University of Virginia Library

I. Jefferson's Preference for University Site

We have seen that, until the outset of his mission to
France, at least, Jefferson persisted in hoping that the
College of William and Mary could be lifted up to the
level of a real university, both in its standards of instruction
and in the number of its professorships; and that
down to this point in time, he used every means in his
power to bring about the transformation. The change
in its curriculum which he had suggested, was certainly a
long step towards the desired conversion; but the upshot,
as the years passed, was disappointing in spite of the fact
that the college was in the enjoyment of the subtle advantage
which springs only from age, and was also, in the
beginning, situated at the very centre of the political
and social framework of the Commonwealth. The enlargement
of its field of studies failed to secure for it
that popularity with the members of all social classes and
all religious denominations, with which alone it could
win the highest prosperity.

When did Jefferson abandon the expectation that it
would become a university to the extent that alone would
satisfy his exacting requirements? When did the
thought that he might be able to found an entirely new
university, in the neighborhood of Monticello, invade his
mind? Now, as has been pointed out, he had, from early
manhood, felt a keen aversion to sectarianism in all its

shapes and voices. He was, of his own personal knowledge,
aware that the College of William and Mary had
been, and probably still was, as saturated with the vapours
of Episcopalianism as Oxford itself. No influences
but his shrewd recognition of the sentimental value of
age in a seat of learning, the prestige of its situation at
first in the capital, and that affection for his alma mater
which still tarried in his breast, had, perhaps, impelled
him, even in the beginning, to plan for its elevation to
so high a point that it would satisfy the educational
wants of the whole State. But all these influences, powerful
as they once were, in making his attitude towards
the ancient college so favorable and so sanguine, must
have gradually weakened and fallen away as he perceived,
with ever increasing clearness, that popularity
with the old dissenting sects was not likely to be won
even by the proposed broadening of its curriculum; and
that the mere suppression of the theological school
would not suffice in itself to blot out the historic sense
of the unquestionable, though, perhaps, exaggerated,
wrongs which those sects had suffered in the past,
through the workings of the Episcopalian system. In
his own heart, he probably sympathized with their lingering
animosity, although he may have thought that they
were hardly justified by common patriotism in letting that
feeling deprive the new university of their support, without
which it could not hope to represent the whole community
in its attendance of students.[1]

So deep was the impression made on him by this hostility,
coupled with his own wide and discriminating observations
abroad, that, after his return from France, he
seems never to have seriously considered the College of
William and Mary in his plans for the establishment of
a great State institution. If that institution was not to
be the old college, still further remodeled and enlarged,
and with its seat unremoved from the ancient town of
Williamsburg, where was it to be placed? What other
locality was to become its site? Apparently, there was
never in his mind but one reply to this question: in the
vicinity of Charlottesville. If he was mortal enough to
be influenced by personal reasons in his selection of that
site, it was a form of selfishness that was fully redeemed
by the nobility of his aims. If there was one citizen of
the State, during those years when he was so persistently
nursing this "bantling," as he termed it, who was fully
equipped by broad philanthropy, liberal opinions, unfailing
love of knowledge, and an eager interest in education,
clarified by study and observation, to set up a
true university for his countrymen, that man was Thomas
Jefferson. The most signal stroke of good fortune for
this offspring of his spirit, throughout the first century
of its existence, was this: that its site was chosen so
close to his home at Monticello that he was able to
impress upon its structure, whether physical, moral, or
scholastic, the full force of his principles and his tastes.
While it may be acknowledged that it might, at a distance
from him, have caught his lofty tenets of political freedom
and religious tolerance, and his devotion to science
in all its departments, there is no likelihood whatever

that, without his dominating personality and his indefatigable
supervision, it would have presented to the eye
to-day perhaps the most beautiful group of college buildings,
the noblest academical setting, to be discovered on
the American Continent.

La Rochefoucauld, who was travelling in the United
States during the years from 1795 to 1797 inclusive, and
visited Monticello in the course of his tour, has recorded
the fact that there was then a rumor in circulation that
the General Assembly would soon establish a "new college
in a more central part of the State." It was at this
time that the bill of 1796, which, as already shown, only
nominally assured a moderate degree of public instruction,
was a subject of general conversation and debate.
Before two years had passed, the groundlessness of this
report had been proven; but Jefferson, in writing to Dr.
Priestley, expressed the hope that a new university,
planned on a "broad, liberal, and modern" scale, would
be erected "in the upper country, and, therefore, more
centrally for the State." He does not mince his words
in giving his reasons for wishing to turn his back on the
college in Williamsburg. "She is just well endowed
enough," he remarked to the same correspondent, "to
draw out the miserable existence to which a miserable
constitution has doomed her." He then repeats the practical
objection which was coming to have an ever-increasing
influence with him in his view of its site. "It is,
moreover, eccentric in its position, and exposed to all the
bilious diseases, as all the lower country is, and, therefore,
abandoned by the public care, as that part of the
country is, to a considerable degree, by its inhabitants."[2]

A few years afterwards, Jefferson, now President of
the United States, had an opportunity to express indirectly
an equally emphatic opinion in opposition to all
further efforts to develop the old college in preference to
founding a new university elsewhere. Joseph C. Cabell,
who was to be so honorably associated with him at a
later period in the establishment of such an institution,
had returned from Europe in May, 1806, after a tour
of the principal European countries, and having married
Miss Carter, a step-daughter of Judge St. George Tucker,
the first of that distinguished family to settle in Virginia,
had decided to make Williamsburg, where his wife had
resided, his permanent home. He was an alumnus of the
College, and through this connection and those domestic
bonds, soon became a warm partisan of a scheme having
its origin with De la Costa, a foreign savant, to erect
a museum of natural history in the former capital, and
to attach it to the professorship there which embraced
the various departments of that subject. The cost of
building and collecting was to be defrayed by private subscription.

Isaac A. Coles, of Albemarle, Cabell's intimate friend,
was, at this time, Jefferson's private secretary, and in that
capacity stationed in Washington. Cabell was but a recent
acquaintance of the President, and he, doubtless, for
that reason hesitated to approach him by direct correspondence,
although aware of Jefferson's interest in
science. Possibly, too, he may have had some reason
for questioning the President's fidelity to his alma mater,
for reports of his views as to the need of a new seat of
learning, to be founded in a more central situation, must
have come to his ears. Cabell wrote to Coles instead.
The letter itself was, perhaps, not shown to Jefferson, but
the subject of it was, by Coles's admission in his reply,

discussed between them. The President thought "the
attempt premature," by which cryptic expression he probably
meant that the museum should be reserved for the
institution which was yet to be established elsewhere.
He returned the same reply to De la Costa, when his
assistance was sought directly at a somewhat later date.
In the meanwhile, Coles had fully stated Jefferson's present
mental attitude towards the venerable college and
the hoped-for new university. "If I could bring myself,"
he wrote to Cabell, "to consider Williamsburg as
the permanent seat of science, as the spot where the
youth of our State, for centuries to come, would go to be
instructed in whatever might form them for usefulness,
my objection would, in great measure, cease. But the old
college is declining, and perhaps the sooner it falls entirely,
the better, if it might be the means of pointing out
to our legislative body the necessity of founding an institution
on an extended and liberal scale. Instead of wasting
your time in attempting to patch it up, a decaying
institution, direct your efforts to a higher and more valuable
object: found a new one."

Cabell, who had not yet been weaned from his alma
mater by close confidential intercourse with Jefferson, was
palpably nettled by the tone, and by the suggestions, of
his friend's letter. "If the great new university of which
you speak," he wrote in reply, "were in existence, or
could be expected to appear within the space of a few
years, then it would be prudent to defer the intended
museum and to connect the two objects. But knowing as
you do, the spirit of our Legislature, can you calculate
anything of the kind from them? I doubt very much
whether we do not evince more prudence in patching up
what we have than in reposing in indolence under the
expectation of what may never come. ... We ought to

make the most of it, as it is all we have, indulging at the
same time the hope that the Legislature will either remove
it to Richmond, or found a new one in the upper
country."[3]

One would hardly recognize in these partial and loyal
words, the presence of the man who was to be, after Jefferson
himself, the most influential instrument in the establishment
of the university at Charlottesville, which
was comparatively to throw the College of William and
Mary into the academic shade. They show, however,
that he would not be averse to the erection of that university
in another part of the State, should the sentiment
of the General Assembly declare in favor of it. So soon
as he should directly pass under the spell of Jefferson's
personality, and catch the full inspiration of his devotion
to his great scheme, Cabell was to become as earnest a
supporter of all his plans for his projected seat of learning
as Coles himself.

A few years after the date of these letters passing between
the two friends, Jefferson committed himself definitely,
over his own signature, to Charlottesville as the
site of the institution which he had so long carried in his
mind. Hitherto, in his correspondence at least, he seems
to have referred with politic vagueness to a site "in a
healthier and more central part of the State." But, in
1814, he mentions specifically his own vicinage as the
spot which might be chosen. "I have long had under
contemplation, and been collecting materials for a plan
of the University of Virginia," he wrote to Dr. Cooper,
"which should comprehend all the sciences useful to us,
and none others. ... This would probably absorb the
functions of William and Mary College, and transfer
them to a healthier position; perhaps to the neighborhood

of this place. The long and lingering decline of William
and Mary, the death of the last President (Bishop
Madison), its location and climate, force on us the wish
for a new institution more convenient to our country
generally, and better adapted to the present state of
science." When these words were written, Jefferson, unknown
to himself, was within a few months of the practical
inauguration of a scheme, started by others, but soon
adopted by himself, which was destined to expand, in
a comparatively short time, into the very institution
which he had been pondering over for so many years.
Before taking up the narrative of the very small acorn
which was to grow into so great a tree, it will be germane
to our subject, and conducive to a clearer understanding
of it, should we give a short description of the immediate
country in which the proposed university was now so soon
to be planted, a summary history of its settlement, and a
concise recital of the social influences which had governed
it down to the establishment of that seat of learning.