that the cost of the whole entertainment should not exceed
eighty dollars, and that the subscription of the individual
student should be limited to two dollars and fifty
cents. The abolition of the uniform law had rendered
these balls a smaller cause of concern to the Faculty, formerly
so perplexed by the necessity of compelling every
The professors, wisely recognizing that politenesses on
their part were promoting a better feeling between themselves
and the students, varied the social life of the latter
by giving several balls in the course of each session.
We learn from Crawford H. Toy, a student during
1852–56, that there were still numerous instances of
drunkenness in college, but that such vicious indulgence
occurred in a very quiet way. The young man found
guilty of flagrant intoxication was not expelled as formerly
as the sole punishment for his conduct,—he was
first offered the choice of signing the pledge required by
the Temperance Society of its members; and it was only
in case he should refuse, that he received notice that he
must withdraw from the precincts. It is quite probable
that the penalty of membership in the society, drastic as
it must have appeared to be to many of the students, was
accepted as preferable to summary dismissal. Nevertheless,
the prospect of being dragged into the Temperance
Hall by the scruff of the neck, as it were, exercised, no
doubt, a repressive influence upon those who were inclined
to drink too freely. Numerous suppers were still held in
the dormitories, without criticism or interference from the
Faculty, provided that no liquor was furnished; that the
company present was small; and that the expense of the
entertainment was not extravagant. These meals were
simple enough in their food,—ham and eggs, chicken and
turkey, were the staple dishes. One of the most pleasant
as well as one of the most politic customs that had crept
in by this time was the invitation, which, annually, each
professor sent to every member of his class, to attend a
supper which he was proposing to give them as a proof
of his personal goodwill for them all. In 1842, the
students asked permission to subscribe to a banquet in
United States; but their request was refused, on the bald
ground that it was in conflict with an important section of
the University code.[17]
During many years, an ugly club flourished among the
students. The right of admission was common to all
who were willing to pay a small fee to be used in the
purchase of the prizes. To the man with the homeliest
countenance in college was awarded a pair of boots, which
had cost fifteen dollars; the prettiest man received a
necktie; the smallest, a stick of red and white candy,
weighing twenty pounds; the vainest, a hat. A stand was
erected on the Lawn before the voting began, and to this
elevated position, after the announcement of the ballot,
the winner of the prize for ugliness was formally escorted.
As soon as he faced the audience, he was loudly
cheered and called upon to return thanks for the honor bestowed
on him, and his reply was always expected to be
of a humorous cast. The president of the club was invariably
a student with an irrepressible taste for fun, and
a talent for amusing speech. In 1857, this office was
filled by Thomas U. Dudley, afterwards a distinguished
bishop of Kentucky, whose triumphs in wit and frolic,
while still a student, have come down among the most
brilliant social traditions of the University.
In the course of each session, one day was set apart
the Lawn, under the directing hand and vigilant eye of
the professor of chemistry. The gas was manufactured
in the laboratory, and from thence was brought on the
ground in a large rubber bag. A student was always selected
as the subject for experiment, and in the presence
of a highly amused crowd, he inhaled the vapor. Its
effect upon the mental equilibrium of some of the subjects
was almost as extreme as the working of insanity,—they
fell into the strangest contortions, and burst into peals of
hysterical laughter. Their extravagance of behavior was
even more unbridled than that which usually accompanies
drunkenness; and as it led, on one occasion, to some impropriety
on the part of one of the subjects, the custom
was suddenly and permanently discontinued.
The commencement exercises grew in distinction and
popularity as time passed. As early as 1849, the Lawn
was illuminated at night while these exercises were in
progress. This, in the beginning, was perhaps done with
ordinary candles stuck against the pillars of the arcades,
and not with the Chinese lanterns, which were used so
effectively at a later period. A band of music was always
present,—a body of men usually obtained from
some Virginian town; thus, in 1849, its members had
their homes in Harrisonburg. Some of the most accomplished
speakers in the State delivered addresses in the
course of the main exercises in the public hall. Although
the entire occasion was supposed to have been reserved
for intellectual enjoyment, yet at least one part of the
time was considered by those of keen appetite for pleasure
to be intended only for social amusement. "The
point of view of the large audience," says Professor Toy,
"was that the occasion was a social one; the essays had
been approved by the authorities and needed no further
laughter filled the air; and it was impossible to hear the
reading five feet from the rostrum. But the essayist
was so glad to have passed through the ordeal unscathed,
that he could harbor no unkind thoughts of the laughter-loving
audience." The attention of that audience was,
no doubt, always respectful while the visiting orator occupied
the platform; and it was also less fickle when the
exercises of the debating societies were going on because
of the interest felt in the speeches of the presidents and
speakers. Among those, who, at one date or another,
during the Fifth Period, 1842–1861, were elected to the
latter offices were men of subsequent distinction like
Robert Toombs, Robert L. Dabney, John A. Broadus,
Virginius Dabney, and Edward S. Joynes.
"By 1843," says Frederick W. Page, in his recorded recollections of
the University at that time, "the uniform was abolished. Each man
dressed as seemed proper in his own eyes. Sack coats had not been invented.
Frocks and swallow-tails only were worn. Some of the more
daring wore their calico study gowns to lecture as well as meals and gave
no offense. Felt hats were unknown. The headgar was a cap and top
hat." College Topics, 1909.
In his Recollections of 1843–5, Frederick W. Page says: "We enjoyed
good smoking tobacco. There were no little bags and no briar roots (in
those times). Our pipes were the real Powhatan clay, with reed stems.
The longer the stem, the more aristocratic the pipe. They could not be
carried in the pocket. One fellow boasted of a stem so long he could lie
on his bed and rest the bowl on the hearth. He had to employ his roommate
as lighter. We got our tobacco from Lynchburg. The stage driver
for a dollar would bring a two bushel bag full. My tobacco club was
annoyed by a fellow from another part of college, who dropped in ACCIDENTALLY
so often to fill his pipe that a little gunpowder got mixed in the
tobacco."
XXV. Fraternities
It will be recalled that there flourished at the University
of Virginia, during the early years of its existence,
a Greek letter society, whose principal object apparently
was simply the cultivation of powers for debate. The
first Greek letter society established there exclusively
for those purely social purposes which are indicated by
the word "fraternity," was the Delta Kappa Epsilon.
Then, in succession, were chartered the Phi Kappa Psi,
Phi Kappa Sigma, and Beta Theta Pi. Previous to 1861,
seven others were added to this number: the Chi Phi,
Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Phi Gamma Delta, Delta Psi,
Theta Delta Chi, Delta Kappa, and Kappa Alpha. The
Delta Kappa Epsilon was a fraternity that traced its fountain-head
to Princeton College. The history of the chapter
established at the University of Virginia is practically
duplicated in the history of the local chapters of the
other similar associations, which, like itself, were, for the
found a congenial spot for growth at the University, owing
to that tendency toward social groups which has already
been mentioned as an important feature of its scholastic
life. Moreover, this was the period in which the
masonic organization flourished most among the fathers
of these young men; and that secret association, perhaps,
had something to do, in spirit at least, with the rapid
spread of these college bodies, in spite of the fact that
their reason for existence was social and not benevolent.
It was in May, 1853, that Messrs. Abrahams, Rogers,
and others sought the Faculty's consent to the establishment
of a chapter of the Delta Kappa Epsilon at the University.
They candidly acknowledged that, as the purpose
of its organization were not disclosable, they possessed
no warrant to state what were its rules and usages,
except so far as to say that these were consonant with law
and order. The reply of the Faculty to this application
was expressed with equal frankness: they asserted that
they had no mistrust whatever of the motives of the petitioners,
but as the proposed society was admitted to be
covert in its by-laws and its aims, it was unquestionably
open to grave abuses, which might have a tendency to
nourish further that insubordinate disposition which had
so often flamed up among the students. For this reason,
the authorities refused, though with reluctance, to assent
to the request. The main influence that shaped this decision
is intelligible enough: that decision was really
only another proof of the lurking distrust which the Faculty
still felt, even as late as 1854, in the orderly spirit of
the student body acting as a whole or in segments,
whether organized into secret fraternities or into Calathumpian
bands. We learn from the history of Eta
chapter, written by Professor James M. Garnett, that
1852, many months before the open application for formal
recognition was submitted and denied. This refusal
was afterwards very wisely recalled, for, during the session
of 1854–55, the brothers of the chapter were meeting
regularly and under no ban.
Hilary A. Herbert, who was Secretary of the Navy in
Mr. Cleveland's cabinet, was a member of the chapter
during the sessions of 1854–55 and 1855–56, and has recorded
his recollections of its working. "We had many
interesting debates and a number of fine papers read," he
says. "We strove to keep up a high standard, requiring
always both character and scholarship in candidates
for admission." The tests, it appears, were: fair abilities,
agreeable social qualities, and the disposition and
manners of a gentleman. "I remember," continues Mr.
Herbert, "being very much chagrined at the rejection of
a warm friend, because his class standing was not up to
the mark."
It was the supreme characteristic of the Delta Kappa
Epsilon fraternity, as of all its fellow associations, that
its proceedings were hidden behind an oriental veil. The
place of meeting was as scrupulously concealed as the
den of an untamed animal in the jungle. It was usually
a contracted attic-room under the roof of some college
building which was not often visited at night. The hour
for assembling always fell after dark, and as it drew near,
the members of the fraternity would leave their respective
dormitories with the furtiveness of conspirators, and
make for the place of rendezvous by a route that doubled
upon itself like the trail of a hunted fox. The members
of the other fraternities were always on the alert to detect
any suspicious movements on their rivals' part; and
in order to avoid detection, the latter were forced to
which so often offered a cover for the advances and retreats
of the stealthy rioters of those tumultuous times.
Indeed, so far, it is said, did the Eta chapter of the Delta
Kappa Epsilon fraternity stickle for its mole-like privacy,
that it protested against the publication of the official letters
that were, from time to time, sent in by it and its
sister chapters, because this was thought to amount to
the divulgence of the fraternity's secret history.
On the roll of this chapter, during the session of 1860—
1, there were found the names of at least eight members
who sacrificed their lives for the cause of the Confederacy.
Among them were the supremely knightly spirits
of Randolph Fairfax, W. T. Haskell, and Percival Elliott.
There were, during this interval, two members
who were destined to become bishops of unusual distinction
in their church denomination; two celebrated scholars
in ecclesiastical history,—Dr. Dubose, of the University
of the South, and Dr. Toy, of Harvard; several
professors in advanced seats of learning; members of
Congress and the State legislatures; prominent judges,
lawyers, and physicians; and equally conspicuous representatives
of other callings. Not less than eleven of
their number carried off the highest scholastic honor of
the institution, the degree of master of arts.
The Delta Kappa Epsilon enjoyed only one advantage
over its fellow fraternities: it had been the one the longest
established at the University, and it had thereby acquired
more time to swell the roll of its membership.
But in the achievements of that membership, whether
within the college precincts, or in the practical affairs of
the great world afterwards, its members were not more
distinguished, in proportion to their number, than the
members of the other fraternities that approached it in
were all founded simply to strengthen the bonds of friendship
within their respective circles, yet in spite of this
innocent and legitimate purpose, they were looked upon
by outsiders with a suspicion that occasionally went so far
as to attribute to them positive iniquities,—possibly not
to the discontent of some of the members, who may have
taken a Byronic pride in the possession of a reputation
far blacker than they deserved.
XXVI. Debating Societies
The debating societies, which reflected the forensic activities
of the students, as the fraternities reflected their
social, sometimes broke away from their normal channel
and descended to frivolous gayeties. Not infrequently,
they applied to the Faculty for permission to give a contillion
in their respective halls. Such was the request of
the Jefferson Society in 1845; and it was granted on the
usual conditions: (1) that all drinking was to be avoided;
and (2) that the cost of the supper,—which was to be
furnished by Col. Watson's University hotel,—was not
to run beyond a total of sixty dollars. This ball was
repeated from year to year on the floor of the hall.
Not satisfied with this popular means of contributing
to the amusement of its members, the society also adopted
another plan: public notice was given that a box had been
attached to the door of the hall to receive all satires, or
other mirth-provoking essays, which the students might
be induced to drop within. No signatures were required.
The secretary pulled out these documents at each meeting
of the society and read them to the assembled audience.
This privilege, as might have been anticipated,
was soon outrageously abused. The satirical compositions
of the young are likely enough to be extravagant
degenerate into offensive grossness. The members of the
society, finding themselves the targets of many irresponsible
pens, bent upon making them ridiculous, through the
exposure of their most vulnerable weaknesses, quickly
winced under these volleys; and it was with a sense of relief
that the box was permanently removed, and the invitation
to contribute thus silently and significantly withdrawn.
Annually, on April 13, Jefferson's birthday was celebrated
by the society. This was done with formal ceremonies,
—invitation cards were printed, and sent out to
persons who were not members; and the audience that assembled
represented all that was most distinguished and
most respected in the community. Many ladies were invariably
present, to lend, as the old fashioned courtesy of
that day expressed it, "the charm of their grace and
beauty to the occasion." A brass band, obtained in Richmond
or Washington, filled the intermissions with the
strains of expert music. These meetings were held,—
sometimes in the hall of the society, sometimes in the
public hall after its completion, but ordinarily in the
chapel, as offering the accommodation of the required
number of seats. The proceedings were opened by the
reading of the Declaration of Independence; and this was
followed by the delivery of a patriotic address.
Even as late as 1853, the society did not feel positively
certain of the permanence of their tenure of their
hall. When, during that year, the roof of the building
began to leak, the Faculty ordered it to be repaired at
the University's expense, on the ground that it might be
needed, at a later date, for the purposes of the institution.
At this time, the increase in the number of students had
become very perceptible, and the Faculty probably expected
would have to be turned into a dining-room. Fortunately,
the society was never required to give up its
premises.
As its membership swelled in volume, the excitement
of its elections rose to a higher pitch. In 1858, there
was a tumultuous contest for the final oratorship, which
culminated in the hall on a Saturday night, near the end
of the session. "I was present," we are told by Rev.
John Johnson. "Next morning, before I was out of
bed, a friend, who bore a name honored over all Virginia,
burst into my room with the exclamation 'Johnson,
I am the happiest man in the world.' 'What is the
matter now?' I asked; 'you got your man last night?'
'Well,' said he, 'I received four challenges before I
went to bed, and I got two more this morning before I
got up. That is glory enough for one year."' "It is
pertinent to remember," adds Johnson, "that I never
knew a challenge to materialize in powder and lead."
The philosopher of the magazine, commenting on this
exasperated struggle, with all its emotions and schemings,
exclaimed: "The University is a miniature world in its
defeats and victories, successes and disappointments, rivalries,
jealousies, squabbles, and enmities. A Jefferson
Society election for final orator is a rare piece of fun, in
some respects, but in others, it presents the observer with
the baser side of human nature."
It seems to have been customary for the supporters of
the victor in one of these contests to shoulder him, so
soon as the upshot of the ballot had been called out, and
in a cheering and singing procession, carry him off to the
nearest drinking-saloon on the road to Charlottesville.
There he was expected to treat every member of the half
frenzied company to lager beer, whiskey, or brandy, until
reshoulder him, and bear him back to his dormitory within
the precincts. The campaign anterior to one of these
elections was graphically described, at the time, by the
editors of the magazine. "For several days before
hand," they stated, "friends of the various candidates
might have been seen bustling around hunting up recruits,
soliciting votes, praising their candidate's genius, and peculiar
fitness for the post of final orator, urging his claims
on green academics and unsophisticated meds with a
warmth and fluency worthy a political campaign against
the Know-Nothings. Each separate clique had a man,
who was, by all odds, the smartest fellow and best
speaker in college. The only topic in all circles for a
week beforehand was the election. Every other man
you met wanted to bet you a box of Havanas, a dozen of
Chambertin, a cask of lager, a bottle of Johannesberg,
or anything else from a basket of champagne to a double-breasted
brandy smash, that his candidate would be the
successful one. But the candidates themselves! What
winning ways they had about them, how overpoweringly
delighted they were to meet you, how they shook you
by the hand until there was imminent danger of dislocating
your shoulder! And doubtless they would have
asked us about the family if there had been any probability
of any of us having any."
The Washington Society seems to have been buffeted
about during several years after 1842 for lack of a permanet
assembly hall. In 1846, it convened in one of
the rooms of Hotel F, which building was, at that time,
occupied in part by the family of the proctor; but this
privilege was soon taken away; and the society, in consequence,
petitioned the Board for another suitable apartment.
The nearest approach to such an apartment which
B. This they used, if at all, apparently for a short interval
only, for, in 1847, they were still coming together
in their former quarters in Hotel F, although they complained
that it was too small for the attendance at their
regular debates. In 1849, they were granted the possession
of a room in Hotel A. Three years later, they
asked for permission to enlarge the bounds of this room,
which, from this time forward, seems to have acquired
the name of the Washington Hall. The original apartmentment
is said to have stood above a number of dormitories,
which, in became so damp that Dr. Cabell advised
the Faculty to discontinue their use.
There has been a reference already to the unsuccessful
effort of the two debating societies to obtain new halls
for their members by collecting a large sum through the
employment of Mr. Pratt, the superintendent of grounds
and buildings, as a solicitor. In the plan of the anticipated
structure, the Washington Society was to occupy a
spacious apartment on the one side, and the Jefferson on
the other, with a large room reserved between the two
for religious services. Each hall was to contain seats
for at least four hundred and fifty persons. It appears
that the two societies had never been chartered. In November,
1860, they determined that their prosperity
would be fortified by incorporation, because it would enable
each of them to borrow the money with which to
provide the quarters that they had been unable to secure
by public subscription. It was at first proposed to erect
a hall that should be held in common. By the terms of
the scheme now suggested by the Jefferson Society, a sum
of three thousand dollars was to be negotiated upon the
security of coupon bonds running fifteen years. These
were expected to be endorsed by the Board of Visitors,
annual sinking fund of three hundred dollars. This proposal
failed to receive the approval of the more wary
Washington Society, whose resources were less abundant,
owing to its smaller membership. It was fortunate, indeed,
that this prudent stand was taken by that body, for
the four years of complete suspension which followed the
breaking out of the war would have left the two associates
burdened with a debt that would have been equivalent
to bankruptcy.
The Jefferson and Washington Societies were not the
only organizations formed for debate during the Fifth
Period, 1842–1861. In the course of the session of
1847–48, there were at least three bodies of this character
in existence within the precincts. The third was the
Philomethean Society, which was established on April 5,
1848. The right was given to it, as to its sister associations,
to celebrate special occasions in the chapel; but its
ordinary meetings seem to have been held in one of the
vacant rooms of the old library pavilion. The privilege
to do this was at first denied, on the ground that the
apartments in that building were reserved for the chaplain
and the Board of Visitors; but it was afterwards
granted,—quite probably as a temporary measure,—in
order to allow the new society time within which to find
a permanent home. In 1852, the Parthenon Society
was organized, and at once petitioned the Faculty for a
hall. Embarrassed by the request, that body prudently
referred it to the Board. A suggestion was now put
forth that an addition should be made to the proctor's
office for the housing of the new association; but no step
was taken to carry this out; in fact, there was an expectation
at first that room for both the Parthenon Society
and the Washington Society would be reserved somewhere
soon as completed; but this anticipation proved delusive;
and the members of the Parthenon, finding it impossible
to secure a roof to shelter their assembled heads, seemed
to have resignedly allowed it to pass out of existence.
So soon, however, as one association was pronounced
dead, another sprang up, in the most sanguine spirit, to
occupy the vacant place. In 1854, a fifth debating society
was organized by W. W. Bird and his friends; and
they were permitted by the Faculty at first to come togehter
in the eastern lecture-room of the Rotunda. The
name which this new association adopted was the Columbian
The Columbian was in the habit, during some
years, of assembling in Temperance Hall; and it gradually
acquired a roll of membership that brought it very
near to the numerical importance of the Jefferson and
Washington Societies. Towards its end, this society received
permission to hold its debates in the hotel on East
Range occupied by Colonel Ward. Its dissolution seems
to have occurred sometime anterior to 1860, and the
room which it had occupied was transferred to the use of
the superintendent of grounds and buildings.
A list of some of the questions debated in these societies
may be given for the light which they cast on the historical
and political interests of the young men of the
University in those now distant times: Are free institutions
favorable to the progress of literature and arts?
Do the virtues of mankind increase with the progress of
civilization? Are short terms of political office desirable?
Was the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, justified?
Has the union of Ireland and England been detrimental
to Ireland? Would it benefit the English governmental
to separate Church and State? Was the English
Government justified in banishing Napoleon to St.
Ought capital punishment to be abolished? Who has
exerted the greater influence on the destinies of Europe,
Napoleon I or Napoleon III? Have savages a full right
to the soil?
In 1850, a joint committee of the three debating societies
obtained permission to invite an orator of distinction
to address the audience in the public hall, on the occasion
of the commencement exercises, to be followed by a ball
in the library. The next year, the Board and Faculty
replied favorably to a similar application; but in 1852,
the condition was imposed that the speaker should confine
his discourse to a literary or scientific subject. During
the session of 1857–8, Henry Winter Davis,—who
had made himself obnoxious to the South by his embitered
partisanship—was asked to deliver the annual
oration. The Faculty unanimously protested against his
selection for such an honor; and they were supported by
a strong minority of the members of the societies. Davis
discreetly refused the invitation, but in doing so expressed
himself with offensive pungency.
At this time, famous lecturers from other States often
spoke before the debating societies in the course of the
session. A considerable fee was received by Edward
Everett, about 1859, for the delivery under these circumstances
of one of his popular discourses; and this sum
he generously presented to the societies as the means of
affording, through the accruing interest, a prize for an
annual essay on American biography, to be published in
the magazine. There was a lecture in the public hall,
during the same year, by H. W. Miller, of North Carolina.
This was for the benefit of the Mount Vernon
fund. Objectionable words must have been uttered by
Miller, in the course of his remarks, for the Faculty decided
liberty of the same great apartment unless he had been
invited to the University with the approval of its authorities.
XXVII. Expenses of Students
In the interval between 1842 and 1861, there were several
important changes in the amounts of the fees.
Among them, was the recall, in 1845, of the supplementary
fee of twenty dollars which the professor of law had,
after 1833, been permitted to collect from each member
of his class; but he was recouped for this loss by obtaining,
for the first time, the right to give professional opinions,
in return for the remuneration ordinarily asked by
practising attorneys. Subsequent to the session of 1851–
2, the professor of law was authorized to charge sixty
dollars for membership in his intermediate class, and
seventy-five for membership in his senior. The total
dues for the four courses embraced in the medical school
was one hundred dollars,—with five dollars added for
the use of dissection material. In 1856, the fee in the
law school was increased to eighty dollars in each of the
classes, and at the same time, the matriculation fee was
advanced from fifteen dollars to twenty. Should the student
in any school have been admitted after February 1,
he was to be entitled to a deduction of ten per cent. in the
tuition fees; but there seems to have been no abatement
in the matriculation fees, or rents of the dormitories,
whether he entered college early or late in the year. The
amount of his payments was only refunded in case he had
withdrawn from college on account of sickness; and then
simply in proportion to the length of time which was yet
to pass before the close of the session.
There were still instances in which, for special reasons,
1850, J. L. Gillespie, who had, during many years, followed
the calling of a teacher, was, in consideration of
his laborious services in that character, and of his narrow
income, permitted to attend the lectures in the medical
courses without any charge; and he was left at liberty
also to join a class in any other school on the same footing.
While all candidates for the ministry were exempt
from the payment of tuition fees, they could not claim the
right of having a class provided for themselves alone; nor
were they admitted to the institution, the second year, on
the same liberal terms, unless they had won at least a certificate
of distinction in both the intermediate and the final
examinations of the previous year. In 1859, a candidate
for the ministry was required to submit testimonials of
his clerical plans and proofs of his good standing in the
ranks of his own denomination; and he was not allowed,
the second year, to attend the same class which he had
attended the first except in a higher grade. There were,
in 1857, thirteen students who had announced their intention
of following the clerical profession.
Sometimes, the son of a minister of the gospel was permitted
to matriculate without payment of fees, in consideration
of the impoverished circumstances of his father.
Sometimes the brother of a professor in the University
was granted the same privilege. In one instance, a
printer of Charlottesville was admitted without charge,
on the ground that he was a young man of "good talents,
exemplary character, and no means," who was spurred on
by a praiseworthy ambition to seek an education in the
higher branches of knowledge. A professor from another
college, who wished to prosecute his studies along
some special line, was always exempted from the payment
of fees.
The amount imposed upon each student for board was
gradually increased after 1850, in response to the advance
in prices in general which followed the discovery
of gold in California. It was, in 1850–51, one hundred
dollars for the entire session; in 1852–53, one hundred
and ten dollars; in 1853–54, one hundred and twenty;
and in 1855–56, one hundred and thirty. In the ensuing
year, it fell back to the amount which had been fixed
during the previous session; but in 1857–58, it again
rose to one hundred and thirty dollars; and so remained
until the war began. In 1860–61, the student possessed
the right to board at any one of the University hotels
which he should prefer; and if he was able to induce the
keeper to lower the charge in his own case, no effort to
nullify it was made by the Faculty. He was, however,
still called upon to settle his board once every three
months in advance; and this continued to be done through
the proctor.
No increase in the rents of the dormitories seems to
have occurred during this period,—the tenant still paid
sixteen dollars for the single apartment; but now, as formerly,
this, if he desired, could be equally shared with a
companion. During the session of 1858–59, the students
were permitted to buy the furniture which they needed
for their rooms, with the right to dispose of it to their
successors the next year; and a substantial reduction in
their board was allowed on this account. As many as
fifty sets of furniture were purchased, during one session,
by the proctor from Hutchinson and Wickersham, of
New York, and sold to the young men, at the rate of
twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents a set. But it was
soon found that this method, not only occasioned grave inconvenience,
but also failed to reduce the outlay for such
articles.
The fuel consumed in the dormitories was still supplied
by the proctor, and, quite frequently, he was unsuccessful
in obtaining a profit on his annual sales. In the
session of 1842–43, the total amount of his expenses was
$1,942.62; the total amount of his proceeds, $1,701.00,
—a deficit of $241.62. We learn from the fuel account
for this year that he bought 476 ¼ cords, for which
he paid at the rate of three dollars the cord; he sold this
to the students at the rate of four dollars; but the charges
for sawing, carting, and the like, were so onerous that
the margin of gain soon faded away.
It was only the wagons that were able to transport to
the University two loads a day that brought the sellers
of the original wood a satisfactory profit. This advantage,
however, was restricted to the proprietors of
lands situated not far from the precincts,—a fact that
gave their owners a practical monopoly, which they soon
began to use to the point of exorbitancy by advancing the
price of a cord from two dollars and twenty-five cents to
three dollars,—an addition to the previous charge of
nearly one-fourth. Emboldened by this success, they
announced a second advance,—this time to three dollars
and a half; but the proctor shrewdly counterchecked this
second gouge by buying the fuel of numerous small proprietors
who were content to sell at the original rate.
They could not, however, be depended upon to supply all
the wood that was needed, but their intervention at least
served to scotch the greedy impositions of the large landowners
in the neighborhood. In 1854, the railway, for
the first time, furnished a vehicle for the transportation
to the University, with ease and dispatch, of a sufficient
quantity of fagots; and it also offered a second solution
in the supply of coal which it made available. To the
proctor was left the decision as to whether the saving
substituting in the dormitories iron grates for the ordinary
open hearth fireplaces.
It was reckoned that the expenses of a student at the
University of Virginia, in 1845, were about equal in
amount to those of a contemporary who was enrolled at
Harvard College; they were not in excess of a student's
expenses at the College of William and Mary; and were
less swollen in volume than those of one who had matriculated
in any of the other conspicuous seats of learning
in the South. The actual outlay of the average student
at the University of Virginia, during an entire session,
was, at this time, calculated by the Society of Alumni to
be $332.00. The largest amount spent by the most extravagant,
they said, did not rise above $502.91. The
corresponding figures for the average student at Harvard
was $245.00; at Yale, $195.00; and at Princeton,
$226.00. The expenses of a student in the leading medical
colleges, during this period, were estimated at
$250.00; in classical academies, at $175.00; and in advanced
female schools, at $200.00 to $300.00.
It was asserted by the Faculty, during the session of
1844–45, that, as the great majority of the students
then at the University of Virginia belonged to the middle
ranks of life,—in which a modest competence had to
be scrupulously husbanded,—there was no ground whatever
for the charge that the institution was the scene of
lavish wastefulness, rendered possible, according to reports,
by the presence of a very large body of wealthy
young men. They claimed that, as a matter of fact, a
very respectable proportion of those in attendance had
accumulated the means to enter college by their own
brains or hands, and were, in consequence, solicitous to
exercise a rigid economy in their expenditures.
XXVIII. Finances
In 1824, not many months before the University received
its first students, Jefferson reduced to figures the
anticipated amount of the annual income and outlay of
the institution. The income to be relied upon was the
annuity of $15,000; the rents to accrue from the hotels,
$900.00, and from the dormitories, $1,708; payments on
various accounts by the students, $2,616,—a total sum
of $20,224. On the other hand, the expenses were expected
to reach the aggregate sum of $20,224 also.
They were to consist of $3,000 for current demands;
$12,000 for the salaries of the professors; $200.00 for
the remuneration of the military instructor; and $5,024
for the defrayment of miscellaneous costs,—such as appropriations
for the purchase of books, philosophical
apparatus, and the like.
The statement of the bursar for the session of 1826,—
the second in the University's history,—confirmed the
substantial correctness of Jefferson's estimates, for the
total income for that year turned out to be $25,–
155.30, and the total expenses $25,135.27. This,
however, did not include the sum of $3,430.50, which had
to be provided for the liquidation of one of the debentures
held by John M. Perry for the conveyance of the
University site; but it did take in $9,953.27 due for interest
on the library fund advanced by the General Assembly,
and also on the University bonds in the possession
of private individuals. Jefferson had calculated that
the current expenses would amount to $3,000. They actually
rose to $3,500.
As $25,000 was needed in 1826 to complete the buildings
and to create a permanent water supply, the Board
of Visitors in July, 1827, authorized the proctor to borrow
for his mother. The money actually obtained from
this source was $19,777. An attempt had been previously
made to procure the required fund from the Richmond
banks, but without success. The interest on this
loan was guaranteed by the pledge of the annuity. It
was issued in the form of eight certificates, dated January
1, 1828. By 1830, this debt had been increased
by borrowings from other individuals that amounted to
$4,000. Down to 1830, the following sums in different
forms had been received by the University: loans, $180,–
000; annuities, $163,854; appropriation by the General
Assembly for the purchase of the library and philosophical
and chemical apparatus, $50,000,—a total of $393,–
854. In 1832–3, the obligations of the institution
amounted to $28,628. They embraced $3,800, due for
repairs and improvements; $2,339.05, indebtedness to
James Oldham on contract; $719.00, unpaid salaries;
a bond of $2,000, held by Minor's executor, and a bond
of $19,777 belonging to the Randolph estate. The actual
receipts for this year were $20,500,—a decline in
volume; the actual expenses, $15,500,—which also was
a decided reduction. In July, 1833, the bursar's report
showed a favorable balance of $8,155.66,—which was
the means of preventing an important deficit for the session
of 1833–34, since the receipts for that session were
only $21,394.94, while the expenses were $23,480.90.
How small was the command of surplus funds which
the University had at this time is brought out by the fact
that the debt to Oldham,—the result of his successful
suit as one of the original contractors,—still remained
unliquidated.
In 1835, the institution was called upon to pay the sum
of $1,366.20 in the form of interest on loans from private
for, during this year, the income was $20,521,
and the expenditures only $16,866.20. A list of
these expenditures discloses the following items: Salaries
of professors, $10,500; salaries of officers, $1,700;
appropriation for library, $500.00; for different schools,
$250.00; hire of laborers, $60.00; printing, postage, and
the like, $600.00; and repairs, $1,350. The drafts upon
the University's income varied but little during the next
ten years; thus, they did not exceed $17,527.48 for the
fiscal term ending June 1, 1845, and $15,000.50 for the
like term ending June 1, 1847. The receipts for the latter
year were $20,176, figures that disclose no gain whatever
in the income over the return for 1835, twelve years
before. During the term ending May 31, 1848, the receipts
were $20,716.56, and the expenses $18,850.88,
while for the following fiscal year, the receipts were $22,935.64,
and the expenses, $16,515.55. We thus perceive
that, twenty-four years after the University was opened
to students, its income exceeded by barely two thousand
dollars the amount which Jefferson had calculated as reasonable
to expect for the first year. The Randolph loan
had, by this time, been reduced to $9,000.
In order to build the annex to the Rotunda, the Board
obtained from the Legislature the authority to negotiate
a loan of $25,000.The enabling act was passed February
17, 1852.The bonds issued—which were signed
by the rector, and countersigned by the bursar,—were
payable twenty-five years after date; they were limited
to $5,000 each; and bore interest at the rate of six per
cent., secured by the pledge of such a proportion of the
annuity as would be needed to meet it. As a corporation,
the University was not empowered to borrow large sums
without first receiving the permission of the General Assembly;
consent to the use of the annual payment by the State
as a guarantee for the interest. It was debatable
whether there was not a limit to the University's right to
borrow even with legislative approval, and for this reason
it was always wise to allow the General Assembly to pass
upon the amount of every loan to be floated.
The increase in the number of students after 1851 was
reflected in the expansion in the volume of receipts: including
the surplus fees, which had previously gone to
the professors, the income of the University for the fiscal
year ending June 28, 1851, was as much as $33,078, while
the disbursements were only $23,096.91, leaving a balance
of $9,981.18, the largest in the history of the institution.
This afforded substantial assistance towards
meeting the cost of the Annex. For the fiscal year ending
May 31, 1852, the surplus fees amounted to $5,506.
The total receipts for the twelve months were $47,744.87,
and the disbursements $45,203.53,—nearly
double, in both instances, the figures submitted by the
bursar a quarter of a century earlier. The expenses approximated
the receipts in 1852, in consequence of the
heavy charge for erecting the Annex. By the end of
the fiscal year in 1855, the receipts had mounted up to
$38,978.10; and of the corresponding year in 1857, to
$57,581.86. This sudden jump was due to an enlargement
of the annuity by a special temporary grant; and
$5,065.96 had also been appropriated for the purpose of
making certain repairs and improvements. The normal
average income still ranged below $40,000; but there had
been a decided increase in its volume. This was attributable
in part to the growing amount of the surplus
fees, which swelled, in 1852, to $7,514.66, and in 1853
to $10,043.91.
The expenditures were always held under a rigid curb,
and appear, in no year, to have run beyond the receipts,—
indeed, for some of the fiscal years, they fell short of
the receipts by figures ranging all the way from $650.00
to $5,178.15. The details of the expenditures for a
normal year are accurately exemplified in those for 1849;
the salaries of the professors and officers, during that
session, absorbed about eleven thousand, six hundred dollars;
the cost of repairs and improvements, about two
thousand more; the library, about one thousand; and the
hire of labor, about two hundred and fifty. The rest of
the outlay embraced the following items; printing, about
three hundred dollars; contingent expenses, about four
hundred; the several schools, about three hundred; State
students, about five hundred and fifty; and the dispensary,
about two hundred. The total expenditures were sixteen
thousand dollars in amount.[18]
| 1856 | 1857 | 1858 | 1859 | 1860 | |
| Instruction | $14,137 | $15,891 | $17,925 | $17,842 | $17,025 |
| Officers' salaries | 3,995 | 5,598 | 6,513 | 6,731 | 7,997 |
| Labor | 1,137 | 1,814 | 2,267 | 1,869 | .... |
| Repairs and Improvements | 7,825 | 20,046 | 21,388 | 40,036 | 9,553 |
| Interest | 2,166 | 2,166 | 2,166 | 2,163 | 2,166 |
| Insurance | 572 | 572 | 654 | 651 | 651 |
| Fuel and lights | 617 | 698 | 932 | 1,425 | 1,799 |
| Library | 2,918 | 3,110 | 2,541 | 2,631 | 1,100 |
| Apparatus | 350 | 3,000 | 642 | 415 | 906 |
| Contingent | 3,358 | 3,915 | 5,243 | 2,403 | 2,544 |
| Advertising and Printing | 621 | 391 | 950 | 881 | 610 |
| Total | $37,696 | $57,201 | $61,221 | $77,047 | $44,351 |
XXIX. Administration
In an early chapter, we offered some biographical details
respecting the members of the first Board of Visitors.
Before briefly describing the personnel of the subsequent
Boards, it will be pertinent to mention the names
an office only second in importance to the rectorship itself.
As we have already stated, it was a feature of Jefferson's
scheme that the chairmanship should be occupied
by the professors in regular succession; but this arrangement,
so harmonious with democratical principle, was
soon abandoned because the members of the Faculty were
already so busy with the courses of their schools that, as
a body, they were unwilling to undertake an administrative
task in addition. The system which was adopted in
consequence made certain the selection of the most competent
men among the professors, and their retention in
the position,—in some instances, for a considerable period.
It is possible that more satisfactory executive
work was done under this system than under the one
which Jefferson had so carefully formulated; it, at least,
cut out those members of the Faculty who had no natural
talent for the performance of such duties, and, by longer
service, ripened the experience of those who possessed an
aptitude for it.
It was entirely proper that George Tucker should have
been elected the first incumbent of this office, for he was
far older in years than his colleagues; had mingled much
with the world; and was already in the enjoyment of a
high reputation, not only in Virginia, but in the United
States at large, both as an author and a publicist. He
had not yet removed to the University from Washington
when the election was held, and until his arrival, the
duties of the chairmanship were executed by Emmet.
Under the rule which prevailed at the start, Tucker was
not again chosen when his first term expired. Robley
Dunglison succeeded him,—to be followed, during the
session of 1827–8, by John T. Lomax, the professor of
law, the only native of the country to be found at that
the Board, restored to the office during the session of
1828–29; and his efficiency was now so satisfactorily demonstrated
that he was reappointed the ensuing session.
A term of two sessions became the rule subsequent to
1831–2, when George Tucker, coming after R. M. Patterson,
again assumed the chairmanship,—to be succeeded
by Bonnycastle, J. A. G. Davis and Gessner Harrison,
in turn. Davis was again appointed for 1839–
40, and Harrison for 1840–42. Henry St. George
Tucker, although he had just entered the Faculty, was
chosen as the incumbent for the next two sessions,—a
very proper tribute to the great reputation which he had
won as a teacher of law, as the presiding officer of the
Court of Appeals, and as a man of commanding talents,
ripe experience, and charming personality. During the
three sessions beginning with 1844–5, the chairmanship
was occupied in succession by William B. Rogers, E. H.
Courtenay, and James L. Cabell,—men who had taken
the places of three of the professors who belonged to the
original Faculty. They were still young, but they demonstrated
their administrative capacity in this office as
clearly as they had already done their pedagogic, in their
respective chairs.
But the two members of the Faculty who exhibited the
happiest qualifications for this office, and afforded the
most unbroken satisfaction, were Gessner Harrison and
Socrates Maupin. Harrison, as we have already mentioned,
had, previous to the session of 1847–8, filled the
chairmanship during several terms; he was again appointed
to the same position in July, 1847; and from this
time until the end of the session of 1853–4,—seven sessions
in succession,—occupied it without a single interruption,
and would have continued to occupy it, quite
from it at his own imperative request. Beginning with
the session of 1854–55, Socrates Maupin was reappointed
to the chairmanship from term to term until the outburst
of the war practically paralyzed the administrative organization
of the University.
It will be perceived from the preceding statements,
that, in the course of the first twenty-two sessions, eleven
men were selected for the office of chairman,—a proportion
of one incumbent for every two sessions. During
the remaining fourteen sessions, two men alone were
chosen; and each of these remained in office, before the
war, without a break for a period of seven years. Their
constant reappointment was not simply a proof of high
personal influence and tested executive ability,—it was
also an indication of an admirable public spirit, since occupation
of the position was accompanied by many inconveniences,
and was an exhausting tax upon the mental
and bodily strength of the holder. The chairman, in addition
to performing the duties of this office, was still
called upon to study his subjects and lecture to his classes.
Only a man who was vigorous intellectually and physically
could have sustained its burdens piled on top of his professorial
tasks.
Hardly second in importance to the chairmanship was
the office of proctor. John A. Carr succeeded Brockenbrough
in this position in 1831; but the latter, in appreciation
of his valuable services in the past, was permitted to
retain the post of patron. He was practically dismissed
from the proctorship, although his usefulness in that capacity
could not be justly disputed The reasons which
were given for this action, so far as the records reveal
them, appear to have been decidedly trivial. Brockenbrough's
son was a candidate to succeed him. "He has
Cocke in August, 1831, "with his grandfather's temper."
We have pointed out the indispensable share which
Brockenbrough had in the building of the University.
He was now criticized for want of energy; and the complaint
was urged that he suffered from deafness; but he
denied very heatedly that his infirmity disqualified him
from performing the duties of the office efficiently. "It
is true," he remarked, with natural bitterness, "that I
have no capacity as a spy or eavesdropper or seeker-out
of little petty offenses against the laws of the institution,
and as a runner for the chairman." He asserted in a
letter to Cabell that there had been an untiring intrigue
for several years to undermine his influence and thereby
to compel his removal. "Repeated efforts," declared
his wife, "were made by professors to get him to do
work at the University's expense which they were bound
to do at their own, and in every case, he refused to do
this work, and, therefore, became unpopular." "Oh,"
she exclaimed in a letter written to one of the Visitors in
behalf of her husband in July, 1831, "could the venerable,
high-minded, and noble founder rise from his grave, how
would tyranny and injustice hide their heads, and shrink
from his indignant gaze! You know who it was that
came here when this place was almost a wilderness, and
struggled with all the difficulties attendant on rearing so
many buildings in a country place where there were so few
facilities."
Carr, his successor in the proctorship, generously acknowledged
that Brockenbrough had been "exceedingly
kind and friendly in showing and advising him in all his
duties, and had taken great and particular pleasure in so
doing." He bore the most positive testimony to the perfect
integrity of his predecessor's character. Brockenbrough,
support of a large family alone had influenced him to do
so. "I will be thankful," he added rather piteously, "for
any work, either carpenter's, stonecutter's, and the like,
that you can throw in my way. I will make proposals."
Carr was succeeded by W. G. Pendleton, after occupying
the proctorship during one session only. Pendleton
remained in office during five years, and retired under a
cloud, caused, not only by irregularities in his accounts,
and a slack performance of his supervisory duties, but
also by an obscure scandal in his private life. It should
be stated in his defense, however, that Cocke declined to
countenance the reflections upon his uprightness, although
he was constrained to acknowledge that Pendleton had
not upheld the disciplinary ordinances to the degree of
stiffness very properly expected of him as the principal
police officer on the ground; and that he had been equally
neglectful in reporting the damage which the students
had done in their abuse of the buildings. The Faculty
bore his delinquencies with patience, until, finally, they
became so injurious to the welfare of the University, that
a complaint to the Board could not be avoided. At this
time, his accounts showed a shortage of two thousand
dollars.
The tenure of Willis H. Woodley, who succeeded him,
extended over eight years. Woodley was generally addressed
as "Colonel," a title to which he, perhaps, could
make no just claim, unless he had been an officer in the
militia. It was more probably a popular tribute to those
genial and easy-going qualities for which he was personally
noted. Indeed, he appears to have been characterized
by all the kindly spirit of those unreformed and
unexacting times, when a taste for good liquor and a well
garnished table was not looked upon as directly traceable
in the odor of all the old Virginian social traditions, he
was inclined to be lenient in executing his police powers at
Christmas, as that was a festival in which he thought the
students should share along with their friends of more
matured years. His sense of hospitality seems to have
risen in revolt at the mere suggestion that he was setting
them a bad example, or even violating an ordinance,
when he offered them, under his own roof, whatever cordial
they, as his guests, had said that they preferred.
His want of rigidity in this particular,—a common failing
during that period,—was possibly only another form of
the carelessness which he exhibited in keeping the accounts
of his office, for, without any reflection on his personal
integrity, he was asked in October, 1845, by the Board,
which had been examining his books, to resign, and
George W. Spooner was appointed temporarily to take
his place. Woodley was retained as his principal clerk,
—a proof that his delinquency had at least not been intentional.
It seems contradictory that he should have
been willing to incur unpopularity by enforcing with great
firmness the ordinance that restricted the credits to be
allowed the students.
Spooner occupied the position during one session. He
was, perhaps, not reappointed in consequence of the important
permanent relation which he, as a contractor,
bore to the repair work so constantly required for the
buildings. William B. Kemper was his successor, and he
continued in office until September 1, 1853. Kemper
seems to have been entirely satisfactory until he attempted
to give the prestige of his position to an academy
founded by his kinsman, Delaware Kemper, at Gordonsville.
The prospectus which he issued over his own
signature in support of this establishment was decided by
duties as proctor, and they offered him the alternative of
resigning or withdrawing his name from the directorate
of the school. Kemper in a huff interpreted this as tantamount
to his dismissal and retired. Spooner was again
put in temporarily as a stopgap until the appointment of
R. R. Prentis, who held the office for many years.
The rectors of the University, previous to the War of
Secession, were Jefferson, Madison, Cabell, Chapman
Johnson, Cabell for the second time, Andrew Stevenson,
and Thomas J. Randolph. We have already touched
upon the principal events in the career of Cabell. Chapman
Johnson, the fourth incumbent of the office, was
one of the few eminent Virginians of that day who was of
obscure parentage. His father, a citizen of Louisa
county, was too impoverished in his circumstances to
give his children an education. During several years,
he was the proprietor of an inn, the atmosphere of which,
being one of idleness and dissipation, was unfriendly to
the proper training of the young. Indeed, one of his sons
was rescued with difficulty from a slough of drunken
habits, thus acquired in early manhood, by the generous
action of his two brothers in devoting their small patrimony
to defraying all the charges of his tuition at the
College of William and Mary. This spirit of kindness
to the members of the circle of his kin was characteristic
of Chapman Johnson throughout his career, for he was
not more notable for the keenness of his intellect than for
the affectionate warmth of his heart. It was said of him
that he had never failed to use every occasion that arose
in his own life for the exercise of these genial and benevolent
instincts. While still a boy, he obtained a livelihood
by hiring himself out as a laborer on his native
farm, which had been sold after his father's death; and
pay his fees in a country-side school, where he devoted
himself to his books with extraordinary diligence and success.
Fortunately, his sister had married a man of education,
Patrick Michie, who warmly encouraged his brother-in-law
in the acquisition of knowledge, and assisted
him afterwards to enter the college at Williamsburg.
There he began at once the study of law, and soon formed
a very close friendship with such accomplished men as
Henry St. George Tucker, Benjamin Watkins Leigh, and
William Wirt.
In 1812, Johnson opened an office in Staunton, and
after an interval of some discouragement, entered upon
a lucrative practice. His amiable disposition, winning
manners, and handsome appearance, associated with conversational
talents of the highest order, soon acquired
for him an unsurpassed popularity in the social life of
the community, while his vigor of thought, lucidity of expression,
profound professional knowledge, and even temper,
placed him among the foremost advocates at the bar.
He represented Augusta county in the State Senate, during
many years, and in that character used his influence
for the passage of many beneficent laws. In the meanwhile,
his practice in the Court of Appeals had steadily
increased; and his frequent attendance upon this tribunal
from a distance at last caused him so many inconveniences
that he decided to remove his family to Richmond and
pass only the summer months in the vicinity of Staunton.
He was one of the most conspicuous members of the Convention
of 1829–30. Although he gave the most conscientious
attention to the political duties imposed upon
him by the voice of the constituency which he so long represented,
it was as a wise counsellor in chambers, and as
a powerful advocate before courts and juries, that he was
mainly directed, with unremitting zeal and perseverance.
It was said of him, after his death, that all thought of
his genius, fame, learning, and influence, was lost in the
contemplation of the singular beauty of his personal relations,
the kindness of his heart, the sweetness of his temper,
the unaffected cheerfulness which he exhibited under
all circumstances, even when overwork had begun to
weaken his mental and physical powers.
Andrew Stevenson, who followed Johnson, enjoyed a
more widespread reputation beyond the borders of Virginia,
because, after a conspicuous career in his own
State, he had filled several offices of great national importance,
having been Speaker of the House of Representatives,
and Minister to the Court of St. James. Indeed,
his political course had been exactly modeled on
the one pursued by so many public men of those times:
first, the occupation of the foremost state offices, and
afterwards, promotion to the highest offices under the
national government, either at home or abroad. Although,
perhaps, inferior to Johnson in native ability, he
was a man of balanced judgment and quick perceptions,
and like Johnson, of many engaging personal qualities.
He continued a member of the Board of Visitors during
twelve years, and was the incumbent of the rectorship at
the time of his death.
Thomas Jefferson Randolph, his successor, was the
favorite grandson of Jefferson, and had been trained under
his grandfather's strict but partial eye. He was the
main stay of that aged statesman during his overclouded
closing years; acted as his faithful executor; and edited a
large part of his voluminous correspondence. He made
a final settlement of Jefferson's insolvent estate by paying
all the remaining debts out of his own purse. He was
and in the momentous debate which occurred there over
the question of abolishing slavery in Virginia, demonstrated
his foresight by earnestly advocating that vital
measure; but, unfortunately for the safety of his native
State and section, without success. He was also a member
of the Constitutional Convention of 1850–51, which
democratized the suffrage, and brought about other radical
changes in the political condition of the community.
The rank of colonel in the Confederate army was conferred
on him, but he was too old to take the field. He
resembled his great-grandfather, Peter Jefferson, in the
extraordinary size of his frame, and his grandfather,
Thomas Jefferson, in the imposing dignity of his bearing.
After he had passed his eightieth year, he was called
to the chair during the sessions of the convention which
nominated Horace Greeley for the Presidency in 1875.
He held the office of Visitor for thirty-one years.
The members of the Board of Visitors, during the
Fifth Period, 1842–1861, just as during the Fourth, were
recruited from the ranks of the most conspicuous and influential
public men in Virginia. Among their number
were to be found brilliant politicians like Henry A. Wise
and Roger A. Pryor; distinguished representatives in
Congress, like William C. Rives, James M. Mason,
R. M. T. Hunter, John Y. Mason, and Muscoe R. H.
Garnett; lawyers of eminence, like William J. Robertson,
John Randolph Tucker, John B. Baldwin, Patrick Henry
Aylett, and George W. Summers; men prominent within
the confines of the State for wealth or talents, like W. H.
Brodnax, John R. Edmunds, Thomas L. Preston, and
Harrison B. Tomlin, or like Franklin Minor, famous,
within the same limits, for their success as the principals
of academies. Either before or after their appointment,
had served as ministers to foreign courts; James M. Mason,
as Confederate Commissioner to England; Wise also
as Governor of Virginia; Robertson as a judge of the
Court of Appeals; Tucker as the Attorney-General of the
Commonwealth; and Hunter as the Confederate Secretary
of State. Presence upon the Board was, from decade
to decade, an unfailing indication of previous distinction
in some high public capacity. Indeed, the calibre required
for membership, in these early years, was the largest
that the citizenship of the entire community could
offer. It was the most prominent single public body in
the State; and its exalted quality in ability and character
was maintained with jealous and exacting scrupulousness
from term to term.
The men who performed the duties of the secretaryship
of the Board also stood high in the popular esteem.
The first was Nicholas P. Trist, so long personally associated
with Jefferson, and afterwards a distinguished figure
in the sphere of the national life. He was followed
by John A. G. Davis, subsequently the second professor of
law in the University; and Davis was succeeded by Frank
Carr, Carr by St. George Tucker, and Tucker, in 1853, by
R. T. W. Duke.
XXX. Society of Alumni
The earliest alumni association of the University of
Virginia was organized in 1838. The initial step was
taken during the first month of that year, when a committee
of the Faculty was appointed to draft a plan for establishing
a society to be composed of the alumni of the
institution; and this committee was also instructed to select
an orator from among these alumni to deliver an
address at the close of the session. It seems that the
of inviting a distinguished graduate to speak
during the final exercises, and this, in its turn, had suggested
to the Faculty the timeliness of proposing to the
alumni that they should unite as a permanent body, and
hold a meeting at the University at the close of the scholastic
year. At this annual meeting, an orator could be
chosen for the commencement that was to follow twelve
months afterwards; and such regulations could also be
adopted as would increase the practical and sentimental
usefulness of the association.
It was anticipated by the Faculty that these meetings
would be an inducement to the alumni to revisit
more often the scenes of their college life; that they
would revive the early friendships of the arcades; would
enlarge the acquaintance of the old alumni among the
new; and in the long run would greatly stimulate and
accelerate the material prosperity of the University itself.
This was to be accomplished, in a general way,
by their annually refreshing the interest of the public
in the institution; and, in a particular way, by directing attention
to any injurious deficiencies in its system of administration;
by pointing to its successes and achievements;
and by defending it from the assaults of unwarranted
and unprovoked prejudices. It was even expected that,
in time, the Board of Visitors would be chosen by the
alumni at these meetings,—an innovation that would be
justified by that body's familiarity with the needs of the
University, and by their jealousy for its reputation.
The circular letter scattered broadcast by the committee
of professors in February, 1838, invited the recipients
to be present at the University on the following
July 4. On that date, twenty-three graduates assembled,
and among them, were citizens of influence in every
members of the Board of Visitors, and by all the members
of the Faculty. A committee to draft the constitution
was appointed, and also one to submit nominations.
Under the earliest rule, the membership was
made dependent upon election by a unanimous ballot and
subsequent acceptance. Every person who had been a
student in the institution previous to 1830, whether he
had succeeded in graduating or not, was eligible for admission;
but if he had attended that year or after, it was
necessary that he should have won at least one diploma.
Among those who were chosen members of the association
at this initial meeting were several men who had
already risen to prominence in different departments of
activity; namely, R. M. T. Hunter, Judge William
Daniel, James A. Seddon, William B. Preston, Frederick
W. Coleman, James C. Bruce, John R. Edmunds,
and John B. Baldwin. Hunter was appointed to deliver
the first oration before the society, and James C.
Bruce was selected as his alternate. Chapman Johnson
had been first chosen, but the condition of his health
did not admit of his acceptance. Alexander Moseley
was elected president of the association, and Thomas
H. Ellis, its secretary.
A resolution was submitted at this first meeting that
a committee should be nominated with a view to gathering
up useful information on the subjects of law, medicine,
commerce, manufactures, and agriculture as bearing
upon the interests of Virginia. It will be thus perceived
that the Society looked upon itself as having in
its care the welfare, not only of the University, but of
the State at large. The reunion of the association held
at the commencement of 1839 was attended by the Governor
of Virginia,—the first instance, it is said, of a visit
There was an uproarious banquet, at which,
according to the report of the Whig, "as wine flowed
in, wit flowed out." A falling off in interest was reflected
in the small number of alumni present at the reunion
in 1840. It was admitted that a strong foreboding
was now felt as to the future of the organization.
"It is still hoped," remarked the Collegian, with palpable
doubt, "that the purposes for which the Society was
formed, and the good which it was designed to do, will
not be defeated."
How was a more zealous and energetic spirit to be
breathed into the membership? The principal steps suggested
to bring this about appear to have been rather
inadequate; first, two essayists were to be annually nominated
to read papers at the yearly meeting; and second,
a committee was to be appointed to inquire into the
condition of popular education in Virginia. Having
adopted these resolutions, the assembled alumni broke
up in order to be present at a banquet spread at the
Monticello House in Charlottesville. The address was
delivered by James C. Bruce, in the spacious library room,
before a large audience, which included Governor Gilmer,
and many other persons conspicuous in the political
or social life of that day.
The vitality of the association, which had been gradually
declining, flamed up clear and strong when the
University was assailed by the Richmond Whig, in consequence
of the riots of 1845. The institution was held
up by that journal to criticism as the foster-mother
of aristocracy, and the hotbed of extravagance, licentiousness,
and turbulence. The sting of these exaggerated
charges prompted the alumni to attend the annual
meeting of that year in an unusual number. R. M. T.
time, was voted into the chair, and a committee on resolutions
was promptly named. This committee recommended
that there should be a permanent chairman of
the Faculty, with the title of president; that the membership
of the Board of Visitors should be enlarged until
there should be a representative from every division of
the State; that, with the view of raising the standards
of instruction, no student should be admitted without a
preliminary examination; that the University should be
made the principal agent in promoting popular education;
that the power should be obtained from the General
Assembly to banish all dismissed students from the
neighborhood of Charlottesville; and that the annual session
should begin on September 29, and close on June
29. All these recommendations were of a nature to
advance and nourish the practical welfare of the institution.
But a recommendation of far more general interest
was that an address to the people of Virginia in the defense
of the University should be drafted and issued at
once. A committee, composed of the ablest and most
distinguished members of the society, was appointed
for the performance of this important duty. It is recorded
that the alumni present at the meeting, broke up
"with a deep impression of the high character of the
noble institution with which the happiest years of their
lives had been associated, and with the determination
to devote all their energies to disabuse the public mind
of any erroneous conceptions which may have been
formed of it, and to exercise all the influence in their
possession to eradicate any prejudice which jealousy,
distrust, or suspicion, may have spread through the land
to impair its usefulness." How faithfully, loyally, and
in the admirable address which was soon published by
the committee, and to which we have already alluded
at length in a previous chapter.
A historical department was organized by the association,
one session of which was to be held annually in
Richmond, and the other at the University. Its purpose
was to encourage research among the records of
Virginia and of the United States, and to collect books,
documents, relics, and similar material, in illustration
of their respective annals. Only the inferior officers
could be appointed from beyond the ranks of the
alumni; and not more than fifty corresponding members
were authorized to be chosen outside of that circle. It
was expected that a large fund could be gathered up
by subscription to carry out the aims of the department.
At this time, the Virginia Historical Society was in a
state of suspension, but, by 1847, it had been so much
revived by the adoption of a new constitution, and the
election of new officers, that the alumni association decided
to drop their historical purposes, as those purposes
could be more easily and thoroughly subserved by
the resuscitated organization in Richmond,—in which
city too all historical records were to be kept as the
place most accessible to students.
The twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the
University was celebrated by the association with a distinguished
assemblage of members, and with an oration
by M. R. H. Garnett, admitted to be the most scholarly
public speaker then living in Virginia. Previous to
1852–53, the address before the alumni had always been
delivered on Public Day, but the decision was reached
that it would be more convenient to fix the date for it
thereafter on the preceding day. The students had become
consumed most of the time allotted to the commencement
exercises on the principal occasion. As a means of
inducing the alumni to attend in larger number, the young
men occupying rooms on the Lawn were required, in
1853, to vacate these quarters two days before the final
exercises should begin, so as to provide, in part at least,
lodgings for the expected visitors. This measure
turned out to be very unpopular, and as the intended
beneficiaries failed to make any use of the privilege, the
regulation was ultimately repealed.
The principal colleges of the country were, as a rule,
situated either within the borders of considerable towns
or in their immediate vicinity. The University possessed
no such advantage. Charlottesville was not
only too small a village to afford full hotel accommodations
for the alumni, if many attended, but it stood at
least a mile away from the precincts, with no sufficient
means of transportation to do away with the inconvenience
of this distance. There were practically no unexceptionable
facilities for sheltering the returning alumni,
or for boarding them, since the professors, the only
other recourse, however hospitable they might be in
their own homes, were unable, from the contracted area
of their pavilions, to take in many guests. All these
influences were disheartening; and they were further
accentuated by the absence of that enthusiasm among
the graduates as a body which a curriculum system tends
to engender because it keeps the same set of students
together during four years, and binds them to each other
by those strong ties which only arise from a community
of interests and experiences as classmen. This fact was
perceived with perfect clearness by the students themselves.
"We are very willing to acknowledge," says
peculiar system, the same abiding interest in the affairs
of this college we see manifested in connection with
others is not to be expected of our alumni. All are
ready to admit that our alumni are not so blessed universally
with diplomas as those of other institutions are,
and have not that link of magic power to bind them to
their alma mater. Moreover, our class influences are
not so powerful, because, in the various departments,
we are thrown in entirely different company."
The alumni banquet of 1860 was long remembered
for its brilliant animation. The presiding officer at the
table was B. Johnson Barbour, perhaps the most accomplished
citizen of Virginia of his own day when at
the zenith of his powers. His opening address, and
his remarks in introducing each speaker, were commented
upon with extraordinary admiration. His flow of eloquence
and wit in the course of this occasion, which
lasted five hours, never slackened, and although responses
to toasts were made by John Randolph Tucker,
John B. Baldwin, and Daniel Voorhees, a trio of exceptional
ability as after-dinner orators, he was acknowledged
to have borne off the palm of superiority over them
all.
XXXI. Distinguished Alumni—General
By the year 1861, time enough had passed for the
alumni, by their numbers, talents, and energies, to exercise
a perceptible influence upon the general progress of
the entire South. There was no department in the affairs
of that great community in which their beneficent
activities had not been displayed.
There were the lawyers, who, educated for their profession
by Lomax, Davis, Tucker, Minor, and Holcombe,
acquired through lectures and text-books, but also that
lofty view of its ethics and its duties which had been so
earnestly inculcated by those teachers. There were
the judges, who had administered the law in accord with
the principles which they had learned under the same
instructors. There were the statesmen who had drafted
the public ordinances under the transmitted influence of
that tutelage also. There were the journalists, who
had spread abroad political sentiments caught up from
the same source. There were the physicians, trained by
Dunglison, Emmet, Cabell, Magill, Howard, and Staige
Davis, who, pursuing their calling in town and village
and remote country districts, as a body never forgot
the lessons in professional conduct which their preceptors
had held up before them as equal in importance to
the services which they were to perform for the relief
of suffering. There were the teachers who, after being
thoroughly drilled in the academic branches by Harrison
and Gildersleeve, Holmes, George Tucker, and McGuffey
and their colleagues, had brought to the schools and
colleges of the South those advanced standards of scholarship
which had so long prevailed at the University of Virginia
and which, in turn, they were to employ so successfully
to enhance the public esteem for learning and
increase the dignity of their profession. There were
the ministers of the gospel, who, by their unselfish spirit
and militant piety combined, silently refuted the charge,
originating in ignorance and prejudice, that their alma
mater was indifferent to religion and morality. There
were the engineers who designed and built so many of
those public works, which, in our own times, have expanded
into systems of railway stretching from the
North Atlantic to the Gulf. There were the farmers
often strove to improve the condition of agriculture,
and who, in so many instances, retained a relish for good
literature first acquired from the lips of revered professors.
And finally, there were the men of business, not
all of whom permitted the anxieties of the countinghouse
to divert their attention entirely from civic duties
or to dull completely their recollection of the lessons
which they had learned in the lecture-rooms of the University,
in the days of their far-off youth.
If that large band of matured alumni could have assembled,
at the same hour, under the roof of the stately
Rotunda, how many noble spirits, how many eloquent
tongues, what love of knowledge, what fidelity to principle,
what loyalty to honor, what devotion to country,
what splendid, what solid, performance in every sphere
of action, would have been represented among their
thoughtful figures! As their shadows pass before us
fifty-eight years after the close of that period in our
history to which they belonged in life, we prefer to think
of them only in association with those remote academic
years, when they were the care-free and buoyant citizens
of the arcades, the eager competitors for the prizes
of the lecture-room and the plaudits of the debating society;
the devotees at the unselfish shrine of college
friendship; and still crowned with the romance of their
youthful hopes and aspirations.
XXXII. Distinguished Alumni—Literary
In designating the alumni by their employments, we
omitted one division because its representatives were
too few to constitute what could be correctly referred
to as a class. There was, in that diversified body, no
such section as men of letters, if the test applied is mere
America has ever produced was an alumnus of the University
of Virginia, the only higher seat of learning
which he ever attended. And the foremost man of letters
of Virginia, during the same interval, was also a
graduate. The name of Poe has been carried from one
end of the civilized world to the other; the name of
John R. Thompson has almost faded from the memory
even of the living generation, and yet both, in their several
degrees, were as distinctly men of letters as the
great figures in the splendid province of English literature,
such as Pope or Johnson, Goldsmith or Byron,
Dickens or Thackeray, Kipling or Meredith.
The two most illustrious names associated with the
University of Virginia are those of Jefferson and Poe.
There is no reason to doubt that these two had frequently
met each other face to face, for Poe was a student
of the institution in 1826, and Jefferson did not
die until the Fourth of July, in the course of that year.
The poet was certainly one of the band of young men
who were invited to dine at Monticello, and he had
thus the fullest opportunity to converse with the philosopher
and statesman. Though always reserved, Poe
was never diffident, and the extraordinary distinction
of his host would not in itself have deterred him from
expressing his own opinions. But if he caught any sort
of inspiration from Jefferson's words, it did not take
the shape of an excessive admiration for democracy.
This was a subject, however, to which he had given only
scant thought, since it touched at no point on the province
of his real interests; but he was not prevented by this
fact, in after life at least, from characterizing with pungency
the supposed evils of that condition of society which
Jefferson had always advocated. It will be recalled
he informs a resuscitated mummy, a former nobleman,
that the principal benefits of American democratic institutions
could be summed up in the words "universal
suffrage, and no King." "The mummy listened with
marked interest," Poe continues, "in fact, he seemed not
a little amused. When I had done, he said that a great
while ago, there had occurred something of a very similar
sort,—thirteen Egyptian provinces determined all
at once to be free, and so set a magnificent example to
the rest of mankind. They assembled their wise men
and concocted the most ingenious constitution it is possible
to conceive. For a while they managed remarkably
well, only their habit of bragging was prodigious.
The thing ended, however, in the consolidation of the
thirteen states with fifteen or twenty others, and the
most odious and insupportable despotism that ever was
heard of upon the face of the earth. I asked what
was the name of the usurping tyrant. As well as the
count could recollect, it was 'mob'."
Had Jefferson survived to read this passage, it would
have been quite clear to him that, among the students
who had gathered about his table, at least one was as
reprehensible in his political opinions as the worst of the
Hamiltonians. Beyond the Tale of the Ragged Mountains,
there is no tangible allusion to the University of
Virginia or its environment in the works of the poet
and romancer. Perhaps, the impressions which the
place stamped upon his mind were entirely obliterated
by the cruel penury of so much of his subsequent life;
but there never was in his nature any touch of that geniality
which usually prompts men to recur, with softened
thoughts, to the scenes of their college careers. The
University itself was, during many years, dully indifferent
consideration. "We have no right to claim him,"
remarked a writer in the Virginia University Magazine
for 1872. "His name has been blackened, and his sleep
desecrated, by the entire puritanical element of America,
and we have calmly looked on as though we were not
lending our approval to the aspersion of our own good
name." The reasons for this culpable neglect were:
(1) the comparative modernity of the academic disposition
to capitalize the fame of a celebrated alumnus;
and (2) the cloud which lowered over the reputation
of the poet during so many years after his death.
Charges against his conduct which could have been disproved
by the records of the University were suffered
to pass from printed page to printed page unchallenged
and unrebuked. The earliest defense of his character
suggested by these records was made by William Wertenbaker
as late as 1868, long after Griswold's odious
slanders had taken deep root and spread abroad their
poison; and it is quite probable that this vindication
would have been deferred indefinitely by representatives
of the University, had not the demand for information
about the poet by the public at large grown so insistent.
Poe matriculated but a short time after he completed
his seventeenth year. There is reason to think that
he expected to continue his studies during at least two
sessions. Had he not anticipated doing this, he would
hardly have restricted the course of his first term to the
languages, both ancient and modern, The record of the
books which he borrowed from the library would seem
to point to a decided taste for history,—Rollin's, Voltaire's,
Marshall's and Robertson's works were the principal
volumes which he obtained from its shelves. An
anecdote told of him as a student demonstrates his capacity,
Blaettermann had suggested to his pupils that they should
test their grasp upon the Italian language by turning
certain stanzas into English metre. Poe alone attempted
the scholarly task, and his performance of it
was of such striking merit as to win the professor's commendation.
His knowledge of the Latin and French
tongues, in consequence of his training at Stoke Newington
and Richmond, was very remarkable in one of his
age; and so confidently did he rely on it that he rarely
made any preparation to answer questions in these
classes before he had taken his seat in the lecture-room.
He had a fondness for cards, and a relish for a glass
of peach and honey, but he was intemperate in the use
of liquor so infrequently, and he gave up so few of his
hours to cards, that he was able to win distinctions in
the Latin and French schools, and also to write the immature
tales which he was not adverse to reading to the
small group of friends who possessed his intimacy. He
was in the habit of going off for long walks alone,—a
proof either of moody exclusiveness, or of preoccupation
with literary projects, which, however, failed to
crystalize for the printer.
It has been surmised, and perhaps with some foundation,
that the famous couplet,
The glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome,
along the classic façades of the University pavilions to
the massive Rotunda, rising like its noble model, the
Pantheon, at the end of the perspective. The dormitory
which he first occupied opened on the Lawn, and
he had to pass but a few steps from his doorway, across
the scope of his vision that entire group of ancient temples
that carried the spectator in thought back to the
ages in which the public edifices of Rome and Greece had
reached the highest point that has been achieved by human
genius in architecture. Profound must have been
the appeal to his subtle aesthetic sense even in youth as
he looked at all those classic buildings on some night
when the rays of a full moon had softened and blended
the separate details of roof and entablature, cornice and
pillar. It may well have been that, at such an hour and
in such a spot, the most celebrated expression in the
entire body of his writings was suggested to him by so
extraordinary an interfusion of Nature's beauty with the
beauty of art in one of its loveliest forms. He had not
been long withdrawn from his studentship at the University
when the poem in which these famous lines appear
was written, and it is quite as reasonable to attribute
their conception to the sight of these buildings, the
only ones of that character which he had ever seen in a
group, as to impressions derived from the works of the
ancient authors, with which he had become familiar at
school and at college.
When did Poe's literary influence begin to rise to the
surface in the circle of the University? We can only obtain
an answer to this question through the printed testimony
of its periodicals. There is no allusion in the
pages of the Collegian which would indicate that such a
man had ever existed. Poe died in the course of 1849,
and yet it was not until 1860 that his death received a
poetical notice; and this was copied from a newspaper.
The first unmistakable recognition of his fame appears in
the magazine for April, 1857, in the form of a parody
of the Raven, always a rather flagrant proof of popularity.
as the poets who stood the highest in the admiration of
the students. Many of the tales published in the same
pages, during the years just anterior to the war, had
caught some of the color of his unprecedented and unduplicated
genius. No poet or story-writer ever possessed
idiosyncrasies more seductive to imitators than
Poe, and as the aspiring writers of the arcades were in
the most receptive stage of life, and as his fame was
constantly rising in the world at large, they became increasingly
disposed to yield to the influence of his phenomenal
and peculiarly salient example. It has been calculated
that, between 1867 and 1885, about forty notices
of the poet, in one form or another, were printed in the
pages of the magazine. Among these was an ingenious
article which applied to the Raven the analytical method
which Professor Minor had applied so skillfully to the
principles of law in his Institutes. It stood this searching
test successfully.
Another contribution was a parody of Ulalume, in
which the primitive performances of the drunken Calathumpian
bands were recounted with Homeric gusto.
Another,—still in the form of a parody,—celebrated
the epic incidents of a collision of town and gown on the
debatable confines of Vinegar Hill. The Bells excited
as keen an itch in the imitators as Ulalume or the Raven,
and its metre was frequently used to convey some mock
heroic sentiment, or to describe some unlicensed scene in
the lives of the students of that day. The editorial references
to Poe during these years increase steadily in
number, while the prose contributions to the body of the
magazine, on the same subject, keep step with this rising
editorial interest. In addition to avowed imitations of
his tales, there are found in its pages stories which are
of the great author, while others are palpable imitations,
without any acknowledgement of the inspiration. Labored
criticisms of his masterpieces also appear, and dissertations
upon his literary and personal life at large.
And there are also found descriptions of his association
with the University, both in his friendships, his classes,
and his dormitories.
So strong was the hold, which, in 1861, the memory
of the man had on the imagination of the members of the
Jefferson Society, the society to which he had belonged,
that a committee was nominated by that body to visit the
Washington Society to solicit its cooperation in relieving
the penury of Mrs. Clemm; but the application was
passed upon adversely, owing to the emptiness of the
treasury. Poe, who was not lacking in fluency, or self-possession,
made no effort to win distinction as an orator
and debater; he comes to the surface in the minutes of
the Jefferson Society only in the character of an essayist,
and as the incumbent of a minor office.
XXXIII. Distinguished Alumni—Literary, Continued
Thompson was as distinctly a man of letters as Poe,
although running far behind him in the race as a man
of genius. Poe and Thompson alike filled the editorship
of the Southern Literary Messenger, and both, in the
end, drifted to the North in order to earn a livelihood.
Thompson, though loyal to the South through all the
numerous vicissitudes of his career, was of Northern parentage,
and received his earliest tuition in an academy
in Connecticut. Before he became a member of the
law school of the University of Virginia, he had passed
several years there as a student of various courses in its
academic department. He was so indifferent to the
tongue, he obtained only five numbers out of a possible
eighty; and in the intermediate examination of 1842, in
the School of Modern Languages, he was satisfied to hand
in papers unmarred by a single stroke of his pen. His
absences from the lecture-room were so frequent at times
that he was summoned by the chairman for negligence;
and yet he justly possessed, within the college precincts,
throughout his stay, an extraordinary reputation for literary
ability. Perhaps, the most remarkable incident in his
life at this period, however, was the one thus described
by Judge Welsh, his contemporary: "He went to his
room to take a nap at 3 p. m. one Thursday; slept all
that evening and night; all next day, Friday; and all
night and next day, Saturday, until 4 p. m. He did not
dream or wake up during this time."
When Thompson had been a practitioner at the bar
for two years, he determined to purchase the Messenger,
but he was not so infatuated with literature, or so reckless
of consequences, as to fail to announce that he had
no intention of abandoning law. He never again, however,
pretended to visit his former office. During the
next thirteen years, he concentrated all his powers in the
management of his magazine; and he exhibited such discriminating
taste, and such sound business judgment, that
it rose to a position of literary and pecuniary equality
with most of the widely known periodicals of that day
published in the large cities of the North. So distinguished,
indeed, did he become in literary spheres, that,
during his visit to England, in 1854, he was received with
the most friendly consideration by its foremost men of
letters,—Dickens, Thackeray, Bulwer, Macaulay, Robert
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. He is said to have
written one chapter of the Virginians, during this sojourn
Cooke took over his editorial duties with conspicuous
ability. Resuming his editorial chair in 1855, he continued
to hearten the best literary talent in the South;
and was also instrumental in first introducing to the public
notice several Northern writers who rose subsequently
to national eminence. Aldrich and Stoddard, Sigourney,
Morris, and Mitchel, contributed to the pages of the Messenger
as well as Simms, Hayne, Timrod, Bagby, Baldwin,
and Philip Pendleton Cooke.
Thompson was not satisfied to remain simply the critic
and the editor. He wrote articles for his own and the
Northern magazines, threw off graceful vers de societé,
and composed poems for the celebrations of literary or
college societies. His poetical work was distinguished
for its polish and perfect command of numerous and intricate
metres, as well as for manly sentiment and knowledge
of the world. In 1860, he was succeeded in the
editorship of the Messenger by Dr. Bagby; but his health,
always precarious, was too delicate to suffer him to take
any part in the war,—which began in the following year,
—beyond aiding the cause with his wide information and
forcible pen. His condition was so low in 1864 that he
had to be carried on board of the ship in which he was
to run the blockade on his voyage to Europe.
During his stay in England, to which he had gone to
advance the interests of the Confederacy abroad, he contributed
regularly to the Standard, and the Southern organ,
the Index; and at the same time, in a social way, he
greatly promoted those interests by his intimacy with influential
politicians and men of letters. After his return
to the United States in 1866, he won Bryant's pleased
attention by his reviews of books for the Evening Post,
and was soon appointed the literary editor of that journal,
sympathy for the South, or compromised with his political
principles. During several years before his death,
he exhibited all his former literary activity,—contributed
to Harper's, and other magazines, as well as to the columns
of the Post, and mingled, with his old winning manner,
in the best literary society of New York. All this
time, his pulmonary weakness had been steadily growing,
until he was compelled to seek some alleviation by a sojourn
in the West; but this turned out to be illusory. He
was buried in Richmond, the capital of the defunct Confederacy,
and not far from the pyramidal monument to
the warrior dead whose deeds he had celebrated in his
most moving verse.
XXXIV. Distinguished Alumni—Professional
The alumni of the Fourth and Fifth Periods numbered
among themselves many men who won a great reputation
as teachers. To those who became members of
the Faculty of the University of Virginia previous to the
war, allusion has already been made: they were Harrison,
Minor, Maupin, Cabell, Francis H. Smith, Lewis H.
Coleman, and John Staige Davis. Charles S. Venable,
Thomas R. Price, James A. Harrison, and James M.
Garnett were promoted to professorships in the same institution
after the close of that harrowing interval.
Among the alumni who were elected to chairs in other
colleges, one of the first and most eminent was Henry
Tutwiler, the earliest professor of ancient languages in
the University of Alabama, and the head of a famous
private school during a later period, who, by his ripe
scholarship and excellent personal qualities, was highly
instrumental in increasing the repute of his alma mater
in the far South. He had been instructed by Long; and
he was so long associated, the spirit of intellectual thoroughness
which that great teacher had acquired in the atmosphere
of Oxford and instilled into his pupils. "The
fullness of manhood," Tutwiler declared, "is not attained
except by the development of both mind and soul." It
was with this controlling conviction that he consecrated
his whole life to his calling during half a century. The
same devotion was afterwards observed in the careers as
headmasters of such alumni of the Fourth and Fifth Periods
as Frederick and Lewis Coleman, Galt, Blackford,
McCabe, McGuire, Abbot, Hilary P. Jones,—all of
Virginia, and Bingham, of North Carolina.
Crawford H. Toy, an alumnus of the Fifth Period,
1842–1861, carried to another part of the Union the
knowledge first accumulated at the University of Virginia,
to be subsequently ripened and extended by his
experience as a professor in secular and theological institutions
in the South. He was perhaps the most celebrated
student of his day in the Semitic languages. Among the
other alumni, who, like Toy, were both clergymen and
professors of distinction, the two most conspicuous, perhaps,
were Robert L. Dabney and John A. Broadus.
These men were powerful figures in their respective
churches, whether as preachers in the pulpit or as teachers
of theology in their denominational seminaries.
Dabney won the diploma of master of arts in 1846; and,
during several years, was pastor of the Tinkling Spring
Scotch-Irish congregation in the Valley; he was then
elected to a chair in the Union Theological Seminary;
and in the early part of the war, served as the chief of
staff to the renowned Stonewall Jackson. After the
close of hostilities, he returned to his chair at the Seminary,
but was subsequently professor of philosophy in
convictions as well as in his religious; was an ardent and
uncompromising lover of the South; and a polemical
writer of extraordinary vigor, incisiveness, and learning.
His Defense of Virginia and Life of Jackson exhibit his
abilities as a historian, and his numerous works on philosophy
and theology his talents as an expositor.
Broadus had become a member of the Baptist church
at the age of sixteen, and its emotional influence stamped
itself upon his general character. He was a man of profound
feeling as well as one of keen intellectuality. Like
Dabney, he succeeded in winning the degree of master of
arts at an early age, and acted for awhile as an assistant
instructor in the School of Ancient Languages. During
1855 and 1866, he performed simultaneously the duties
of chaplain of the University and pastor of a church in
Charlottesville. His powers as a pulpit orator were refined
by practice, and broadened by experience, until he
had no superior in his own or in any other Southern
denomination. It was said of him that he was, in spirit,
a mystic, and that his emotional life was the fountainhead
of his inspiration. His appeal was barbed by the
emotions, and was directed to the emotions. "If I were
asked," he once declared, "what is the first thing in effective
preaching, I should say sympathy, and what is
the second thing, I should say sympathy, and what is the
third thing, again I should say sympathy." But there
was no tumultuousness, no incoherence, in his play on this
dominant chord; the emotional power of his sermons was
a chastened power, expressed with all the simplicity of
genuine feeling and perfect taste, and illuminated by all
the resources of his extraordinary knowledge of art, science,
and literature.
Among the distinguished alumni who were contemporaries
Briggs, of the New York Theological Seminary, the
central figure at one hour in an ecclesiastical storm; William
Dinwiddie; Dabney Carr Harrison, who drew his
sword for the South while he still wore the surplice; Richard
McIlwaine, distinguished also as college president,
constitution builder and thoughtful writer; W. Theodore
Pryor, the faithful patriarch of a devoted flock, which he
had served with inflexible fidelity through all the stress of
violent times; James A. Quarles, John B. Shearer, Francis
S. Sampson, and Thomas L. Preston. Contemporaries
of Broadus, in the Baptist denomination, were W. D.
Thomas, George B. Taylor, W. H. Whitsitt, H. H.
Harris, J. C. Hiden, W. S. Ryland, and Edmund Harrison,
—men who demonstrated, in their lives and teachings,
the zeal, energy, and enthusiasm of their church.
Equally conspicuous in that church was J. William Jones,
an indefatigable missionary among the mountaineers in
his youth, a chaplain in the Confederate army, and a true
soldier at heart, the friend and biographer of Lee, the
loyal historian of the Confederate cause, and the faithful
pastor in the after-times of peace. The alumni of
the Methodist denomination numbered in their circle such
distinguished preachers as Bishop Doggett, J. J. Lafferty,
L. A. Steel, and W. H. Bennett. Among the clergymen
of the Episcopal church were Thomas U. Dudley,
Bishop of Kentucky, renowned throughout the South for
wit, humor, and good fellowship, and also for his earnest
labors in his calling; John Johnson, rector of St. Philip's
in Charleston, loyal soldier and author as well as minister
of the Gospel; John A. Gallaher, Bishop of Louisiana,
who had won a high reputation for intrepidity in the war;
James Latanè, Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church;
H. C. Lay, Bishop of Eastern Maryland; Randolph H.
pulpit orator, and an instructive writer; Kinloch Nelson,
also a gallant soldier and profound expositor of theology;
George Peterkin, a gallant soldier too, and Bishop
of West Virginia; Philip Slaughter, a famous antiquarian
as well as minister of the gospel; and A. W. Weddel,
the beloved pastor of a city parish.
The roll of alumni includes the name of at least one
great explorer, Elisha Kent Kane, and also the names
of numerous lawyers who won distinction in their profession
and exercised a wide personal influence: R. C.
Stanard, John B. Young, I. Randolph Tucker, William
Wirt Henry, James Alfred Jones, John S. Caskie, John
B. Baldwin, Charles Marshall, R. G. H. Kean, H. H.
Marshall, James A. Seddon and W. J. Robertson.
These men were from the Old Dominion, but the representatives
of the institution practising at the bars of other
States were equally respected in their several communities.
There was not a commonwealth in the South that did
not count among its supreme judges graduates of the
University of Virginia. The names of some may be
mentioned: R. W. Walker, of Alabama; W. H. Bentley
and James D. Thornton, of California; N. E. Maxwell,
of Florida; Henry G. Turner, of Georgia; J. T. Bullitt
and Joseph Landis, of Kentucky; C. E. Turner, George R.
King, A. D. Land, Samuel D. McEnery, of Louisiana;
Henry Page, of Maryland; W. L. Harris, of Mississippi;
John Garber, of Nevada; Thomas Smith, of New
Mexico; Roger A. Pryor, of New York; R. M. Pearson,
of North Carolina; J. P. Sterrett, of Pennsylvania;
Wood Bouldin, E. C. Burks, William Daniel, W. J.
Joynes, James Keith, B. W. Lacy, W. J. Robertson, of
Virginia; Henry Brannon, H. A. Holt, D. B. Lucas,
C. P. J. Moore, of West Virginia; Alexander Rives, a
Justice of the Supreme Court.
The alumni among the Governors of States were
David P. Lewis and John W. Watts, of Alabama; W.
M. Fishback, of Arkansas; J. L. Orr, of South Carolina;
J. W. Stevenson, of Kentucky; R. W. Hubbard, of
Texas; F. W. M. Holliday, of Virginia; A. Fleming and
H. M. Matthews, of West Virginia; James D. McEnery,
and Samuel D. McEnery, of Louisiana; Thomas W.
Ligon and Thomas Swann, of Maryland; and Elias Carr,
of North Carolina. Anterior to 1861, two alumni of
the University of Virginia had filled the Speaker's chair
of the House of Representatives, and sixty-two had occupied
seats on the floor. Among the United States senators,
before or after that date, are found the names of
the following alumni, who were graduates of the Fourth
and Fifth Periods, 1825–1861: John S. Barbour and
R. M. T. Hunter, John W. Johnston and Robert E.
Withers, of Virginia; Allen C. Caperton, of West Virginia;
J. W. Chalmers, of Mississippi; C. C. Clay, of
Alabama; George R. Dennis, of Maryland; H. E. Jackson,
of Tennessee; S. D. McEnery, of Louisiana; John
W. Stevenson, of Kentucky; Robert Toombs, of Georgia;
and L. T. Wigfall, of Texas. W. B. Preston and A. H.
H. Stuart, of Virginia, William L. Wilson, of West Virginia,
and H. R. Herbert, of Alabama, were members of
the cabinet; R. B. Hubbard, of Texas, James L. Orr, of
South Carolina, Lambert Tree, of Illinois, A. M. Keily
and Dabney H. Maury, of Virginia, James O. Broadhead,
of Missouri, Boyd Winchester, of Kentucky, and E. P.
C. Lewis, of New York, were ministers to foreign courts.
Alumni of the University were enrolled in all the
bodies organized during the existence of the Confederacy.
At least thirty-eight members of the convention which
were drawn from their ranks. In the Confederate Congress,
at its second session, there were six alumni in the
delegation from Virginia, two in that from Alabama, and
one respectively in the delegations from Georgia, Louisiana,
Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, and Texas.
The three most brilliant and influential figures seated in
that Congress were Robert Toombs, R. M. T. Hunter
and L. T. Wigfall, and each was a graduate of the University
of Virginia. At least thirty-two members of the
Permanent Congress were alumni of this institution.
Among the members of the Confederate Cabinet were
such distinguished alumni as Robert Toombs, and R. M.
T. Hunter, Secretaries of State in turn; James A. Seddon
and George W. Randolph, Secretaries of War; and
Thomas H. Watts, Attorney-General.
Previous to the war, one half of the medical corps in
the service of the United States had come up from the
South, and one half of that proportion had been educated
at the University of Virginia. The preference of the
latter had, from the start, been for the navy because it
opened up the prospect of a life of travel and adventure,
in addition to throwing open an honorable professional
career. The medical alumni obtained admission without
difficulty, owing to the high standard in the examinations
by which their knowledge had been tested for graduation.
There were few alumni in the medical service of the army.
The great body of the physicians who won their diplomas
at the University were dispersed throughout the Southern
States; there was not a city, hardly a town, and few
prosperous rural communities, in which they were not
to be found.
But the largest section of the alumni of the Fourth and
Fifth Periods, 1825–1861, belonged to the dominant
the obscure sphere of their secluded calling in which they
could win personal distinction, but the example of scientific
improvement of the soil set on their own estates by
wealthy members of this class, like Philip St. George
Cocke, of Powhatan County, James C. Bruce, of Halifax,
and Williams C. Wickham, of Hanover,—to mention
Virginians alone,—was as nourishing for the welfare of
their respective communities and the commonwealth in
general, as the labors and achievements of those who had
been trained for other vocations. It was from this body
too that a very large proportion of the State legislators
were drawn. As delegates and senators in the General
Assemblies, they won the esteem of their fellow-members
by their unostentatious but faithful performance of their
duties; and they kept alive in their country homes that
loyal devotion to family, that chivalrous respect for
womanhood, that considerate tenderness for weakness,
that high recognition of the claims of hospitality, that
reverence for religion, and that quick sensitiveness upon
all questions of personal integrity and honor, which they
had inherited from their fathers, and which they shared
with their associates in all the other great callings.[19]
XXXV. Influence on Secondary Education
Prominent as the University had become in public affairs,
and in the professions, through the distinction of
its alumni in those useful spheres of activity, yet it was
upon the scholarship and zeal and fidelity of the teachers
which it furnished to the secondary schools that its
most indisputable right to be respected and lauded was
based. And that right was not the less strong because
so many of these teachers were obscure, and their labors
which no popular interest was felt. But it would be a
grave error to presume, from the remarkable achievements
of these men after 1840, that the Virginians had
been grossly lacking in all means of secondary education,
either before the establishment of the University, or during
the period that immediately followed that event,
when its influence had not yet had time to spread very
far. Jefferson, in his very natural eagerness to create a
public sentiment in favor of building that institution, undoubtedly
exaggerated the deficiencies which really existed.
"I hope that our successors," he wrote John Adams,
in 1814, "will turn their attention to the advantages
of education. I mean of education on the broad scale,
and not that of these petty academies, as they call themselves,
which are starting up in every neighborhood, and
where one or two men possessing Latin and sometimes
Greek, a knowledge of globes and the first six books of
Euclid, imagine and communicate this as the sum of science.
They commit their pupils to the theatre of the
world, with just taste enough of learning to be alienated
from industrial pursuits, and not enough to do service
in the ranks of science."
Jefferson, by thus contemptuously belittling the information
to be got from these lower schools, was indirectly
arguing in favor of the need of expanding that information
indefinitely by the introduction of University education.
Now, it would not be correct to assert that such
an education could be obtained in any one of the academies
in existence at this time. Such was hardly possible
even a generation later, when the standards of Jefferson's
own seat of learning had been so widely adopted in Virginia.
Nevertheless, the instructors in many of them,
from 1800 to 1830, before the University's influence was
their methods of teaching were accurate and thorough.
The history of Virginian families, during this period, reveals
the fact that many of the tutors were graduates of
foreign universities,—like Burke, for instance, the headmaster
of the Bremo school,—or of Princeton, Yale, and
Harvard, the most famous colleges in America at that
time, and were not entirely deserving of the criticisms
which Jefferson's political animosities prompted him to
launch against them. Many of these strangers were men
of rare talents as well as of profound scholarship, and
rose to distinction in their own communities in after-life.
The larger proportion of their pupils passed out of the
schoolrooms of the plantation mansions into those of the
local academies; and there is no reason to think that they
were not as well prepared as youths in general are, in
our own time, who have had equally capable tutors at
home.
It is strictly correct to say, that, previous to 1835, the
teacher's avocation in Virginia did not possess the same
standing as the legal and medical professions; and that
the establishment of the University had a very perceptible
influence towards raising the respectability of that
calling. But during every period, either before or after
that event, it was followed by men of unexceptionable social
position. The number of clergymen who were engaged
in teaching, as a pursuit collateral to their clerical
duties, would alone have made it highly honorable even if
the inherent dignity of its work had failed to do so. At
the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were in existence
in the State at least twenty-one male classical academies
of such merit that some of them, like the academies
of Hampden-Sidney, Liberty Hall, and Richmond,
grew into colleges of importance. Others, like the academies
and Concord, while continuing to be secondary schools,
steadily increased in usefulness and distinction. It is calculated
that, between 1800 and 1820, there were thirty-two
male academies in Virginia; and between 1820 and
1840,—towards the end of which period the University's
influence on secondary education had just begun to be
clearly discernible,—there were thirty–three. Between
1840 and 1860, when this influence had reached a very
high pitch, there were forty academies.
Previous to 1830, when the University was still in its
infancy, and as yet incapable of making a profound impression
on secondary education, there were numerous
academies, in charge of headmasters of superior scholarship,
scattered throughout the eastern and western sections
of the State.[20]
There was the Washington-Henry
Academy, situated in Hanover county; the Fredericksburg
Academy, in Louisa county, where R. L. Dabney received
his first classical training, which he afterwards said was
equal in quality and scope to the classical knowledge required
of a University bachelor of arts; the Winchester
Academy, where at least one thousand students had been
taught; the Warren Academy, near Warrenton, which
accommodated as many as eighty pupils; the Milford
Academy, in Southampton county, which had an attendance
of fifty; the Harrisonburg Academy, and the Petersburg
Academy; the New London Academy, which enjoyed
an exceptional repute; the Ebenezer Academy, in
Brunswick county; the Charlestown Academy, in Jefferson;
the Leesburg Academy, in Loudoun; the Robertson
classical school in Culpeper; the Prince Edward Academy,
in Prince Edward; the Bellfield Academy, in Greenville;
Academy, in Amherst; the Abingdon Academy, in Washington;
the Richmond Academy, which was but one of
several schools in the capital city taught by scholars of
distinction; the Norfolk Academy; the Rumford Academy
in King William; the Hampton Academy in Elizabeth
City; the Charlotte Academy in Charlotte; the Reed
classical school in Lynchburg; the Lewisburg Academy in
Greenbrier; the Mecklenburg Academy in Mecklenburg;
the Newmarket Academy in Shenandoah; the Westmoreland
Academy in Westmoreland; and the Fleetwood
Academy in King and Queen.
This list, which comprises only the most reputable
academies in existence between 1800 and 1830, at least
demonstrates the fact that there was not a division of the
State which was not in possession of a school which, in
the extent and thoroughness of its course, was appreciably
superior to the schools which flourished under the
roofs of the planters, or in the old fields of the rural
neighborhoods. Of the departments of knowledge taught
in these academies, it can, in a general way, be said that
they embraced the Latin and Greek languages, the science
of mathematics,—both in its preparatory and its
higher branches,—and also the sciences of physics,
chemistry, and botany.
But the practical efficiency of these institutions, which
Jefferson, in a rather exaggerated spirit, was disposed to
question, is not to be measured so much by the subjects
in which they gave instruction, as by the qualifications of
the headmasters who presided over their activities.
Washington and Henry Academy was under the superintendence
of Rev. Thomas Hughes, a clergyman of
eminence, who enjoyed a just consideration for scholarship
Ritchie's school in Fredericksburg was directed by
in Virginia, and a writer of uncommon ability. John
Goolrick, the principal of a school in the same city, in
1825, was a mathematician of high reputation, who had
been educated in Ireland, his native country. John
Lewis, who was at the head of the Llangollen school in
Spottsylvania county, strove, in teaching Latin, to enforce
the thorough methods followed in the great English
Universities. His classes in Greek were conducted by the
Rev. Mr. Boggs, an Episcopal clergyman of great learning.
Waddell's classical school in Louisa county, was
taught by the Blind Preacher, the impression of whose
genius has been preserved in one of the most eloquent
papers in the British Spy. The Winchester Academy
was under the superintendency in succession of Mr. Heterick,
John Bruce, and Nicholas Murray. Heterick, a
Scotchman of superior education, was particularly successful
as an instructor in the ancient languages. He always
spoke to his pupils in Latin, and required them to answer
in the same tongue. John Bruce, also a Scotchman,
was so broadly cultured that he was warmly recommended
by capable judges as a successor to Bonnycastle in the
chair of natural philosophy at the University of Virginia.
John Davis, the English traveller, was, at one
time, a teacher in an academy situated in the town of
Petersburg. Edward Smith, who was especially distinguished
for his classical information, was the headmaster
of the Milford school at Smithfield. Among the principals
of the New London Academy were George Baxter,
afterwards President of Washington College, and Nicholas
H. Cobbs, afterwards Episcopal Bishop of Alabama.
Mr. Hogan, who taught in the Ebenezer Academy in
Brunswick county, was an Irishman of remarkable classical
knowledge; and he was followed by Mr. Rice, a
Oxford. John Robertson, the father of Judge William
J. Robertson, conducted a school in Culpeper and Albemarle
counties in succession, which, during thirty years,
was held in just esteem through all that region of country.
A native of Scotland, he had, before his emigration, been
drilled in the universities of his native land, and when
he died, left among his effects what was, perhaps, the
largest and choicest classical library in the State. His
successors were two clergymen of recognized learning;
namely, Rev. Samuel D. Hoge and Rev. Mr. Marshall.
Drury Lacy, the founder of the Ararat classical
school in Prince Edward county, was, at one time, the
President of Hampden-Sidney College. "But it was in
the capacity of the principal of a classical school," we are
told by Hugh Blair Grigsby, "that he rendered the most
valuable service to his country. I was one of his pupils,
and bear my testimony to his thorough teaching of the
Latin tongue. Though sixty-one years have passed since
I was under his care, I feel the influence of his teaching
on my mind and character at this moment. In Mr.
Lacy's school were trained numerous students who have
become prominent in every sphere of social action. It
is to such private schools that Virginia owes a debt which
she can never repay." The three wards of John Randolph
were first educated in this academy, and it was his
habit to take part, from time to time, in its daily exercises.
Among the instructors employed in the academies of
Prince Edward county, independent of the professors of
Hampden-Sidney College, were Franklin Smith, a native
of New England, who was afterwards appointed to the
Presidency of Columbia College; H. P. Goodrich, an
alumnus of Princeton, subsequently President of Marion
College, and still remembered as the inventor of the
railway spike. The headmaster of Bellfield Academy, in
Greenville county, was Andrew Rhea, a master of arts.
James Burke, one of the tutors of Edgar Allan Poe,
and an alumnus of a European University, was, as already
stated, employed in the Bremo Academy. In 1837,
Peter McVicar, formerly a professor in Hampden-Sidney
College, and a graduate of Union College, was superintendent
of Abingdon Academy. The headmasters
of the Norfolk Academy were during many years, graduates
of Scotch Universities. The Lewisburg Academy
was founded by Rev. Dr. John McElhany, an alumnus
of Washington College, and its principalship was, at one
time, filled by R. T. W. Duke, afterwards a distinguished
officer in the Confederate army, and a member of Congress.
The Staunton Academy was, in 1817, under the
supervision of Bartholomew Fuller and J. G. Waddell,
who were justly esteemed for their excellent scholarship.
In 1815, Rev. John Cameron, who was a graduate of
King's College, Aberdeen, was headmaster of an academy
in Lunenburg county; Rev. Stephen Taylor, graduate
of Williams College, of the Boydton Academy in Mecklenburg;
and Rev. John Kirkpatrick, a graduate of Hampden-Sidney
College, of the Chesterfield Academy in Chesterfield
county. In 1835, Mr. Provost, a graduate of
Princeton, was teaching in the neighborhood of Keswick;
and he was followed by Giles Waldo, a graduate of Yale,
and James Chisholm, a graduate of Harvard.
During an earlier period, William Ogilvie, a Scotchman
who had enjoyed a thorough classical education,
was the principal of an academy at Milton. Among the
headmasters in Richmond at this time were Rowland
Rogers, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and Richard
afterwards so influential in the Presbyterian denomination,
was the headmaster of a classical school in Charlotte
county; and he was followed first by Thomas T.
Bouldin, a graduate of the University of Virginia, and
Daniel Comfort, a graduate of Princeton. Rev. W. S.
Reed,—also a graduate of Princeton,—was, about the
beginning of the century, the headmaster of an academy
in Lynchburg. From 1800 to 1827, Rev. Robert Taylor
Semple, the historian of the Virginia Baptists, had
charge of a classical school in King and Queen county.
One of the most prominent of the academies, during that
period, was the Hallowell Academy in Alexandria. It
was here that General Robert E. Lee received his first
training, and throughout life, he testified warmly to the
excellence of its instruction.
From the facts enumerated in the preceding paragraphs,
it is clear that there were not only numerous respectable
academies in existence in Virginia previous to
1830, but also that a very large proportion of them were
under the control of headmasters who had graduated in
the foremost institutions of the North or of the British
Islands. Jefferson, it is plain, created,—unintentionally,
of course,—a misleading impression in remaking in his
letter to W. B. Giles, written in December, 1825, that
the teacher in the home of his correspondent was one of
"the three or four truly classical scholars whom he had
heard of as giving lessons in the schools of the State."
In the point of fact, the academies of that day were
the successors of the classical schools always spoken of
as the parsons' schools, which, as Jefferson himself admitted,
had, before the Revolution, placed his native commonwealth
on a footing of equality with the most enlightened
communities in the Northern colonies. The
a public school system, largely because of the heavy taxation
which it would have imposed, these private academies
had thriven as the beneficiaries of a patronage necessarily
concentrated, owing to the absence of all other
local means of obtaining an education. That they were,
if we consider the majority of them, still defective in their
ability to train for a really exalted seat of learning, was
quite probably true. Jefferson was not exaggerating in
saying that the University of Virginia, in its first session,
was compelled to receive some "shameful Latinists;" but
we have the personal testimony of Long himself that he
was very favorably impressed with the knowledge of the
ancient languages shown by Gessner Harrison and his
brother, when they first appeared in his classroom; and
this knowledge was certainly shared by Henry Tutwiler,
and, perhaps, by many other pupils of this English professor
who had enjoyed the same opportunities for an
equally thorough preparatory drilling. It was not the
degree of latinity, but the kind of latinity, which seemed
to have caused Jefferson's criticism. "We must get rid
of this Connecticut Latin," he wrote W. B. Giles, "of
this barbarous confusion of long and short syllables, which
renders doubtful whether we are listening to a reader of
Cherokee, Shawnee, Iroquois, or what."
It is to be inferred from this rather over-colored remark
that Jefferson's condemnation had its taproot far
more in a hatred of Yale Federalism,—which Giles
shared to the hilt,—than in the supposed flagrant inferiority
of the Yale accent. What was really to be regretted
was that this respectable college could not have
furnished the Virginian academies with a larger number
of preceptors. Could it have done so, the possible deficiencies
in mere pronunciation which Jefferson ridiculed,
advantages to local scholarship which would have followed.
Jefferson was indisputably wise in persistently
advocating a system of intermediate colleges,—not, however,
because excellent academies did not already exist,
but because the proposed colleges could have been far
more effectively linked up with the University of Virginia.
The coordination between them and the higher institution
at Charlottesville could have been made so perfect that
college and university would have worked together as
parts in one great piece of machinery, many wheels within
one, subject from top to bottom to the control and direction
of the State. An unbroken concatenation would
have resulted from the enforcement of a unified policy, as
to modes of instruction and management alike, throughout
the system.
The academies which were in existence at the foundation
of the University were all independent of the State
and of each other. There was no strong impulse of interest
or sympathy to bring them together, even in a limited
concert. They moved in no groove common to all,
whether in tuition or discipline, but each pursued those
methods which either the inherited traditions of the past,
or the private convictions of the headmasters themselves,
suggested as the most certain to be successful. The
great work done by the University of Virginia after
1840, in its relation to the secondary schools, did not
consist simply in providing all these schools with an army
of capable teachers,—it consisted partly at least in furnishing
all of them with the same high standard of schoarship,
—a standard which had already been introduced
in many of them by the youthful professors who had been
trained in the great universities of England or New England.
The secondary schools, which had been so independent
could not maintain this attitude,—to the same
degree at least,—after that institution had begun to acquire
a great reputation for scholarship. They must
adopt its methods or lose ground in the popular esteem.
An influence tending irresistibly towards unity was thus
created among the private academies; and this unity in
time assured those very conditions which would have
been brought about by the adoption of Jefferson's original
plan for intermediate State colleges. The chief deficiency
of this unity was its failure to offer that opening
to the talented sons of indigent parents which the bill of
1779 was so careful to provide.
The situation in Virginia after 1840 then was as follows:
instead of there being half a hundred schools, as
in 1819, that had adopted the methods which prevailed
in the colleges of Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Dublin,
Oxford, or Edinburgh,—accordingly as the headmaster
had been educated in one or the other of those famous
institutions,—there was an equal number which either
adhered altogether, or in greater part, to the manner of
instruction, the standard of scholarship, and the form
of administration, which were in operation at the University
of Virginia. It is estimated that, in 1860, there
were as many as 13,204 pupils in the academies, and it
would not be inaccurate to say that there was hardly one
of these pupils who was not unconsciously subjected to
the influence of a system which had its fountain-head in
the State University. Of their seven hundred and
twenty teachers, a very important proportion had been
educated in that institution.
We were indebted for much information about the academies to A.
J. Morrison's remarkable report to the Virginia Board of Education.
XXXVI. Influence on Secondary Education, Continued
The University had been in existence only a few years
for its success began to show a desire to encourage
the establishment of secondary schools, which, in spirit
and methods, would be more in harmony with the system
prevailing in its classrooms. They were not content
to await the upshot of its influence on the academies
already in operation, as this would necessarily require
time for fruitful demonstration. The most important
of these projected schools was the gymnasium that Cocke
was so eager to set up at Monticello in 1829, branches of
which were to be located in other divisions of the Commonwealth.
It was to be modelled on a German prototype,
—was to be under the control of one principal and
four assistants; and its course of instruction was to embrace
the English, Greek and Roman languages, and also
the Italian, German and French, as well as history, mathematics,
sacred philosophy, and bookkeeping. Its disciplinary
regulations were to be parental. This scheme,
however, was too ambitious in its scope to be put in actual
operation.[21] One of a different, but of an equally exalted,
character, was planned by Cabell for the village of Warminster.
This, too, as we have already mentioned, never
passed beyond the stage of paper. An academy was
proposed for Fredericksburg upon a similar model; but
this also was never founded.
Apparently, the first academy or private school that
was really set up, with the declared purpose of following
the methods of the University of Virginia, was the
one for which Henry Tutwiler issued a fully detailed prospectus
in 1830. The site of this school was Charlottesville.
Among the conspicuous schools which, one after
another, sprang up, afterwards, under the influence of the
the best of those that had been long in existence,—were
the Bloomfield Academy, in Albemarle, taught by Willoughby
Tebbs and Leroy Broun; Ridgway School in the
same county, of which Franklin Minor was the headmaster;
the Buchanan School, taught by W. R. Galt; the
Episcopal High School, which was under the principalship
in succession of Rev. William N. Pendleton, Rev.
E. A. Dalrymple, and the Rev. John P. McGuire; Concord
Academy, taught by Frederick W. Coleman, and
Hanover Academy, by his nephew, Lewis M. Coleman;
schools in Staunton and Richmond, taught by Pike Powers
and Socrates Maupin, respectively; a school in Alexandria,
taught by Colonel Kemper, and the Brookland
School, in Albemarle, by William Dinwiddie. In addition,
there were the Northumberland and Clarke Academies.
Each of these schools justly asserted that their
courses of instruction were broad enough to prepare their
numerous pupils for the senior academic classes in the
University of Virginia; and so were the courses of many
of the older schools, like the Norfolk Academy, Lewisburg
Academy, the Hallowell Academy, in Alexandria,
Hampton Academy, and others which might be mentioned
In the majority of them,—whether established
before or after the incorporation of the University,—the
number of students varied from sixty to one hundred; and
they were drawn from all the States of the South. The
headmasters were, in most instances, masters of arts of
the University of Virginia.
"For three years," says Professor James M. Garnett,
describing his experience as a scholar in one of these
schools, "we read the higher Latin and Greek authors,
others having been previously studied,—of which I recall,
in Latin, Tacitus and Juvenal, Plautus and Terence
Thucydides and Theocritus. There were written
weekly examinations in Greek and Latin composition, retranslating
into these languages a piece of English translation
from some classical author. We had studied trigonometry
and surveying, and analytical and descriptive
geometry; and the class succeeding ours studied also differential
and integral calculus. We had pursued a French
course during the three years, reading lastly Racine and
Molière, and writing weekly exercises. Spelling was
rigidly taught, but no English studies were pursued."
The young men who were trained in the different academies
under this thorough and advanced system of instruction
were frequently inspired with a burning ambition
to distinguish themselves at the University. "They
often seem," said the editors of the magazine for January,
1860, in a spirit of protest, "to have an unhealthy
passion for the mastership of arts. Indeed, at some of
the preparatory schools of the State, the whole course of
teaching is modeled and directed to the accomplishment
of this end, and from the time a youth enters one of
these schools, the degree of master of arts is held out
before his eyes as a priceless guerdon to arouse him to
energy and application."
The three schools which enjoyed a preeminent reputation
for the success of their preparatory methods were
Ridgway Academy, in Albemarle, under Franklin
Minor; Concord Academy, in Caroline, under Frederick
W. Coleman, and the Hanover Academy, in Hanover
county, under Lewis M. Coleman. The Ridgway Academy
was situated on a fertile and scientifically managed
farm which belonged to Mr. Minor, and which supplied
his pupils with an extraordinary abundance of meats,
meal, flour, fruits, and vegetables. The boys were subjected
classroom. They cut the wood for their own hearths,
lighted the fires with their own hands, and performed
other menial tasks of a like sort. The recitations began
at sunrise. There were two teachers in addition to
the principal. Minor, besides his remarkable talent as
an instructor, was a citizen who took a useful part in
the affairs of the community in which he was domiciled,
—served on the Board of Visitors of the University,
was a member of the General Assembly, and was also
one of the judges of the magistrates' court.
Frederick W. Coleman, the headmaster of Concord
Academy, had graduated as a master of arts in the University
of Virginia in 1835, and it was the conspicuous
success of so many of his students in winning the highest
honors in that institution which conferred so much distinction
upon his pedagogic methods. The first duty
of a Concord boy, it was said at the time, was to triumph
at the University. "Its traditions," we learn from Edward
S. Joynes, "were as familiar to us as those of our
own school." No regular system was strictly pursued
at Concord. There was no hour for recitation; and
the pupils were as likely to be summoned to their instructor
at midnight as in the morning or at noon;
indeed, the bell was to be expected to ring at any moment
almost throughout the twenty-four hours. The scene
of the recitations in summer was usually chosen under
the shade of the trees on the lawn, where the classes
were received by Coleman lying prone on the grass in his
shirt and trousers only. In the intervals of relaxation,
headmaster and pupil were on a footing of delightful
equality; but this familiarity never degenerated into disrespect
or horseplay. There was not a woman about
the establishment. The entire round of menial duties
to their master, and also very much afraid of him. The
diet,—which was procured from the Concord estate
alone,—was plain and simple, and coarsely served upon
a rudely constructed table and amid bare surroundings.
The school buildings, consisting of one brick structure and
several log cabins standing together, were devoid of attractiveness
in themselves, and unrelieved by whitewashed
enclosures. The interiors were rough and primitive.
The spirit of the place was designed to produce men
who defied all hardships, and scholars who could hold
their own against all rivals. "I have never seen such
teaching since," said Professor Joynes, "and I have sat
at the feet of Harrison and Courtenay and McGuffey
at home, and Haupt and Boeckl and Bopp abroad."
But while it was noted that the pupils of the school won
many honors at the University, and were frank in opinion
and virile in character, they enjoyed an unpleasant
reputation for roughness of manners. Concord Academy
was reflective of the individuality of its headmaster,
—a man in the raw, who would have strongly appealed
to Fielding and Thackeray, with their exaggerated respect
for a human being who had not been cabined and
cribbed by social conventionalities. "His wrath," says
Joynes, "was something terrible,—a tornado in its irresistible
and undisciplined fury. He was a man of massive
power of body, mind, and will. Through this power,
he dominated all his boys, impressed himself upon them,
wrought himself into them, controlled them by his immense
will power, moved them by his mighty sympathy,
and thrilled them into life by his stentorian voice."
Lewis M. Coleman had served a pedagogic apprenticeship
under his eccentric but brilliant uncle; and in
establishing an academy of his own, he was wise enough
its spirit of sturdy virility. Above all, he introduced
the policy,—which had been adopted at the University
of Virginia,—of trusting the moral government
of his boys primarily to their own sense of personal honor.
Without laying down too many rules, he saw that there
was a condition of order throughout the school, and
rigidly interdicted every form of dissipation, whether of
cards or of drinking. "I have been with him at Hanover
Academy, both in his hours of teaching and his
hours of play," we are told by John R. Thompson, "and
seen him among his pupils, beloved and never feared,
always respected, the master of their confidence and
their affections. His sympathies were with them on the
playground and in the recitation room. His temper was
the sweetest and his discipline at once the most kindly."
"He improved on Concord," says W. Gordon McCabe,
"in the greater attention given to the lower classes; in
the more thorough grounding of the students; in a more
perfect organization and system, with unfailing regularity;
and in extending the instruction." In some
studies, indeed, the course at Hanover Academy covered
the entire field of the same course at the University,
the result of which was that many of its pupils took almost
at once, after entering, the foremost rank in the
lecture-rooms of that institution.
The influence of Concord and Hanover Academies
was observed in two directions: First, they set an example
in thoroughness that was followed by many other
high schools in the State. They demonstrated the extraordinary
efficiency which could be reached by all secondary
institutions that would adopt the standards which
the University of Virginia was employing so successfully.
In the second place, by proving that the profession of
distinction and to pecuniary profit as the profession of
law or medicine, they caused many men of talent to enter
that vocation who otherwise would have passed it by
as offering no field for either ambition or accumulation.
"When young men of good position," says W. Gordon
McCabe, "saw these two gentlemen of the landed proprietors
winning as schoolmasters as great emolument
as fell to none save the foremost at the bar or in medicine,
great numbers felt free to follow their scholarly inclinations,
and gladly consecrated their lives to a calling
which had become, in the eyes of the world, at once lucrative
and honorable."
Franklin Minor and the Colemans, together with their
numerous compeers in Virginia, were, in the teaching of
the ancient languages at least, the disciples of one man.
This man was Gessner Harrison. To Harrison more
than to any one person must be attributed that general
advance in the standards of classical scholarship which
was so discernible in the Southern States after 1840.
From the altitude of his professorship, he could, from
the start, detect what was wanting in so many of the
preparatory schools and academies of his native State;
and he quickly recognized that one of the weightiest responsibilities
which his chair laid upon him, was to remove
these imperfections so far as his own exceptional
culture would enable him to do so. He announced the
broad principle that "education must work from above
downward," by which he meant—to use his own words,
—that "the better education must begin in the higher
institutions by preparing teachers so well trained, and
filled with such a spirit, that they will afterwards send
up pupils much better rounded in the elements than they
diminishing the existing deficiencies that he
could, without exaggeration, say, towards the close of
his fruitful career as a professor, that "young men were
then entering his classes with a larger knowledge of the
Latin language, obtained from the preparatory schools,
than he had been able, twenty-four years before, to impart
to his graduates in that tongue." As the backward
schools, under his indirect influence, raised their
standards of scholarship in the ancient languages, the
University, in turn, was able to advance its own standards
again. And what was pertinent to those languages
was true, although in a less impressive degree, of
the other subjects taught in both the local academy and
the University. For every step forward taken by the
latter institution, in courses common to both, there was
a corresponding step forward taken by the preparatory
school. The two were drawn permanently together by
the fact that so many of the academies were taught by
the University's graduates.
The general influence of the University of Virginia on
the schools of the South, during this period, may be
thus summarized: it led to the introduction of the Honor
System into their moral government; it encouraged the
expansion of their courses of instruction; it prompted
them to improve their methods of teaching; and it promoted
a continuous advance in the standards of culture.
The headmasters of Virginia, and of many other parts
of the South also, kept themselves, it was said, fully informed
as to every new phase of thought which might
be deeply interesting the University circle. The inauguration
of a new professor there was an event of importance
to the remotest part of the Southern country;
force throughout that region, drawn from the annual company
of the University's most promising graduates.
Cocke debated for some time whether he should not establish his
gymnasium in the Mudwall boarding house in Charlottesville, his own
property.
XXXVII. Influence on American Colleges
What was the extent of the influence which the University
of Virginia brought to bear on the other advanced
institutions of the like character to be found in
the United States before the war intervened? President
Angell, of the University of Michigan, suggested in
a public address delivered in 1899, that the reluctance
exhibited by the higher seats of learning in the North
to adopt the system of instruction and administration
which had always prevailed in Jefferson's university, was
largely attributable to a traditional distrust of that statesman
as a mere theorist in science and education. It was
his opinion too that the cost of maintaining such a system
had been an additional reason for its failure to take
deep and tenacious root in that part of the country.
But it seems more probable that this adverse attitude
had its origin in the conservative spirit, which, at that
time, was so perceptible in all the colleges of the North,
accustomed, from their beginning, to the curriculum inherited
from England. It was not the example of one
institution, however eminent from its association with
Jefferson's principles, which has led to the general adoption
of the elective system,—its introduction has been
made necessary, in whole or in part, by that augmentation
in the number of scientific studies which the growth
of modern communities has rendered indispensable. No
curriculum of the old inflexible order could be retained
if all the valuable sections of this new ground were to be
fully taken in. It must yield in part at least; and in all
it has given away to that degree unquestionably.
There were, however, three important colleges in New
England which were undoubtedly impressed by the system
in operation at the University of Virginia many years
before the development of the practical sciences had led
to the partial abrogation of the curriculum system everywhere.
These three were Harvard College, Brown
University, and the Institute of Technology in Boston.
It is of special interest to follow up Jefferson's influence
upon Harvard, for Harvard enjoyed the distinction of
being the oldest of all the higher seats of learning in the
United States, and was, in those times, a mirror of the
very conservative principles which had been adopted in
Massachusetts in the province of education. The first
suggestion that the curriculum there should be substantially
modified, so as to draw it nearer to some sides of
the elective system, was contained in a letter which
George Ticknor addressed to William Prescott, a member
of the corporation in 1821.[22]
It will be recalled that
Ticknor had visited Jefferson at Monticello, and after
leaving, had maintained a fairly regular correspondence
with him. While the accomplished Bostonian was
abroad, he received from Jefferson the full details of his
plan for the promotion of higher education in Virginia;
and it was during the same period of absence from home
that he was asked to accept the professorship of ethics,
belles-lettres, and the fine arts. This was in 1818, when
Central College had not yet been converted into a State
institution. In 1820, after the University itself had been
incorporated, one of its most important chairs was
was constrained to decline this invitation, as he had been
chosen to fill the professorship of French, Spanish, and
belles-lettres in Harvard College; but this did not lessen
his interest in the experiment with the elective system
which Jefferson was about to begin; and that interest
must have been sensibly increased by his recollections of
the principal European seats of learning inspected by
him, during his recent tour.
Ticknor wrote Jefferson that he would visit the University
of Virginia so soon as it was in the final condition
for the reception of students. In December, 1824,
a few months before it was permanently opened, he
arrived at Monticello, and from that house despatched a
letter to Prescott, in which he mentioned the watchful
interest which he was taking in the inauguration of the
system of elective studies that had been adopted for the
new institution. "It is more practical than I feared,"
he declared, "but not so practical that I feel satisfied
of its success. It is, however, an experiment worth trying,
to which I earnestly desire the happiest results."
That he really thought, as he said, that "the experiment
was worth trying" was demonstrated by his subsequent
effort to introduce the same system at Cambridge.
Prescott and Story sustained him in this effort so vigorously
that the corporation decided to put his proposal to
the test. This was in 1825, the year which witnessed
the establishment of the system at the University of
Virginia throughout the circle of its schools. Ticknor,
naturally, had to contend with almost fanatical opposition,
and in September of the same year, he felt compelled
to issue, in the form of a pamphlet, an article
defending the radical innovation which he had suggested.
In actual practice, the experiment proved successful in
of the Faculty apparently who was really desirous that
it should do so. In 1827, the corporation modified the
innovation so far as to limit its employment to that department.
But that some of the authorities continued to
take a keen interest in the system prevailing at the University
of Virginia is revealed in a letter which Josiah
Quincy, President of the college, wrote to Madison in
1829: he expressed a desire to receive a full account of
the "origin, progress, and arrangement" of that institution,
but particularly of the practical effect of permitting
a choice of studies; and requested that copies of the
printed documents relating to this policy should be sent
to him. "Mr. Quincy," said Madison, "was so anxious
on the subject that he was on his way to the University
when the report of the fever stopped him."
Down to 1835, when Ticknor resigned his professorship,
he was able to prove, in his own classes at least,
the advantages which the elective method had to offer to
students. He described it as a voluntary system; and
his lectures were so popular, and the freedom of selection
was so agreeable to his pupils, that he drew to his recitation-room
a company numbering from one hundred
and forty to one hundred and sixty in all. "If the department
of modern languages is right," he said, in protest
against the criticism with which he continued to be
assailed throughout the last ten years of his incumbency
of his chair, "then the rest of the college is wrong; and
if the rest of the college is wrong, we ought to adopt
its (his chair's) system." "In my own department,"
he added, "I have succeeded entirely, but I can get these
changes carried no further." It was apparently due to
his dissatisfaction with this condition, that, at the height
of his usefulness, he gave up his professorship, which,
in all parts of the Union.
Did Ticknor acquire his preference for the elective
system independently of Jefferson, or did he come to it
under Jefferson's influence alone? Certainly there was
no aspect of the instruction or discipline at Dartmouth
College, his alma mater, or at Harvard, with which he
was so closely associated as a member of its Faculty,
to lead him up to such a conviction. He admitted that,
during several years after his acceptance of a professorship
in the latter institution (1819), it did not occur to
him to question the correctness of the curriculum system
which then prevailed in all its departments. As
he had, before his election, passed some time in European
travel, it would be inferred from this indifference
that he had not procured his ideas touching educational
reform from foreign universities; or at least, that they
had not made such an impression on his mind as to induce
him to propose the innovations which he afterwards advocated
so ably and so earnestly.
It was in 1820 that he was invited to occupy a chair in
the University of Virginia,—an event that would quite
naturally arouse in him an interest in the institution
apart from his intercourse with Jefferson, either in person
or through the letters on education which the two
had so frequently exchanged. The visit to the University
followed in 1824,—a visit paid during such a rigorous
season of the year, and so near the beginning of the
first lectures, that it must have had some object in addition
to mere pleasure. Previous to 1824, he had remained
in constant communication, in one way or another,
with Jefferson: he was either a guest at Monticello,
a correspondent by post, or a reader of the new rector's
reports on the elective system. It was advanced education
and it seems reasonable to presume that the ideas on that
subject held by the older and greater man were permanently
dropped, like so many seed, into the mind
of the younger one, already made more receptive for
them by travel abroad. It is true that Jefferson himself
had drawn the principles of the elective system from the
great European universities; but so celebrated a source
was only likely to have made them more alluring to
the young Bostonian, who had visited those institutions
in person; and who now came to the one at Charlottesville
to see these principles put in scholastic operation for the
first time, on a large scale, on this side of the Atlantic.
The method which Ticknor adopted in arranging his
department demonstrated further the influence of the
University of Virginia on his conclusions. There was
no curriculum in that department. The students were
not required to attend lectures in all its divisions, but
only in those which they preferred. Nor did the
instruction depend on text-books as primary sources of
information; nor was any effort put forth to enforce
discipline by the traditional drastic regulations. On the
contrary, moral influences were looked to as promising
most. In 1846, President Everett endeavored to remove
from Harvard College the last trace of that elective
system which Ticknor had been so solicitous to establish
there. His purpose was to restore fully the whole round
of compulsory curriculum courses. "Better far," exclaimed
Professor William B. Rogers, in a protesting
letter written to Hilliard in November of the same year,
"to make all the studies free and place Harvard at once
on the broad liberal basis of one of the German schools."
It was not until 1883 that the elective system,—principally
through the influence of President Eliot,—was
a century earlier, been so earnestly advocated by Ticknor;
but it was still a modified form of the system as
compared with the complete one which had been in operation
at the University of Virginia since 1825. The elective
studies permitted were really extra studies that the
student was at liberty to pursue or not to pursue as he
chose. In the beginning, they were confined to the
senior year. When extended to the junior, the entire
round of courses for that year were made elective, but
with the provision that a definite proportion had to be
taken. The courses for the sophomore year were next
brought under the same rule; and, finally, three-fourths
of the courses embraced in the freshman year,—a privilege,
however, that was made dependent upon a very
rigid examination at entrance. The student was required
to traverse four courses during each year of the four
terms; but he was at liberty to select the four from the
very large group which was arranged for his choice. It
is true that he was compelled to keep to a definite limit;
but outside that limit, his right of election was entirely
unhampered, except that, in each department, the studies
which he should pursue must follow in such order as
would signify at each step an advance from a lower to a
higher phase of those particular subjects. This right
of election was even allowed in the professional schools
under similar restrictions.
We were specially indebted to Professor Adams's Jefferson and the
University of Virginia in the preparation of this account of Ticknor's
relations with the elective system.
XXXVIII. Influence on American Colleges, Continued
In 1849, Henry Rogers wrote to his brother, Professor
W. B. Rogers, from Providence, as follows:
"President Wayland (of Brown University) dined with
me. He is intent upon some valuable and important
collegiate reforms, and his views are shared by Allen and
reorganization of the college, intending much more science
and practical instruction, less Greek, etc., and adopting
some of your system. Wayland himself is tired of
the old monastic system, and is wishing to see the college
more like our ideal school of arts. I think the time
is nearby for an important revolution in this whole matter
of collegiate education. The old institutions, with
their vast funds, educating youth at enormous expense,
and yet fitting them for nothing truly useful, or calculated
to advance the age, must soon meet the rivalry of
institutions which will embody modern ideas. Wayland
much wishes a copy of your exposition of the system
(elective) at the University. He has had a copy and
lent it to some of the trustees. Send him another."
This second copy was dispatched as requested. Three
months afterwards, when Wayland had had ample time
to digest its contents, he drafted a report to his trustees,
in which he advised that the methods of instruction in
Brown University should be reorganized upon an elective
footing. But before this report could be printed and
actually submitted, he decided to visit the University of
Virginia in order to inquire in person into the practical
working of the proposed system. He was accompanied,
it would seem, by a member either of his faculty or of
his board of trustees, for Professor William B. Rogers,
referring to their departure in one of his letters, said
that he was "satisfied that our guests had carried away
with them much encouragement for their plan of reform
as well as valuable guides in conducting them."
"Wayland," he added, "appears quite determined to
adopt our more liberal features in the new scheme (at
Brown)." It seems that, in his report to his board of
trustees, which he had written before his visit, Wayland
each student was compelled to pursue, in his freshman,
sophomore, junior, and senior years, a prearranged
course, however opposed to his own tastes, or repugnant
to his real wishes; and he had urged that each matriculate
should be unhampered in the exercise of the right "to
study what he chooses, all he chooses, and nothing but
what he chooses,"—a concise yet comprehensive statement,
which would have been very pleasing to the spirit
of Jefferson, had he been alive to read it.
Did President Wayland ever acknowledge his indebtedness
to the University of Virginia for these new ideas?
Only so to the extent of remarking, in the same report,
that the system of study in use there was "something
similar" to the one which he was recommending for
adoption at Brown. Professor John B. Minor, in his
memorable monograph on the history of the University
of Virginia, with that power of analysis, and that capacity
for caustic ridicule too, of which he was a master
when he chose to exert it, has driven a coach and four
through these disingenuous words. He shows that the
system imitated and the system adopted were, in all
essentials, so precisely alike that it was impossible to
doubt where President Wayland had obtained the first
suggestion of his projected innovation. The proposed
methods of Brown and the actual methods of the University
of Virginia rested wholly on an elective basis.
Both systems opened up to the student the opportunity
of concentrating all his energies upon such branches of
knowledge as he might prefer; both offered departments
in which the most important aspects of science were already
taught, and which were capable of future enlargement
as the spirit of investigation should advance; both
conferred their degrees only for successes won in the
said very pertinently, "cannot have been casual. As the
University of Virginia had been in operation twenty-five
years before President Wayland's visit, and since he
had heard enough of it to come to the University, there is
no room to doubt where he got the staple of that eminent
report, which his sons (his biographers) say 'constitutes
an era in the history of collegiate education in
America.'"
The flagrant absence of generous acknowledgement in
this report aroused further adverse comment at the time.
"Whilst it is gratifying," remarked the editors of the
Jefferson Monument Magazine, "to have our opinion in
favor of our own system thus corroborated by the decision
of Dr. Wayland, it is mortifying to our pride to
find that not even the slightest allusion is made to the
fact that such an institution as the University of Virginia
exists. Nor does he fortify his position by mentioning
that, at the University of Virginia, twenty-six
years of experience had proved the plan eminently successful."
The editor of the North American Review,
whose only information on the subject was palpably
derived from a perusal of President Wayland's report,
described the plan which it proposed as a "bold
innovation," and gravely disputed its practicability.
Other colleges were solemnly advised to await the result
of this hitherto untried experiment before they abandoned
the blazed path of the curriculum to plunge into the
trackless wilds of the elective system!
After all, it was not in New England, or among writers
inspired by the political and educational bias of that
region, that an accurate knowledge, or generous appreciation,
of Jefferson's principles and theories was to be
expected. And yet it was in the very heart of New
the foremost seat of learning of its kind in the United
States, which was modeled on the general plan then in
operation at the University of Virginia. But this was
because the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in Boston was a former professor in that
University, and a staunch admirer of its elective system.
"I have come," said Professor William B. Rogers,
writing to Cabell, the rector, when offering his resignation,
"to value more and more the scheme of its organization
and the method and thoroughness that preside
generally in its halls of instruction." "That the University
of Virginia," he said on another occasion, "has
been successful in establishing within our borders a higher
and more thorough system of scientific and literary training
than had previously been successful anywhere in the
United States, is, we think, admitted by all who are familiar
with its courses of study." We are told by Mrs.
Rogers, a woman of Northern birth and sympathies, in
her biography of her husband, that, in founding the
great seat of practical learning in Boston, he kept the
University of Virginia in mind throughout as his model.
"The Massachusetts Institute of Technology," said Dr.
Pritchett, its president, in an address before the literary
societies of the University of Virginia, in 1903, "was
planned in these halls. Its organization as it exists today
grew first in the brain of William B. Rogers, whilst he
was a professor in this University."
It was not Harvard, nor Brown, nor the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology alone which adopted,
either in a modified or a complete form, the elective system
that Jefferson so earnestly and so persistently advocated,
—as time has passed, the tendency has been
towards its more general introduction into American
as far back as 1900, "thirty-four of the ninety-seven institutions
of higher education established in the United
States had employed it in seventy per cent. of their
courses; twelve in fifty to seventy per cent.; and fifty-one
in less than fifty per cent." Cornell University was
founded in 1867 upon the principle of absolute freedom
of choice, but with a bias towards scientific and technical
studies. The existence of the elective system in Southern
institutions of the first grade, through the influence
of the University of Virginia, is now universal.
| HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY
OF VIRGINIA History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919; | |