University of Virginia Library

VI. The Academy Converted into a College

Did the papers sent to David Watson, the delegate
from Louisa, by Peter Carr, as president of the board
of trustees, to be submitted to the General Assembly at
the session of 1814–15, contain a petition for the conversion
of the Academy into Central College? At this
time, Charles Yancey and Thomas Wood represented
the county of Albemarle in the Lower House, and Joseph

C. Cabell in the Senate. Why was it that David Watson,
the delegate of a neighboring county, was preferred for
an important service that did not concern directly his
own constituents? He was probably a friend of Carr's,
and perhaps more influential than the Albemarle delegates;
but to pass the latter by was a slur upon them
which the future interest of the new seat of learning apparently
did not justify. Why were not the papers enclosed
first to Cabell, the senator for that district? Possibly
because Cabell, having married and resided in Williamsburg,
was supposed to be a staunch friend of the
College of William and Mary, the prospects of which
were certain to be damaged by the establishment of a
college in Albemarle. In spite of this fact, it is probable
that, had Jefferson been consulted, he would have
recommended Cabell as the principal steersman, for Cabell
also represented the district, and although, at that
time, not intimately known to him, was sufficiently known
to raise a high opinion of his talents in Jefferson's mind.

An unnecessary delay would have been avoided had
Carr enclosed the papers to Cabell, for, during the whole
session of 1814–15, Watson held them back without giving
any explanation of his dilatoriness. Jefferson wrote
to Cabell on January 5 (1815) that the petition had not
been presented to the General Assembly, and he gave
expression to his regret, for he thought that, had it been
submitted and received favorably, a small appropriation,
in addition to that asked for, might have been obtained,
which would have enabled the trustees to erect in Charlottesville
what he said would be "the best seminary in
the United States." In his impatience, Jefferson sent
Cabell copies of all the papers,—with the exception apparently
of the petition for the lottery,—which had been
reposing in Watson's inert hands, for, with characteristic

foresight, he had been careful to retain duplicates of the
originals. The package forwarded contained: (1) a letter
that described the plans for the institution; (2) Jefferson's
reply to the observations of Dr. Cooper on this
plan; (3) the trustees' petition; and (4) the draft of the
Act which the General Assembly was expected to pass.

It was stated in the petition that the resources relied
upon by the trustees were the proceeds of the projected
lottery; the fund, with the interest added, accruing from
the sale of the glebes of Fredericksville and St. Anne's
parishes; and the dividend from the profits of the Literary
Fund of the State as pro-rated to Albemarle county.
The additional aid which Jefferson, but for Watson's
neglect, had hoped to procure from the General Assembly
was a loan of seven or eight thousand dollars for a period
of four or five years. He declared that, with this amount
of money available, he would be in a position to engage
three of the ablest characters in the world to fill the higher
professorships,—"three such characters," he said, "as
are not in a single university of Europe"; and for those
of languages and mathematics, able instructors could also,
at the same time, be employed. "With these characters,"
he exclaims, "I should not be afraid to say that
the circle of sciences composing the second and final
grade would be more perfectly taught here than in any
institution of the United States." In these words, we
have again that almost pathetic touch to which we have
previously referred: the contrast between the magnitude
and nobility of his designs for higher education in Virginia,
and the smallness of the funds at his disposal.
This was the inception of that protracted struggle for
State appropriations for the most beloved and treasured
scheme of his illustrious life, which was not to end until
he sank on his deathbed at Monticello, and which, attended

throughout by alternate dejection and encouragement,
was pursued with an unselfish persistence and devotion
that forms one of the most inspiring chapters in
the history of American education.

Before the Academy was merged in the College, his
correspondence with his most loyal and zealous coadjutor
in this prolonged appeal for assistance, began. "I had
no hint from any quarter," Cabell wrote on March 5,
1815, "that I was expected to bestow particular care on
the business. There was nothing which should have defeated
the petition unless objected to by some of the
people of Albemarle, who might not wish to appropriate
the proceeds of the sale of the glebes to the establishment
of the Academy at Charlottesville; or a few members of
the Assembly who might have other views for the disposition
of the income of the Literary Fund; or from Eastern
delegates from the lower counties, who may have
fears for William and Mary. ... I hope that there
would be no other effect produced by the plan on William
and Mary than that necessarily resulting from another
college in the State." This petition, the second of the
documents which Jefferson sent to Cabell in Richmond,
contained a prayer for the substitution of a college for the
Academy, and as this was a copy of the original petition
which Carr enclosed to the Louisa delegate, Watson, the
original petition itself must also have been of precisely the
same tenor. It was re-submitted, with the other papers,
to the General Assembly at the beginning of the session of
1815–16, but now under Cabell's general direction. On
December 18, he wrote to Isaac Coles as follows: "Notwithstanding
my unabated regard for the institution of
William and Mary, I shall do everything in my power to
give success to Mr. Jefferson's scheme of a college now
pending before the Assembly. The more the better. He

has drafted a beautiful scheme of a college at Charlottesville."

The patron of the bill in the Lower House of Assembly
was Thomas W. Maury, one of the delegates from
Albemarle. When the debate upon it began, antagonism
at once arose to that clause which asked for an appropriation
out of the profits of the Literary Fund in
proportion to the population of the county. This opposition
was based on the presumption that the public
uses to which this fund was to be applied had not yet
been determined; and on Cabell's advice, this provision
was struck out as not likely at that time to be adopted.
All the other clauses were ultimately approved by the
House. Before the measure, however, could reach the
Senate, Yancey, the other representative of Albemarle
in the lower body, seeking out Cabell, requested him to
offer an amendment to it, when called up in the upper
chamber, that would eliminate the clause empowering
the trustees of Central College to carry out the main
requirement of the law of 1796 by fixing the exact date
for putting in operation the general plan for public education
in Albemarle. Mr. Yancey was worried by the
apprehension that his constituents would be displeased
should they find themselves placed on a different footing
in this respect from the freeholders and householders of
the other counties, all of whom enjoyed the right to designate
the time by popular vote. Cabell seems to have
belittled the grounds for this fear; but he shortly afterwards
discovered that the Governor of the State, a
shrewd politician, held the same opinion as Yancey.

His hope of securing the final passage of the bill in
the form in which the Lower House had left it, was soon
dissipated; discussion in the Senate brought out at once
an expression of hostility to that clause which clothed the

proctor of the College with all the functions of a justice
of the peace within the academic precincts. Cabell hurried
off a letter to Jefferson the very day the bill was
reported in the Upper House (February 16, 1816), to
find out why this stipulation had been inserted. His
purpose was to silence the unfriendly senators. Jefferson,
in his reply, which was delayed until the 24th, pointed out
that he had simply suggested the adoption of a rule which
had always prevailed in every great European seat of
learning; and that if the proctor was a man of integrity
and discretion,—which might be presumed from his selection
for his office,—he was just as likely as the neighboring
justices of the peace to prove himself entirely trustworthy
in the exercise of all his judicial powers. Another
desirable feature was, that, acting as he would do in
the privacy of the College, he would be able to shield
culprits among the immature students from the disgrace
of the common prison by confining them to their rooms,
when their offenses were not very heinous. "My aim,"
Jefferson added, "was to create for the young men a
complete police of their own, tempered by the paternal
affection of their tutors." Nowhere, in his opinion,
would such a local police be so much required, for the
history of the College of William and Mary had demonstrated,
both before and after the Revolution, that students
and town boys would be constantly kicking up rows
and breaking out into riots to gratify their mutual feeling
of animosity. Should the proctor, in the performance
of his magisterial duties, expose himself to the charge
of either partiality or remissness, the nearest magistrate
could quickly and easily interpose.

Jefferson's argument failed to convince the opposing
senators, and the clause was stricken out by Cabell; and
the like fate also befell at his hands that clause to which

both Mr. Yancey and the Governor had expressed their
emphatic objection as being impolitic and untimely.

Would the Senate, unlike the Lower House, be willing
to vote in favor of any kind of appropriation for the benefit
of the new College? Cabell thought that their consent
could be only obtained to a plausible subterfuge.
At that time, a Mr. Broadwood had acquired a great
reputation in the country below Richmond by his success
in teaching the deaf and dumb. "Why not invite him to
Charlottesville," Cabell wrote Jefferson in January, "and
establish him in the house which Estes has offered to
sell? Would it suit your purpose to get an Act passed
for a lottery to purchase that house for an establishment
for the deaf and dumb as a wing to Central College?"
So convinced was Cabell that only in some indirect way
resembling this could an appropriation be assured, that
he wrote to Jefferson again on the same subject before
time sufficient had passed for a reply to be returned to his
first letter. "It is barely possible," he remarks on this
second occasion, "that the General Assembly may give
the Central College something for teaching the deaf and
dumb. I am endeavoring to prepare the more liberal
part for an attempt at an amendment of a professorship
of the deaf and dumb. Thus far it is well received, but
it may be baffled. I have thought that such a plan might
engage the affection of the coldest member." Could
there be a more pertinent commentary on the obstacles,
that, on every side, confronted the advocates of popular
education in Virginia than this scheme, which Cabell
brought forward only in a spirit of despair? But Jefferson,
while he was anxious to get assistance from the public
treasury, was unwilling to lower the dignity of his great
plan by obtaining that aid on conditions which were inconsistent
with its true character. In his reply, he candidly

stated, that, in his opinion, Charlottesville offered
no special advantages that would justify Mr. Broadwood
in removing his school thither. A large town, like Richmond,
was far preferable for such an establishment.
The aims of an academic college and the aims of a school
for the deaf and dumb were fundamentally different.
The one was designed for science, the other for mere
charity. "It would," he added, "be gratuitously taking
a boat in tow which may impede but cannot aid the motion
of the principal institution."

Before the bill was put upon its final passage, Mr. Poindexter,
who represented the Louisa and Fluvanna district,
submitted a resolution that the share of those counties
in the sum accruing from the sale of the Fredericksville
and St. Anne's glebes, so far as these parishes overlapped
the area of that district, should be reserved for their
use, and as the proportion was small, Cabell thought it
advisable to assent; and he was swayed in doing this
further by his own conviction that the new college should
rely upon State appropriations rather than upon such
meagre resources as were set forth in the bill for its
creation.

Albemarle Academy was converted into Central College
by an Act of Assembly dated the fourteenth of February,
1816. Among the influences which are said to
have hastened the passage of the bill was the success that
had crowned the canvass to obtain subscriptions for the
Academy; and also the announcement that the great political
economist of France, Say, having expressed his willingness
to remove his home to Albemarle, would, in that
event, quite certainly consent to be employed as a professor
in the new seat of learning. Perhaps, the most
curious fact associated with the incorporation of the College
was the strong probability, at one time, that it would

be established without the elimination of the Academy.
So much for the hold which Triplett Estes had on the affections
of the one hundred and forty-seven citizens of
Albemarle who had been urging the lottery as a means of
raising the fund needed to buy his property in Charlottesville!
An independent bill was submitted in the Senate
authorizing the lottery to be carried out, and providing
that, if the Visitors of the new college should prefer the
Old Stone tavern as a site, they should have the right to
buy it with the proceeds of the lottery. Should they fail
to do so, however, this sum could be used to secure that
site for the revived Academy. Cabell offered an amendment
that the proceeds should be put absolutely at the
disposal of Central College even if the Visitors should
decide that it would be improper to locate the institution
in the Estes house or unwise to purchase that house even
at a reasonable price. Cabell feared that, if the bill
should become law without this amendment, there would
arise a conflict between the Academy,—which, under the
terms of that bill, would have to be placed in the Old
Stone tavern,—and the Central College, created by an
entirely different Act, under the provisions of which its
Visitors were impowered to choose a site wherever their
judgment should guide them. The bill for the lottery
was rejected by the Senate, and with it disappeared all
danger of the threatened duality.