University of Virginia Library

V. Educational Measures Adopted

How far was this boon, which the venerable statesman
had striven so persistently and so disinterestedly throughout
his long career to bestow, conferred by legislative action
previous to the establishment of the University of
Virginia? To what degree did his comprehensive scheme
fall short of legislative consummation, and why did it
fail to that extent? A variety of influences were working
to scotch his activities in this field, if not to make them
wholly abortive and fruitless. In a letter to Cabell,
dated February 4, 1826, he said, "I have been long sensible,
that while I was endeavoring to render our country
the greatest of all services, that of regenerating the
public education, and placing our rising generation on
the level of our sister states, which they have proudly
held heretofore, I was discharging the odious function of a
physician pouring medicine down the throat of a patient
insensible of needing it."

In reality, the patient declined to take any of the
medicine, except in a dose so small and so diluted as
to produce no perceptible improvement in his condition.
Although Jefferson informs us that the bill of 1779 was
received at first "with enthusiasm," it soon had no spark
of life in its bowels, and lay as it were still-born in the
minutes of the General Assembly for seventeen years. In
1796, a bill was introduced which was based in substance
on the principle of that of 1779, so far as the latter bill
related to elementary schools; and it was only to such
schools that the new measure applied. Each county having
been divided into districts, aldermen were to be chosen
by its voters to decide upon the expediency of summoning
the householders of each district together to pass upon
the question of erecting primary schools for that district.

If its citizens were found to be favorable to the establishment
of such schools,—which every child within its
bounds was at liberty to attend three years without charge,
—then a local tax was to be levied to meet the cost of
the school-house, its site, and the services of a teacher.

Unfortunately, an amendment granted the right to the
county court to determine the year in which the aldermen
were to be appointed, and until this was done, no
valid election could be held by the householders. This
clause, which was really inserted to sound the death-knell
of the bill, was a subtle political device at bottom. The
members of the General Assembly knew that the measure
was a popular one with the lowest class of voters, and an
unpopular one with the highest class, and they, therefore,
shifted the responsibility from themselves to the magistrates,
without appearing to be at all opposed to the
wishes of their constituents. It is certain that the magistrates
as a body felt no sympathy with any general plan
of popular education; and in addition, were not disposed,
as the representatives of the wealth of the community, to
shoulder the expense of providing free instruction for the
children of their less fortunate neighbors. They refused
to acknowledge the force of Jefferson's argument
that they would profit by public education because it would
people every countryside "with honest, useful, and enlightened
citizens"; nor did they discover any pertinency
to themselves in his suggestion that, as there were only
three generations between shirt-sleeves and shirt-sleeves,
their grandchildren, having fallen to the level of the
poor, would have to depend upon the taxes paid by the
rich for their restoration, through education, to the affluence
and social position of their grandfathers.

The opportunity opened up by this Act was used only
by those few counties which were sagacious enough to perceive

the advantages which it would confer on all classes
of their population. On the other hand, into such comparative
neglect did collegiate tuition in his native State
during the next few decades, gradually sink that Jefferson
thought himself justified in saying that the Old Dominion
was in immediate danger of becoming the "Barbary
of the Union." "The mass of education in Virginia
before the Revolution," he exclaimed, with an undisguised
bitterness, "placed her foremost of her sister colonies.
What is her condition now? Where is it? We have to
import like beggars from other States, or import their
beggars to bestow on us their miserable crumbs." It was
estimated that, down to 1825, the number of pupils in
attendance at the three important colleges, William and
Mary, Washington, and Hampden-Sidney, did not annually
rise above one hundred and fifty. On the other
hand, nearly one half of all the matriculates of Princeton,
from year to year, at this time, were said to be young
men from Virginia; and it was calculated that a quarter
of a million of dollars was, during every twelve months,
paid into the treasuries of Northern institutions by students
coming up from that State Perhaps this was not
so great an evil in itself as Jefferson was inclined to think,
for, by drawing young men from the South into the North
even temporarily, it had a tendency to nourish a stronger
national feeling, and to lessen the narrow and mischievous
spirit of provincialism. The reciprocation lay in the
large band of tutors from Northern States, who, during
this period, were employed in wealthy Virginian families;
they were, with few exceptions, graduates of Northern
colleges; and many of them bore old and honorable
names. It was not their scholarship, but their inherited
leaning towards Federalism, in most instances, that probably
prompted Jefferson to describe them as "beggars,"
an epithet that did them, in the mass, as we shall see,
grave injustice.

Even if he exaggerated the need of more numerous
facilities for secondary instruction,—which, in reality,
were fairly abundant,—he was right in lamenting the
languishing condition of higher education and in condemning
the very small provision for primary education which
existed in Virginia at this time. After his return to
Monticello, in 1809,—his incumbency of the Presidency
having come to an end,—he began at once to exert his influence
to bring about an improvement; and a revival of
interest in the subject in the public mind was soon to be
noted. Governor Monroe, in 1801 and 1802, and Governor
Cabell, in 1806 and 1808, had, in their annual
messages, referred to the shrinkage of general education
in the State, but no popular response had followed. In
October, 1809, Jefferson was the guest of Governor Tyler,
a man ardently in sympathy with him in all his plans for
the public welfare, and it is possible that the conference
of the two, on this occasion, was the root of the noble
message submitted by Tyler, in December of the same
year, to the General Assembly, in which he urged, with
earnest and far-sighted patriotism, the needs of Virginia
in the way of popular instruction. Tyler had been
among the most zealous supporters of the bill of 1779,
and had, at all times, upheld the plans which Jefferson
had framed for the curtailment of the general illiteracy.
That part of his message which related to education was
referred, in December, to a committee, who, in the following
January, reported the bill that authorized the
establishment of the Literary Fund.

This beneficent measure, which alone enabled Jefferson
to carry out a part,—fortunately the greater part,—
of his splendid scheme of popular education, passed the

General Assembly on February 2, 1810. It provided
that all escheats, compositions, fines, penalties, and forfeitures,
should be especially reserved for the encouragement
of learning. Its author was James Barbour, who
was then the Speaker of the House, and afterwards a
distinguished figure in national politics.[5] The fund thus
created was designed primarily for the instruction of the
poor, but as the parents of indigent children were slow
to take advantage of it, it was, in time, expended chiefly
for the benefit of the higher seats of learning. During
the session of 1815–16, the remainder of the principal
of the debt due Virginia by the National Government
was transferred to the credit of this fund, which, by
December, 1817, had grown to nearly one million dollars.
So soon as it was created, the principal and interest were
put under the control of a Board known as the President
and Directors of the Literary Fund, a body which was
composed of the Governor of the State, the LieutenantGovernor,
the Treasurer, Attorney-General, and President
of the Court of Appeals,—the foremost officials
and most responsible men in the Commonwealth. In
January, 1816, Cabell had shown Charles Fenton Mercer,
the Chairman of the Committee on Finance in the
House of Delegates, a copy of the letter written by Jefferson
to Peter Carr, in 1814, which gave in detail his
views as to the system of public education to be set underway
in Virginia.[6] This letter was also published in
the Enquirer. It, no doubt, inspired the epochal resolution,
adopted February 24, 1816, which required the
President and Directors of the Literary Fund to report
to the Legislature an elaborate scheme of public instruction.
On December 6, 1816, this scheme was submitted,
and was found to consist of a graded system of
schools; namely, elementary schools, academies, and a
university.

How had the Board arrived at a decision in harmony
at least with the framework of Jefferson's plan? The
President of that body was Governor Nicholas, a friend
and fellow-countyman. He had applied to Jefferson
for advice so soon as the report was ordered, and Jefferson
had suggested that he should read his letter to Peter
Carr as embodying his ripest thought about the subject
under investigation. While counsel was obtained by the
Board from many distinguished men, both in America
and in Europe,—whose letters were formally delivered
with the report,—its recommendations bore, in their
main features certainly, the perceptible stamp of Jefferson's
long projected system of public education. There
was the partition of the county into wards or townships
for the establishment of elementary schools; there was
the division of the State into districts for the establishment
of academies, in which the Latin, Greek and French
languages, mathematics, geography and astronomy were
to be taught; and there was provision for the erection of
a university, which would furnish advanced instruction
in the whole round of the arts and sciences. The same
opportunity was thrown open to indigent boys of promise
to pass on, at the public charge, from the lowest to the

highest grade. Above all, it must have been gratifying
to Jefferson to find that the Board urged that the site
of the university should be chosen in a central part of
the State; and that they adopted the plan for professorships
and courses of tuition which he had always advised,
and which he believed in as firmly now as he had
done in the beginning.

In one important particular, however, the tenor of
the report must have caused him disappointment: it recommended
that the income of the Literary Fund should
be first applied to the establishment of an elementary
school in each township; that an academy in each district
should be next founded; and that an appropriation should
be made for the university only in case the surplus remaining
should be sufficient in volume. Twenty thousand
youths, the report asserted, were looking to the Literary
Fund for primary education, and they could rightly
demand that they should be the first to be considered in
its annual distribution. This was altogether in harmony
with Jefferson's opinion, too, should the money for
public instruction be limited to the Literary Fund; and it
was his calculation that the income from this Fund would
not furnish means enough for a general system of education,
which led him to advocate a local levy for the support
of the elementary schools. But the upshot of the
bill of 1796 had shown very plainly what would be the
fate of any provision for local taxation; and in urging,
as the President and Directors of the Literary Fund did,
the education of all the poor at the expense of all the
people, they were bringing forward the only practical
scheme for the improvement of that part of the population
which had a far higher moral and civic claim upon
the benevolence of the Commonwealth than that more
fortunate part which would be able to seek the shades of

the projected academies and of the university at their own
expense.

Their recommendation, however,—wise and patriotic
as it was,—was too radical for the spirit of that shortsighted
age. Charles Fenton Mercer, Chairman of the
Finance Committee, framed a bill which took in the most
important features of the Board's report. It passed the
House of Delegates, February 18, 1817, but was defeated
in the Senate two days later, on the ground that
the expenditure of so large a sum of money should be
first submitted for approval to the popular vote. It had
reached the Senate at an unfortunate moment, for that
body, as Cabell, a member of it, has recorded, was now
impatient to break up and return to their homes. Before
they adjourned, they ordered a general distribution
of the report of the Board of the Literary Fund.

Although the Mercer bill had been suggested, partly
by the letter to Peter Carr, and partly by the report of
the President and Directors of the Literary Fund, which
reflected Jefferson's views in general, it nevertheless contained,
like this report also, one stipulation of which he
disapproved. While it divided the counties into wards,
it required the Board to pay to the trustees of each elementary
school two hundred dollars to cover the necessary
outlay for the teacher's salary, and also ten dollars
with which to purchase books for the pupils. The bill
called for the acquisition of fifty acres near the centre
of the State as a site for the university; and it appropriated
one hundred thousand dollars for the buildings
and ten thousand for the library. Although provision
was thus made for the establishment of a university, and
also of a large number af academies, priority in the distribution
of the money was still to be given to the support
of the elementary schools.

When the Mercer bill, after passing the House, miscarried
in the Senate, Cabell requested Jefferson to put
his scheme for public education in a shape that would
allow of its being submitted to the General Assembly as
a substitute. He cheerfully complied. His first purpose,
he wrote, in October, 1817, "was to contrive a
plan which would conform to the real resources of the
State." "Unless something less extravagant," he said
of the Mercer bill, "can be devised, the whole undertaking
must fail. The primary schools alone in that
plan would exhaust the whole fund; the colleges as much
more; and a university would never come into existence."

We have already cited the details of the bill which Jefferson
now drafted. It followed closely the lines of all
his previous expressions on the subject. It was introduced
into the House of Delegates by Samuel Taylor, of
Chesterfield; but on February 11, (1818), it failed of passage,
and a substitute, in the form of an amendment,
offered by Mr. Hill, of King and Queen county, was
adopted. This amendment restricted the expenditure of
the income of the Literary Fund to the education of the
poor. This had always been the disposition of the members
of the popular branch of the Legislature, who were
opposed to ward taxation for that purpose because they
believed it to be altogether repugnant to the wishes and
convictions alike of their most influential constituents.
The money that was to be appropriated under the Hill
amendment was to be distributed among the counties as
a bounty for the maintenance of charity schools. There
was some political animosity to Jefferson in the support
which this amendment received; and this seems to have
been most acute in the breasts of the delegates from the
western counties, who, finding that he had inserted in
his bill, in a parallel column, the name of the Central

College at Charlottesville as the site of the projected university,
took it for granted that, if this institution was
established there, the State capital would soon be removed
thither rather than beyond the Blue Ridge, as they
so earnestly desired. The opposition to his bill in the
House,—of which he had been informed by Cabell,—
caused a wave of unwonted despondency to pass over his
mind, for on February 11, he wrote, "I believe that I
have erred in meddling with it (the educational provision)
at all, and that it has done more harm than good.
A strong interest felt on the subject through my whole
life, ought to excuse me with those who differ from me
in opinion, and should protect me from unfriendly feelings.
Nobody more strongly than myself advocates the
right of every generation to legislate for itself, and the
advantages which each succeeding generation has over
the preceding one from the constant progress of science
and arts."

The amended bill soon reached the Senate. It was
first brought up before a committee composed of Chapman
Johnson, John W. Green, and Joseph C. Cabell.
Cabell submitted two propositions: one, which had been
suggested by Jefferson, divided the State into academic
districts without any consideration of the existing colleges;
the other, which sprang from Cabell alone, took in
these colleges as a part of the general system. He also
renewed the demand for a university in accord with the
tenor of the original bill. His colleagues pressed upon
him that he was aiming for too much, and that, at this
stage of the campaign for the entire scheme, it would
be wiser to insist only upon the restoration of a university
to the plan. The bill passed the Senate in this form
by a vote of fourteen to three; and on February 21
finally became law. Those members who favored only

the instruction of the poor were forced to consent to the
establishment of a university, while those who favored a
university were compelled to give up for the present all
hope of securing a large number of district colleges to
serve as feeders for the proposed higher seat of learning.
It was a compromise won by the advocates of advanced
education in spite of those "local interests, factious
views, and lamentable ignorance," upon which Cabell reflected,
with acute exasperation, in a letter to Jefferson
written at the time.[7]

Forty-five thousand dollars was to be annually appropriated
for the support of the elementary schools and only
fifteen thousand for that of the projected university.
School commissioners, to be appointed by the courts of
the counties, towns and cities, were to determine how
many children were to be taught, and also how much
money was to be paid out for that purpose by the different
treasurers, whose number was to be in proportion to
the needy white population. This was to be derived
from the annual appropriation of forty-five thousand dollars;
but all funds and properties in the hands of the
overseers of the poor, not otherwise assigned, were to
form an additional resource. The commissioners were
to return to the President and Directors of the Literary
Fund an annual report showing how many pupils there
were then in the schools, and estimating the sum that
would be required, the following year, to educate all
the penniless children in the State. Advantage was taken
in many counties and towns of the benefits offered by
this Act. It soon became the custom for teachers to
enroll the children of the poor in their schools, and at
the end of the session, send in a list of them to the nearest

commissioner for approval; this list was then handed over
to the sheriff; who, when all the lists had been received,
divided among the teachers proportionately to the number
of their respective indigent scholars, the sum which
had been appropriated for the county out of the Literary
Fund.

Not until the War of Secession had altered the economic
and social condition of Virginia was the system of
public education in the lower grades, advocated by Jefferson,
put in practice. Not even then, however, were
the elementary schools made entirely dependent upon
even county taxation, but in confirmation of his foresight,
it has been noticed that the most efficient public schools
are to be found wherever local taxation has been relied
on chiefly for their support.[8] Not until 1906 was any
test made of that part of his scheme which created a
large number of district secondary schools; in the course
of that year, fifty thousand dollars, increased to one hundred
thousand later, was appropriated for maintaining a
system of such schools distributed among the Congressional
districts, with special provision for the training of
teachers.

Jefferson was not to live to see the realization of his
great scheme for public education as a whole; but when
in February, 1818, the General Assembly voted in favour
of the establishment of a State university, he had succeeded
in securing that part of it in which he was most
deeply interested, and the one which he was best equipped
to carry out by his own previous studies and observations.
It was certainly the part that supplemented most fully
the practical experiment in college building which, for
sometime previous to 1818, had seized upon his whole attention,
and absorbed all his physical and intellectual

powers. Before beginning the narrative of how Central
College was converted into the university which the General
Assembly, in 1818, ordered to be established, it will
be necessary to turn back and follow up the noble record
that he had already made as the father of the promising
institution of learning which he had founded in the
shadow of his own home at Monticello. It will be seen
that he had not been satisfied to wait for the consummation
of his plans through legislative assistance, but, in
his leisure, taking hold of that section of them which he
was able to inaugurate himself, he had done so with a
clearness, persistence, and firmness of purpose, a concentration
of energy and a constancy of supervision, in spite
of his advanced years, which constitutes the most astonishing
chapter even in his own illustrious life.