University of Virginia Library

V. Acts of Albemarle Academy Trustees

Adjourning on March 25, the trustees re-assembled
on April 5. The principal business transacted on that day
was the election of Peter Carr as President of the Board,
and of Frank Carr as Secretary, and the appointment
of a committee, with Jefferson as its chairman, to draw up
a code of general regulations for the government of
the Academy so soon as its doors should be thrown open
to students. A motion to choose at once the site for
its building was put off, in order, doubtless, to await the
report of the committee now selected to suggest the
means of obtaining the funds needed for the completion
and maintenance of the projected institution. Adjourning
over from April 15, because barely a majority of the
trustees were present,—Jefferson himself being one of
the absentees—they re-assembled on May 3. Again
Jefferson did not attend; but as fifteen trustees answered
to their names at roll-call, matters of the first importance
were straightway called up for consideration and debate.
The committee chosen to devise a plan for procuring
money recommended that a lottery should be used for
that purpose. The terms adopted for this lottery demonstrate
the seductive manner in which it was to be employed:
four thousand filled-in tickets were to be printed;
and as each was to be sold for five dollars, it was expected

that, by this means, the sum of $20,000 would be collected
for distribution as prizes. The largest of these
prizes was to amount to five thousand dollars; the next
largest to two thousand; and the third, fourth, and fifth,
to one thousand dollars each. The remaining ten thousand
dollars was to be divided into smaller sums for
prizes running all the way from one of five hundred dollars
to one thousand of five dollars respectively. The
profit was to be derived from twenty-six hundred and
eighty-five blank tickets, to be disposed of at the same
time as the prize tickets at five dollars a piece. The
drawing was to take place in Charlottesville eighteen
months after the sale of all the tickets had been completed;
or if the trustees should so determine, at an earlier
date.

The report of the committee on rules and regulations,
which bore throughout the scholastic and administrative
stamp of its chairman, Jefferson, stated that the Academy's
aim would be to provide higher instruction for
youths already thoroughly grounded in a course of reading,
writing, and arithmetic. It was to consist of such
studies, at first, as promised to be most useful; and as
the income of the institution should grow in volume, the
number of these studies was to be enlarged so as to embrace
other and wider fields of knowledge. A committee
of three was to be nominated yearly by the Board to
keep every branch of the tuition under observation; to
suggest what new departments should be added; to enforce
discipline among the students; to regulate the expenses;
and to overlook the entire domestic economy
of the Academy. Thomas M. Randolph, Jefferson's son-in-law,
was now a member of the Board, and he, Peter
Carr, and Jefferson, the three most conspicuous and influential
trustees, were selected as the committee to petition

the General Assembly for an appropriation, in support
of the Academy, out of the money that had arisen from
the sale of the glebe lands of St. Anne's and Fredericksville's
parishes. By an act passed February 13, 1811,
the county court of Albemarle had been authorized to
appoint a commissioner to invest the funds accruing from
this sale in the stock of the Bank of Virginia. It seems
that only the interest, at this time at least, could be used
for the establishment of a public school or schools in the
county, in harmony with the provisions of the Act of 1796
for the education of the people. But before either principal
or interest could be disposed of, the consent of the
freeholders had to be obtained, as required by the Act
of 1802, already referred to. It was important for the
trustees of the Academy to secure this acquiescence beforehand,
since it would fortify their petition for the entire
sum when brought before the General Assembly. At
this moment, the money was already in the custody of
John Winn, a member of the Board, who had become the
commissioner by order of the court; and it seems now
to have only needed the approval of a majority of the
voters, and the authorization of the Legislature, to assure
the immediate diversion of the whole amount,—
principal as well as interest,—to the use of the Academy.

On June 17, a committee, composed of John Winn,
James Leitch, John Nicholas, Frank Carr, and Alexander
Garrett, was named to decide upon the most suitable
site for the institution. Should a new edifice be erected
on the most commodious and economical plan, or should
a house already in existence be chosen? The question
before the committee really was: should the Stone tavern
be purchased from Estes, or should they buy new ground
in the neighborhood of Charlottesville where no building
was already standing?

It is no cause for surprise to find that, when the trustees
re-assembled on August 19, Jefferson was present for
the first time since their second conference. The point
coming up for determination was the one which interested
him most. It is easy enough to comprehend that the
mind which conceived the splendid group of University
structures at a later date, shrank from the possibility of
a rough tavern, of no architectural beauty whatever from
cellar to garret, being accepted as the correct housing for
the institution which he had already resolved to enlarge
into a great seat of learning. Fortunately, he was not
a common local politician, for had he been, he would
have looked upon the good will of a popular innkeeper
as important to the success of his political future, and,
therefore, not to be jeoparded; nor were his social relations
with that innkeeper such as to make him hesitate
to derange his plans. Jefferson concentrated his gaze
upon the paramount claims of his own great scheme; and
he was too sagacious to yield one inch, even in the obscurity
and uncertainty of its initiation. As he was on a
footing of friendship with all the members of the building
committee, it is reasonable to presume that he was
consulted by them when they came to draft their report;
unquestionably, its tenor was in harmony with his own
wishes and convictions; and when it was handed in, he
was in the room to support it with the weight of his influence
with the board. The report took the ground that
it was not advisable to purchase a building within the
town, but that an unoccupied site, at least half a mile
from its boundaries, should be bought. The Academy,
however, in making this selection, was not to be compelled
to pay a higher price than it would have been required
to do had an improved and convenient situation in Charlottesville
been preferred. As there were now no funds

in the board's possession, the committee recommended
that the choice of the site should be put off until a definite
offer could be submitted.

The expectation of obtaining funds was based on three
petitions to be sent to the General Assembly: the first,
for the appropriation of the money from the sale of the
glebes, now in the custody of Commissioner Winn; the
second, for a dividend accruing from the interest of the
Literary Fund; and the third, for a lottery.

The first two of these petitions had already been drawn
by Jefferson, Randolph, and Carr. The petition for the
lottery was signed by one hundred and forty-seven citizens
of Albemarle county, who did not disguise the fact,
even in the document itself, that one of the purposes they
had in view was to make certain the collection of funds
sufficient for the purchase of the Old Stone tavern, in
order to assist its genial proprietor financially. There was
no word of disapproval by Jefferson of that petition on
this account, although it is altogether probable that he had
no patience with this particular side of it. With another
of its clauses, however, he was warmly in sympathy; indeed,
this section seems to have received its tone from
his own exasperated and outspoken opinion of the impoverished
means of acquiring a higher education in his
native Commonwealth. "We have too long slept in
unpardonable apathy," it ran, "over the crying and lamentable
fact that, in the rich, populous, and liberal State
of Virginia, there stands not one literary academy calculated
to command the education of her youth. ... We
see our youth flying to foreign countries (Yale, Princeton
and other Northern colleges) to obtain that of which
they are deprived at home: a liberal education. We
behold them asking of foreigners (the North) what
their fathers refuse them. It is calculated, in an alarming

degree, to alienate the young from the spot of their
nativity, to instil into their young, open, and unsuspecting
minds, opinions and sentiments inimical to the interest
and happiness of their parent country (Virginia), for
we see that they have too frequently returned back into
the bosom of that country with a respect and affection
for everything abroad, the effect of which is a contempt
and disrespect for everything at home."[8]

These words have the characteristic ring and flavour of
Jefferson in writing about Northern institutions of learning
at that time, or in commenting upon the supposed
monarchical designs of the Federalist leaders.

After the meeting of the Board on August 19, his interest
in the plans for the Academy grew rapidly warmer
and far more personal. On September 7, nineteen days
subsequently, he penned the famous letter to Peter Carr,
the president of the board of trustees, from which quotations
have already been made, as offering the most precise
and voluminous statement by himself of his views on
education. That letter demonstrates in the clearest manner
that his mind was now deeply engaged with the
thought of converting the projected academy into the
university which he had so long been contemplating.
"What are the objects of our institution?" he asks.
"Let us take a survey of the general field of science,"
he replies to his own question, "and mark out the field
we mean to occupy at first, and the alternate extension of
our views beyond that, should we be able to render it as
comprehensive as we would wish. ... We must select
the materials from the different institutions of others
which are good for us, and with them erect a structure
whose arrangement shall correspond with our own conditions,

and admit of enlargement. With the first (primary)
grade of education, we shall have nothing to do.
The sciences of the second grade are our first object:
(1) languages, including history; (2) mathematics, including
chemistry, zoology, botany, mineralogy, anatomy,
and the theory of medicine; and (3) philosophy. To
adapt them to our slender beginnings, we must separate
them into groups comprehending many sciences each,
and greatly more in the first instance than ought to be
imposed on, or can be completely conducted by, a single
professor permanently. They must be subdivided from
time to time as our means increase, until each professor
shall have no more under his care than he can attend to
with advantage to the students and ease to himself.
In the further advance of our resources, professional
schools must be introduced and professorships established
in them also."

Jefferson asserts, in the same remarkable letter, that
he had "lost no occasion to make himself acquainted with
the best seminaries in other countries, and with the opinions
of the most enlightened individuals on the subject
of the sciences worthy to be taught in the new institution."
So keen was the interest which he now felt in
its expected evolution into a great seat of learning, that,
for the first time, he began to regard with just apprehension
the possible dissipation of the moneys, derived from
the sale of the glebes, that had been deposited in the several
State banks. Were such banks safe places of custody?
"Perhaps, the loss of these funds," he wrote
Cabell, only three weeks after the date of the letter to
Carr, "would be the most lasting of the evils proceeding
from the insolvency of those banks." There is a suggestion
of pathos in this solicitude about a sum so small
and so inadequate for the development of the noble

scheme which he had in mind; but he was clearly aware
of the opposition which he would have to overcome before
he could hope to obtain even a meagre legislative
appropriation; and he was, therefore, the more earnestly
disposed to husband the few petty resources for public
education which he knew could not be disputed or withheld.
In the prosecution of his plans, he seems to have
gone so far as to submit to the trustees of the Academy
a sketch for the building of a separate pavilion for each
separate school, with the entire number grouped along
three lines of a square, and in each a spacious lecturehall
and two apartments for the use of the professor who
would occupy it.[9] This is an additional proof of how
little he was thinking of the small local academy, and how
much of the university which he intended to take its
place. The Academy, indeed, was a mere figure of straw
in his scheme, to exist only for such time as would be
required to procure the charter of the College, which
was to forerun the University somewhat as the Academy
was to forerun the College.