University of Virginia Library

THIRD PERIOD

THE BUILDING OF THE UNIVERSITY

I. Rockfish Gap Commission

It was on February 21, 1818, that the bill for the establishment
of a State university received the final approval
of the General Assembly. The clause providing for the
choice of the site was vague and general: it simply required
that it should be "convenient and proper"; and
as these words left a broad field for selection, the decision
was really reserved for a Board of twenty-four Commissioners.
This Board was to be appointed, not by the
President and Directors of the Literary Fund, but by
the Governor and Council. Cabell used his influence to
have this latter method adopted because he looked upon
it as the first important step towards the designation of
Charlottesville as the site; for was not the Governor a
citizen of Albemarle, and in picking out the Commissioners
might he not be biassed by that fact to nominate men
known to be friendly to the selection of Central College?

But there was another fact quite as auspicious: a Commissioner
was to be chosen from each senatorial district,
and the districts situated east of the Blue Ridge were
more numerous than those lying west. With the rivalry
narrowed down to Staunton, Lexington, and Charlottesville,
the local partizanship of the eastern majority would
probably tip the scale on the side of Charlottesville even
should the Commissioners from beyond the mountains,

who were in the minority, cast their votes as a body in
favor of a western site.

But Cabell was not satisfied with creating all these
propitious conditions in advance: he was acutely solicitous
that Jefferson should serve as a member of the Board;
and that he should induce Madison to consent to his appointment
also. The influence of these two distinguished
men, Cabell rightly anticipated, would carry extraordinary
weight with their associates. Deeply interested as
Jefferson was in the approaching conference, he debated
with hesitation for some time the wisdom of his becoming
a Commissioner. "There are fanatics both in religion
and politics," he said in reply to Cabell, "who,
without knowing me personally, have long been taught to
consider me as a rawhead and bloody bones; and as we can
afford to lose no votes in that body (General Assembly),
I do think that it would be better for you to be named
for our district. Do not consider this to be a mock modesty.
It is the cool and deliberate act of my own judgment.
I believe that the institution would be more popular
without me than with me, and this is the most important
consideration, and I am confident that you would
be a more efficient member of the Board than I would be."
Cabell submitted Jefferson's candid suggestion of his own
unfitness to a parley of their friends, who decided unanimously
and wisely in favor of Jefferson's nomination as
the Commissioner of the Albemarle district. Madison
was appointed for the Orange district. Their fellows on
the Board were men of substance, distinction, and influence.
The full membership of that body embraced Creed
Taylor, of Cumberland, Peter Randolph, of Dinwiddie,
William Brockenbrough, of Henrico, Archibald Rutherford
of Rockingham, Archibald Stuart, of Augusta, James
Breckinridge, of Botetourt, Henry E. Watkins, of Charlotte,

James Madison, of Orange, A. T. Mason, of Loudoun,
Hugh Holmes, of Frederick, Philip C. Pendleton,
of Berkeley, Spencer Roane, of Hanover, James M. Taylor,
of Montgomery, John G. Jackson, of Harrison,
Thomas Wilson, of Monongahela, Philip Slaughter, of
Culpeper, W. H. Cabell, of Buckingham, N. H. Claiborne,
of Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, of Albemarle, W.
A. G. Dade, of Prince William, William Jones, and four
other Commissioners, who sent word that they were unable
to be present to take part in the deliberations. But
it was remarked at the time that the absentees represented
that part of the State which had always been loyal
to the College of William and Mary.

The specific duty imposed on this Board by the Legislature
was to report to that body (1) a site for the University;
(2) a plan for the building of it; (3) the
branches of learning which should be taught therein; (4)
the number and character of the professorships; and (5)
such general provisions for the organization and government
of the institution as the General Assembly ought to
adopt. All these requirements were precisely in harmony
with Jefferson's wishes, and they had quite probably
been indirectly, through Cabell, proposed by him.
An additional clause in the Act,—which, no doubt, caused
him equal satisfaction, as increasing the chance of Central
College winning the coveted prize,—authorized the
Board to "receive any voluntary contributions, whether
conditional or absolute, in land, money, or other property,
which may be offered through them to the President
and Directors of the Literary Fund for the benefit of
the University."

On Saturday, August 1, the Commissioners assembled
at the Rockfish Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains. This
spot had been selected as lying on the great natural line

of division between the western and eastern sections
of Virginia; and as the Gap was crossed by a public road
that was very much frequented, and was near the centre of
the State, it could be reached by an equality of exertion
from the Potomac and the Carolina border, from Chesapeake
Bay and the Ohio River. In our own age of
rapid, easy, and constant transit by steam, it is difficult to
take in fully the inconveniences and discomforts which
all the Commissioners had to endure in order to attend
the Conference. There were lines of stages, it is true,
running from Richmond to Western Virginia, and from
Lynchburg to Washington, or the reverse, but it was necessary
for many of the Commissioners who were not travelling
in their own carriages to go some distance before
they could connect with one of these cumbrous public
coaches. After it had been caught at some small roadside
tavern, a journey of two days was required, in some
instances, before the Gap could be reached. The rough
jolting, the deep stallings, the blinding dust, and the inclement
weather, which was so often encountered in these
primitive vehicles, must have been irksome and fatiguing
to men already past their prime. General Breckinridge,
of Botetourt, Mr. Claiborne, of Franklin, and Mr. Taylor,
of Montgomery, who were compelled to come all the
way from the Southwest, or Judge Cabell, Judge Creed
Taylor, or Mr. Watkins, from the equally remote Southside,
quite probably traversed the intervening ground in
their own carriages, driven by their own servants. Mr.
Holmes, of Frederick, Judge Jackson, of Harrison, Mr.
Pendleton, of Berkeley, and Mr. Wilson, of Monongahela,
were able to make the journey more easily, whether
by stage or private coach, since good turnpikes had been
constructed through the Alleghanies and down the Valley;
but not so with those whose homes were situated
east, south, or north of Charlottesville, for, in these
regions of the State, the roads were often in a condition of
aboriginal imperfection. August was chosen as the
month for the Conference, not only because the weather
was certain to be then at its best, and the highways more
passable, but also because the larger number of the persons
to attend it were judges or lawyers, who, during that
month, were in the habit of taking their annual vacation.
This too was the time of the year when the mountain
resorts were most visited, and some of the Commissioners,
following their annual custom, could, after participating
in the Conference, continue their journey to the Sulphur,
the Hot, or the Sweet Springs.

There was not within the bounds of the Commonwealth
a more romantic prospect than the one which was unrolled
before the gaze of the Commissioners as they climbed up
from the side of the Valley or of Piedmont to the tavern
that stood in the Gap. Here, towards the north and towards
the south alike, the peaks of the chain rose to a
cloudy height; and far below, in every direction of the
compass, the region spread out like a gigantic map,—
the great Valley on the one hand, and on the other, a
landscape broken by foothills, plateaus, forests, streams,
and cultivated lands, as far as the eye could reach. The
country, in this double picture, promised in its extensiveness
and in its fertility even more than it, at this time, actually
possessed, for it was still only sparsely inhabited
in comparison with the surface of the Old World. The
little company of thoughtful men, who, on the first
day of August, 1818, looked down on that wide panorama,
from the green mountain flanks, might justifiably
enough have been meditating more on its future than on
its present, in associating it, and all the territory beyond,
with the university which they were about to define in

character and fix in site. Where they saw an hundred
people now, there would be a thousand tomorrow; and
they were not too sanguine in anticipating that the seat
of learning which they were about to locate, would shed
its kindly light, either directly or indirectly, over them all
for centuries.

But if the magnificence of the views from these mountain
heights was in harmony with the noble enterprise
which they had come to launch, the actual place of meeting
was plain and democratic enough to suit the birthplace
of a popular university. It was a tavern, spacious and
comfortable, but like all its fellows of that day lacking
in pretension to even the simplest elements of architectural
beauty. Around it, however, there must have been
always a scene of extraordinary liveliness, for the regular
stages, private carriages, and the jingling caravans of
canvas-covered wagons, with their ribbon-bedecked teams,
passing in a broken stream eastward and westward, halted
there to allow the horses to be fed or watered, and the
travelers to breakfast or to dine. This customary animation
was conspicuously increased by the arrival of the
Commissioners, so many of whom had brought with them
their own coaches and servants. Never, indeed, before
had there been such a throng of distinguished citizens
under its roof.

There has been handed down the tradition that the
first session of the Conference was held in the large public
dining-room, an apartment which possessed no other
pieces of furniture besides a long, rough table and numerous
well-worn split-bottom chairs, such as were then in
common use in the log-huts of the mountaineers. Jefferson,
the most eminent member of the Board, was
promptly chosen to preside; and it was, perhaps, in some
measure, due to his moderate and urbane spirit that the

proceedings were, from start to finish, characterized by
so much smoothness and harmony. There was a sharp
antagonism in the views advanced as to the proper site
for the new university, but no bitterness entered into this
diversity of opinion; or if it really existed below the
surface, it was held in check by the silent force of the
quiet and impartial bearing of the chairman, who, as all
were aware, was so earnestly in favor of Charlottesville's
selection, and yet who did not permit an opposing partizanship
in others present to ruffle his temper or to color
his decisions. "If any undue influence (in favor of
Central College), was exercised," Judge T. G. Jackson,
the Commissioner from the Harrison district, has recorded,
"there certainly never was an instance of greater
forbearance or moderation in its exercise. Mr. Jefferson
did not even intimate a wish at any time or in any
shape except when his name was called and his vote
given."[1]

The choice to be made did not concern simply the welfare
of literature and education. Had that been the sole
issue, the dignity of it would have explained the self-restraint
shown in the discussions of the body; but there was
an inflammatory political question involved, which was
known to all, whether or not frankly mentioned and discussed,
for every man present was convinced that the
choice of a site for the University would give a powerful
bias to the choice of a site for the new Capital, should
the General Assembly determine to abandon Richmond
as it had formerly deserted Williamsburg. The antagonism
which such a thought was so calculated to raise did

not crop up in word or act; and there was apparently a
common desire, even in pushing individual and sectional
preferences, to do so in a spirit, and in a manner, worthy
of the great purpose which had brought them together.
The first day of the session seems to have been given
up to a debate on the advantages which each of the
three places canvassed,—Staunton, Washington College,
and Central College,—possessed as a site for the
projected university. It was admitted by all that there
was no difference in the fertility and salubrity of the respective
regions in which they were situated; the decision,
therefore, rested upon the two vital points: (1) which
of the three could offer the most opulent inducements
in the way of buildings and endowments; and above all,
(2) which of the three was nearest to the centre of the
State. If any proposal was made in the name of Staunton
by her representative, Judge Archibald Stuart, it
was only done in the form of a promise of a future appropriation
of money and land; but Washington College
and Central College alike were in a position at once to
contribute substantially, in both buildings and endowments,
to the new institution, should either be chosen
as its site. Washington College offered to transfer one
hundred shares in the stock of the James River Company,
the thirty-one acres on which its buildings were
standing, its philosophical apparatus, its expected interest
in the funds of the Cincinnati Society, the libraries
of its two debating societies, and three thousand dollars
in cash. In addition, the people of Lexington at large
gave their bond to contribute the sum of $17,878. But
a more valuable donation still was the estate of 3,331
acres of agricultural land, twenty-two acres of suburban
property, fifty-seven slaves, and all his remaining personalty,
which John Robinson, a citizen of Rockbridge,
would convey to the President and Directors of the Literary
Fund for the benefit of the university after his
death, should Washington College be preferred.

The offer submitted by the Central College was also
an imposing one. It consisted of its entire possessions:
the one hundred and ninety acres purchased of Perry; a
pavilion and its dormitories "already far advanced";
a second pavilion also, with its appendix of dormitories,
which was to be completed before the end of the year;
the proceeds in hand of the sales of two glebes, aggregating
$3,280.86, and of a subscription list of $41,248.
The whole of this last amount had not yet been collected,
and it was also subject to deductions for sums due under
existing contracts. A deed conveying these several properties
to the Literary Fund had already been executed
and recorded in the clerk's office of Albemarle county.

The value of the estate offered by Washington College
as compared with the value of the one offered by
Central College,—had the difference between the two
been accepted as the final test in the choice of a site,—
would have given the superior claim to the institution
in which Jefferson was so zealously interested. But he
was not satisfied to rest his chances of winning the prize
on this foundation alone; the query in the minds of the
Commissioners which he knew was to shape their decision
more powerfully than any other was this: which
of the three sites lies nearest to the centre of the State's
population? Having fully anticipated this controlling
point, he came amply fortified with statistics to uphold his
contention in favor of Central College. It required little
shrewdness on his part to foresee that Lexington, and
not Staunton, was the formidable rival which had to be
overthrown, for Lexington alone of the two had substantial
advantages in buildings and endowments to offer

at once. The information which he was now to use so
effectively had been collected with characteristic comprehensiveness
and minuteness: through Alexander Garrett,
he had written to each court clerk in Virginia, and from
him obtained a statement of the distance of his countyseat
from some well known town in the State, whilst additional
facts relating to transportation, highways, and
population had been gathered up from the same or similar
obscure but reliable sources. With this mass carefully
sifted and skilfully arranged to guide him, he had
patiently and industriously constructed a large map, which
indicated alike the geographical centre of the State and
the centre of its population. This map was the most
esteemed part of his baggage in his journey to Rockfish
Gap.

During the progress of the debate which sprang up on
the subject of centrality the first day, Jefferson sat in
silent attention to it until the arguments on that point for
and against Staunton, Washington College, and Central
College had caused such confusion in the minds of the
Commissioners that they appeared entirely incapable of
arriving at an accurate and common conclusion. It was
at this critical moment that he modestly drew forth that
innocent-looking blunderbus, his map, and quietly spread
it out for the inspection of the body.[2] While the vote
was not taken at this sitting, there is reason to think that
the evidence, so unostentatiously presented in this
graphic form, proved so unanswerable that it brought
about the decision announced a few days afterwards.

What did the map demonstrate? First, that, if a
straight line was drawn from the mouth of the Chesapeake

Bay to the Ohio River, by way of Central College,
Rockfish Gap, and Staunton, there would be a difference
of only 15,000 individuals between the population south
and the population north of its course. On the other
hand, the number of persons inhabiting the region north
of a line drawn from the same point through Lexington
to the Ohio River was 91,009 in excess of the number
residing south of that line. There were 150,121 more
white people to be found to the east of a line drawn from
south to north along the crest of the Blue Ridge than
were to be found to the west of it. Draw the like north
and south line through Staunton, and the numerical superiority
in favor of the east would be 221,733. Draw
it again through Lexington, and the eastern majority
would be 175,191. If, however, it was drawn through
Central College, the majority would be only 36,315. In
other words, whether the line was drawn from east to
west, or south to north, through Central College, the
numerical difference between the two sections of the divided
population would approach nearest to equality.[3]
On the other hand, if the decision was to be governed by
a comparison of distances, then the argument in its favor
was quite as strong, according to the figures of the same
necromantic map. From Staunton to the boundary line
of North Carolina, as the crow would fly, was one
hundred and twelve and a half miles, and from Staunton
to the Potomac, one hundred and ten,—a difference of
two and a half miles. In the case of Lexington, the difference
between the two like reaches was fifty-two and
a half miles. On the other hand, the difference in the
case of Central College was only eleven and a half miles,
—about nine miles more than marked the situation of
Staunton, but forty-one and a half miles less than distinguished
that of Lexington. It was Lexington, not
Staunton, which caused Jefferson the most serious apprehension,
and it was the pretension of Washington College
that he was really aiming to prick.

There has long been a tradition that, besides securing
these convincing statistics in support of his claims for
Central College, he hunted down the name of every man
and woman in Albemarle county, who had passed their
eightieth mile-stone, and presented the list, which was of
extraordinary length, to the Conference as a proof that
the salubrity of its climate was as productive of Methuselahs
as ancient Judea. Doubtless, some jocularity was
excited by the reading of this list, but it did not strike
the less straight to its mark because of that genial accompaniment.

After carefully examining the map, the Commissioners
agreed to defer their decision as to the site from Saturday
until Monday, and in the meanwhile, a very distinguished
committee was appointed to draw up the statement
required by the General Assembly touching the plan
of the buildings, the courses of instruction, the number of
professors, and the provisions for organization and government.
Its members were Thomas Jefferson, James
Madison, General Breckinridge, Judges Roane, Stuart,
and Dade. Now, there was not in Virginia, at this time,
an equal number of men more competent to draft the
necessary recommendations within a period of forty-eight
hours than these seven Commissioners; but the principal
contents of the report that was submitted would seem to
prove that it had been composed by the brain of Jefferson
alone,—not under the roof of the tavern where they
were assembled, but in the philosophical and stimulating
quiet of Monticello. No doubt, the manuscript of most

of its clauses had accompanied the map to Rockfish Gap,
under cover of the same portmanteau stored away in the
boot of his carriage. If any amendments to these particular
parts were offered by members of the committee,
no record of that fact has survived; and all had probably
too much discernment to think that any change would improve
the substance of that remarkable document.

At least two additions to it, however, were made after
Jefferson's arrival on the ground: first the offer of the
Board of Trustees of Washington College and the provisional
donation by John Robinson; and second, the insertion
of the name of Central College as the place finally
adopted as the site for the projected university. This decision
was reached in the course of the meeting of the
Commissioners on Monday. When the votes were
counted, it was found that Breckinridge, Pendleton, and
John M. Taylor had expressed a preference for Lexington;
Stuart and Wilson for Staunton; and the remainder
of the Commissioners for Charlottesville. The selection
of the latter site was then unanimously confirmed, in a
spirit of harmony worthy of the highest demands of popular
education, which all were anxious to advance in spite
of natural local aspirations. A conciliatory attitude had
distinguished the members of the Conference throughout
their deliberations, upon which Jefferson commented in
feeling language at the close. Adjournment did not take
place until Tuesday, August 4. In the meanwhile, the
report had been read and adopted.

II. The Report

In writing to John Adams, several years afterwards,
Jefferson somewhat modestly declared that the Report
consisted simply of "outlines addressed to a legislative

body, and not of details, such as would have been more
suitable had it been addressed to a learned academy."
But however briefly and succinctly couched, it is perhaps
the most pregnant and suggestive document of its kind
that has been issued in the history of American Education.
Few men of his day had given the penetrating and discriminating
thought to the subject which he had done;
here, in a very narrow compass, will be found the kernel
of every conviction that he had reached as to the proper
college architecture, the true aims of both elementary and
advanced instruction, the branches of learning that
should be taught in a university, the inadvisability of sectarianism
in its management, the methods of governing
its students, and the duties which should be incumbent
upon its board.

As this report was drawn with direct reference to the
University of Virginia, and afterwards shaped the general
character of its whole system, a synopsis of its most
salient features will be distinctly pertinent to our subject.
In proposing a plan for the architectural setting
of the institution as required by the Legislature, Jefferson
simply repeats the scheme which he was already carrying
out in the lawn, pavilions, and dormitories of
Central College. To it, however, he adds a large building
"in the middle of the grounds," which was his earliest
public foreshadowing of the present Rotunda. With
respect to the branches of learning to be taught in the
new seat of learning, he first dwells upon the conspicuous
benefits to accrue from elementary and advanced
instruction respectively, and combats the perverse idea of
those persons who consider the sciences as useless acquirements,
or at least, such as the private purse alone
should pay for. On the contrary, he said, a great establishment

in which all the sciences should be embraced
was far beyond the means of the individual, and it must
either derive its being from public patronage or not
exist at all. In such an establishment, the following
courses should, in his judgment, be introduced: (1) the
ancient languages, including Hebrew, as well as Latin
and Greek; (2) the modern languages,—French, Spanish,
Italian, German and Anglo-Saxon; (3) mathematics,
—algebra, fluxions, geometry, and architecture; (4)
physico-mathematics, mechanics, statics, dynamics, pneumatics,
acoustics, optics, astronomy and geography; (5)
physics or natural philosophy, chemistry, and mineralogy;
(6) botany and zoology; (7) anatomy and medicine;
(8) government,—political economy, history, and
the law of nature and nations; (9) municipal law; and
(10) ideology,—general grammar, ethics, rhetoric,
belles-lettres and the fine arts.

Jefferson was regretfully aware that, without more preparatory
schools than existed in Virginia at that time to
train the youths who intended to enter the University,
its standards in the ancient languages,—tuition in which
he so highly valued,—would necessarily be damaged.
No greater obstruction to that particular study, he remarks
in the Report, could be suggested than the presence,
the intrusion, and the noisy turbulence of small
boys; and, said he, if they are to be permitted to go to
the University to acquire the rudiments of these languages,
they may be so numerous that the characteristics
which should belong to it as a seat of higher learning,
will be submerged in those of an ordinary grammar
school. He pressed upon the consideration of the General
Assembly the expediency of erecting a system of intermediate
academies, for, unless they were set up, the

University would be overwhelmed with pupils not at all
fitted by their previous schooling to uphold its scholarship.

The proposal of a course in Anglo-Saxon was a novel
one in those times, when its study was confined to a few
private investigators. "It will form," he said, "the
first link in the chain of an historical review of our
language through all its successive changes to the present
day; and will constitute the foundation of that critical
instruction in it which ought to be found in a seminary
of general learning." He candidly admitted in the Report
that only a single professor for both medicine and
surgery was possible at first, as the population of Charlottesville
and the surrounding region was not as yet
sufficiently large to justify the erection of a hospital,
where students would enjoy the practical advantage of
clinical lectures and surgical operations. Only the theory
of medicine and surgery as a science was to be
taught. Anatomy, however, was to be fully covered.
The Report, in addition, recommended that no chair of
divinity should be established, for to do so, it said,
would be repugnant to that principle of the Constitution
which puts all religious sects on a footing of equality.
It advised that, for the present at least, only ten professors
should be chosen, and that a maximum for their
salaries should be determined. Whilst no formal provision
for gymnastics was suggested, the expediency of
encouraging manual exercise, military manoeuvres, and
tactics in general, was urged; so also was instruction in
the arts which embellish life, such as dancing, music, and
drawing; and finally,—and this was perhaps the most
original feature of the Report,—it proposed that training
in the handicrafts should be given.

From some points of view, the most distinctly Jeffersonian

recommendation was the one that a system of
government should be devised for the students which
should be entirely devoid of every form of coercion. All
sense of fear should be banished. "The human character,"
so the Report asserted, "is susceptible of other incitements
to correct conduct more worthy of employ and
of better effect. Pride of character, laudable ambition,
and moral dispositions are innate correctives of the indiscretions
of that lively age. A system founded on reason
and comity will be more likely to nourish in the minds of
our youth the combined spirit of order and self-respect."

The Report, still following closely Jefferson's previously
expressed opinions, further recommended that all
questions concerning qualifications for entrance, the arrangement
of the hours of lecture, the establishment of
public examinations, the bestowal of prizes and degrees,
should be entrusted to the board of visitors. It also
laid down the additional duties of this board, the most
important of which were represented to be: the general
care of the buildings and grounds, and the other properties
of the University; the appointment of all the necessary
agents; the selection and removal of professors; the
prescribing and grouping of the courses of instruction;
the adoption of regulations for the government and discipline
of the students; the determining of the tuition
fees and dormitory rents; the drawing from the Literary
Fund of the annuity to which the University would be
entitled; and the general superintendence and direction of
all the affairs of the institution. The Report, in closing,
advised that the board should convene twice a year;
that it should nominate a rector; and that it should enjoy
the right to use a common seal, to plead and be impleaded
in all courts of justice, and to receive subscriptions
and donations, real and personal. Appended to

the document were two statements,—one indicating the
amount of property which John Robinson was willing to
devise to Washington College, should it be chosen as the
site of the new university; the other, the amount which
the Central College was ready to deliver at once, on the
same condition as to itself.

III. Struggle for the University Site

Not until November 20, 1818, did Jefferson send the
Report on to Cabell, the representative of the district in
the upper chamber, to whom it was now intrusted for
delivery to the proper officials. Cabell's first step was
to print the manuscript, and his next, to hand one copy
of it to the President of the Senate and another to the
Speaker of the House. On the second morning of the
session, it was brought to the attention of both bodies,
and its reading,—so we are informed by William F.
Gordon, now a member of the General Assembly, and a
staunch supporter of the University scheme,—was followed
by exclamations of "universal admiration." A
bill was promptly introduced in the lower chamber to
carry into effect the recommendations of the Report.
This bill was under the patronage of Mr. Taylor, of
Chesterfield county, who had been selected by the pilots
of the measure because he seemed to be entirely disentangled
from the meshes of local interests and ambitions.
Opposition was expected from the start by Cabell and
Gordon, who were marshalling the partizans of Central
College,—the one in the Senate, the other in the House.
The bill, with the Report appended, was referred to a
select committee which contained a majority in favor of
passing it; and a further auspicious condition was that the

delegation from the region of the Kanawha River were
frankly well disposed towards the measure.

The advocates of the Lexington site in the committee
urged, with persistence, that the clause recommending
Central College should be expunged, and a blank substituted
for it; and also that the bill should be held
back for more careful scrutiny before this blank should
be filled up. The members from Rockbridge in the committee
were especially vehement in questioning the correctness
of Jefferson's way of arriving at the centre of
population. They were supported by Chapman Johnson,
who represented Augusta county in the Senate. He
asserted in the presence of Cabell and Gov. Preston, that,
to start the line of division at the mouth of the Chesapeake
Bay, "was to make it nearer to the southern than
to the northern side of the State." This suggestion
seems to have worried Cabell, and he at once wrote to
Monticello for information to combat it. In his reply,
Jefferson acknowledged, what was obvious, that at its
commencement, the line was nearer to North Carolina
than it was to Maryland; but was not the area towards
the north entirely occupied by water without any inhabitants
except numerous fish and many wild fowl?
"Wherever you may decide to begin," he added, "the
direction of the line of equal division is not a matter of
choice. It must from thence take whatever direction
an equal division of the population demands; and the
census proves this to pass near Charlottesville, Rockfish
Gap, and Staunton."

Some of the advocates of Lexington shrewdly laid off
the southern half of the State in the form of a parallelogram
and the northern half in the form of a triangle.
This method, Jefferson gently intimated, was suggested

by ingenious minds seeking to force the situation in favor
of their preferred site. As the whole State was in a triangular
shape, why should not each half be made to
conform to that fact instead of only one? If the line
of equal division was drawn straight from east to west,
Lexington would be thrown out of the contest at once
by its distance from the centre of population. Not so
Charlottesville. Run that line north and south,—again
would Lexington be thrust out, but again would Charlottesville
successfully stand the test. "Run your lines
in whichever direction you please," exclaimed Jefferson,
triumphantly, "they will pass close to Charlottesville,
and for the good reason that it is truly central to the
white population."

At the third meeting, the Committee declined to strike
the words "Central College" from the bill. The measure
was then reported to the House in its original form;
but here it again ran upon the ugly snag that had threatened
to wreck it in the committee room: the advocates of
Lexington again disputed the correctness of Jefferson's
calculations, and demanded that the vote upon the bill
should be deferred until they had been given an opportunity
to refute them. Cabell soon began to feel doubt as
to its passage, for he had found out that the party
opposing the acceptance of the Central College site,—
which consisted principally of the delegation from the
West,—had decided that, should they be unable to substitute
Lexington for Charlottesville, they would endeavor
to overthrow the whole university scheme; and in this
course, they counted on the support of those members
who favored the permanent breaking up and dispersal
of the Literary Fund.

Cabell plucked up heart once more when privately informed
by his colleague in the Senate from Clarksburg

that the entire delegation from the Northwest with one
exception,—twenty-one members,—had determined to
stand by the recommendation of the committee; this
was about the 17th of December; and although Christmas
was so close at hand, and most of the members were
departing for their homes, when not too remote, he decided
to stand to his post in Richmond. His health had
been so much undermined by his assiduity that he was advised
to spend the holiday season at Williamsburg with
his wife's family, for the sake of the change; but he emphatically
refused to do so. "Even if the danger of
my life existed which my friends apprehend," he said,
"I could not risk it in a better cause." He urged the
supporters of the bill in the House to hold it up until the
opening of the New Year. At the same time, he was
very much alarmed lest his opponents should continue to
gain strength by wily intrigue and unscrupulous bargaining.
Once more, indeed, he began to fear the complete
failure of the measure through the working of these
malignant agencies. He was fully aware that, in the
strongly cohesive delegation from the eastern counties,
there were at least twenty-six members who were expected,
under the influence of their loyalty to the interests
of the College of William and Mary, to show themselves
hostile to the establishment of a university at all, by
casting their votes against the bill, whether in the original
or the amended form. There was thought to be but one
provision that could ward off this blow: the appropriation
of five thousand dollars annually to the use of that institution.
This was Cabell's not unprejudiced impression,
for the antagonism which he had to overcome had left
him in an exasperated and jaundiced mood. "The best
informed of these partizans of the ancient college," he
wrote Jefferson, "whilst they, their sons, connections, and
friends have been educated at William and Mary, quote
Smith, the Edinburgh Review, and Dugald Stewart, to
prove that education should be left to individual enterprise,
the more ignorant part pretend that the Literary
Fund has been diverted from its original object,—the
education of the poor,—and accuse the friends of the
University of an intention to apply all the funds to the
benefit of the University."

Some opposition to Charlottesville, as the site for
a great seat of learning, was expressed by a small circle
of thoughtful and enlightened members on the ground
that, as it was simply a village and remote in its situation,
it would offer no social advantages to draw thither distinguished
professors; nor could it, for the same reason,
serve to polish the manners of the students, furnish them
with the needed accommodations, or bring forward sufficient
physical force to put down large bodies of young
men, should they fall to rioting.

By January 1, 1819, the delegates from the Valley had
united in solid rank against Central College, and nearly
one-half of the delegates from the region west of the
Alleghanies had joined their company. In addition, the
delegates from the southeastern part of the State were
inimical; and there were members in the same mood who
were scattered throughout the representation from the
other districts. Cabell, bracing himself against a rising
feeling of dismay, urged all the friendly absentees to hasten
their return, and in the meanwhile, he sought encouragement
in the loyalty of his supporters on the ground.
"I consider the establishment of the University," wrote
John Taliaferro, of the Lower House, as he was about
to set out from Fredericksburg for Richmond, "of more
vital consequence to the State than the sum of all the
legislation since the foundation of the government";

and this was also the spirit of the men who had remained
at their posts. "I had indulged the hope," wrote William
F. Gordon to his wife on Christmas day, "that I
could have gone home about this time, but the importance
of our University bill is so great to Virginia, and particularly
to Albemarle county, that I feared to leave it."
In a letter to Jefferson a few days earlier, Cabell had said,
"I have passed the night in watchful reflection and the
day in ceaseless activity. ... I have conveyed from person
to person intelligence of our view, and endeavored
to reconcile difference of opinion and to create harmony.
... I have called on and influenced the aid of powerful
friends out of the Legislature, such as Roane, Nicholas,
Brockenbrough, Taylor, and others. I have procured
most of the essays in the Enquirer."

Within a few weeks, this persistent spirit had forced a
favorable turn. Absent friends came to his assistance.
Especially assiduous and energetic among these were
Captain Slaughter, of Culpeper, and Mr. Hoomes, of
King and Queen; but above all, Chancellor Green, who,
on the day of his arrival, sat up with him until three
o'clock in the morning. The foremost purpose now was
to contrive a plan to break the assaults of the delegates
from the Peninsula; and it was in consequence of such
prolonged mental strain and constant loss of sleep, that
Cabell suffered, at this crisis, an attack of blood spitting,
which lasted, without interruption, for a period of seven
or eight hours.

The ablest and most disinterested of all Cabell's coadjutors,
outside of the Assembly itself, in this protracted
contest, was the Rev. John H. Rice, the most distinguished
Presbyterian divine in the State. Perhaps his
most notable service at this time took the form of a letter
over the signature of Crito, which he contributed to

the issue of the Enquirer for January 9, 1819. "Ten
years ago," he wrote, "I made certain inquiries on the
subject (the pecuniary loss to Virginia from the absence
of a State university) and ascertained, to my conviction,
that the amount annually carried from Virginia for purposes
of education alone exceeded $250,000. Since that
period, it has been greater. Take a quarter of a million
as the average of the last eight and twenty years, and
the amount is the enormous sum of $7,000,000. But
had our schools been such as the resources of Virginia
would have well allowed, and her honor and interest
demanded, it is by no means extravagant to suppose that
the five States that border on ours would have sent as
many students, as under the present wretched system,
we have sent to them. Thus this reaches another
amount of $7,000,000. Let our economists look to that
14,000,000 of good dollars lost to us by our parsimony.
Let our wise men calculate the amount outside of our
losses, and add it to this principal."

Dr. Rice made no plea for a particular site for the
University, because he thought that this should be decided
by the General Assembly, of which he was not a
member; but his reasoning for the creation of the institution
itself was a powerful influence towards the overthrow
of the unscrupulous propaganda then prevailing
that would have shut out Central College by undermining
the whole project of setting up a great seat of learning.
A searching discussion of the several clauses of the bill
took place in the Committee of the Whole of the House
on January 18 (1819), and all the arguments in support
of, and in opposition to, its different provisions were
elaborately presented. A determined attempt was again
made to discredit the statistics of Jefferson's map showing
the centre of population in the State; but when the

last speech had been finished, and the motion was put
whether the clause relating to Central College, as the
proposed site of the University, should be accepted or
discarded, the vote stood sixty-nine in favor of rejection
and one hundred and fourteen in favor of retention.
The brilliant Briscoe G. Baldwin was then a delegate
from Augusta, of which Staunton, one of the competitors
for the University, was the county-seat. So soon as the
decision of the House was announced, he rose from his
chair, and, in proposing that the bill should be adopted
unanimously, appealed to the Western delegation to dismiss
all local prejudice, to repress all spirit of partizanship,
and to join with the majority in acquiescing in the
entire measure as it stood. His speech was so eloquent
in its utterance of the noblest patriotic emotions that
most of his hearers were melted to tears. Cabell, who
had been present in the chamber before the roll was
called, had retired to avoid the shock to his feelings,
should the upshot be adverse. The final vote on the passage
of the bill was taken on the following day (January
19), and only twenty-eight of the one hundred and sixtynine
members present persisted in their opposition.

William C. Rives, a delegate at the time, expressed to
Cocke his gratified surprise at what he described as the
"unexpected result" of the voting. "You have seen
from the newspapers," he wrote on the 20th, "the vigorous
and persevering attempts that were made on the
floor of the House to repeal it (the University bill).
The efforts that were employed out of doors to defeat it
by intrigue were not less vigorous, and possibly were
more alarming, because more difficult to be met and counteracted."

On the 21st, the measure, having reached the Senate,
was referred to a very able committee. When at last

reported, a motion to strike out of the text the choice of
Central College was lost by a vote of sixteen to seven.
It finally passed the Senate on the 25th by a vote of
twenty-two to one, an indication of more enlightened
views in that body as a whole than prevailed in the
House. The discussion of its different provisions had
continued uninterruptedly through two days; and so
strenuously did Cabell participate in the debate that a
blood vessel in his lungs, which he had formerly ruptured,
opened again, and he was compelled to sink to his
seat.

The opposition to the bill, as we have seen, had
its origin in a variety of hostile influences, some of which
were directed against the acceptance of Central College
as the site and some against the establishment of the
University at all, because supposed to be repugnant to the
interests either of the College of William and Mary or of
the poor in the distribution of the income of the Literary
Fund. At the bottom of the antagonism, there was present
a distinct political motive. The desire to obtain the
site of the Capital, should Richmond be abandoned,
prompted many of the delegates from the Valley to cast
their votes against the selection of Central College, for
it was generally anticipated that the Capital and the University
would, in the end, be located together. There was
also a lingering antipathy to Jefferson himself, in spite of
his venerable age and long retirement from public life.
This feeling, however, was not shared by many. William
C. Rives expressed the more generous attitude of
the majority towards him when he said, "Among the
many sources of congratulation that present themselves
on this occasion (the passage of the bill), it is not
the least with me that the man to whom this country of
ours owes more than to any other that ever existed, with

the exception of Washington, lives to see the consummation
of all his wishes in the establishment of an institution
which will be a lasting monument to his fame."

Jefferson himself received the announcement of the realization
of his hopes of so many years with the philosophical
moderation so characteristic of him when his
faculties were not disturbed by the red flag of Federalism
or Sectarianism. "I sincerely join in the general
joy," was his brief and simple reply when the news had
been conveyed to him.

IV. The First Board of Visitors

The Act establishing the University of Virginia, after
accepting the conveyance of the lands and other property
belonging to Central College, laid down with minuteness
the necessary prescriptions for the number of Visitors,
their appointment, their powers and duties, the courses
to be taught, and the number, salaries, and accommodations
of the professors. Substantially, the Act followed
the recommendations of the Rockfish Gap Report in every
particular, and it will, therefore, not be requisite to
add to the synopsis of that Report which has been given.
The most vital provision of the original bill for the creation
of a university was retained: the annuity was again
fixed at fifteen thousand dollars. Among the characteristic
features of the subsequent government of the institution
which were not foreshadowed in the Act was the
chairmanship of the Faculty, and the great power which
its incumbent was to exercise in the management of its
affairs. The Board of Visitors were authorized in a
general way "to direct and do all matters and things
which to them shall seem most expedient for promoting
the purposes" of the new seat of learning, and it was

under this clause that this unique method of administration
came into existence.

The first Board of Visitors,—which, as the Act required,
was appointed by the Governor,—consisted of
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John H. Cocke,
Joseph C. Cabell, Chapman Johnson, James Breckinridge,
and Robert B. Taylor. The Board of Central
College, it will be recollected, embraced only five members,
and all of these, with the exception of David Watson,
were transferred to the new Board. Of the three
new additions, two were lawyers of the highest standing
for learning, probity, and astuteness, and the third a citizen
equally conspicuous for ability and public services.
There seems to have been no undertaking to divide the
membership among the different sections of the State,
but the homes of several were notwithstanding widely
dispersed: Taylor resided in Norfolk, Johnson in Staunton,
and Breckinridge in Botetourt county. There was
not a single Visitor from the region of country lying west
of the Alleghany Mountains,—the reason for which,
quite probably, was that, in those times of stage coach
and private carriage, there was small prospect of even a
rare attendance at the sessions of the Board of a member
who had to traverse the long road from the valley
of the Kanawha or the Monongahela. Johnson and
Breckinridge were also, in their homes, remote from
Charlottesville, but both were constantly passing through
on their way to Richmond to be present at the sessions
of the General Assembly or the terms of the Supreme
Court. The original plan of Jefferson was to ask for
the appointment of men who resided within convenient
reach of the University; but this was modified by the action
of the Governor and Council, who thought it wise
to select only a majority of the Board from the neighboring

region and the remainder from the other parts of
the State. This had a tendency to diminish the chance
of sectional carping; and it also conferred on the institution
the distinction of being governed by a larger number
of influential public men than could be found within
the bounds of any single group of counties. The line of
exclusion seems to have been drawn in the first appointments
sharply against judges and members of Congress;
but in the course of time this rule was entirely abandoned
as to the latter at least.

The last meeting of the Visitors of Central College
was held on the 26th of February, 1819. They had been
impowered by the University Act of January 25 to perform
their former functions until superseded by the coming
together of the new Board. The proceedings of
this meeting were far from being merely nominal, in anticipation
of the early extinction of the old Board; at
least three of its members belonged to the new; and
they perhaps felt that they were an expiring body only
in law and not in fact. Jefferson was present, and
through his influence, no doubt, the necessary measures
were adopted to ensure the continuation of the building,
since upon this he had always laid the primary stress.
It was resolved (1) that the funds of the University
remaining after the payment of current expenses, should
be applied to the erection of additional pavilions and
hotels; (2) that workmen for this purpose should be
contracted with at once before the season had advanced
too far to secure the services of the number required;
(3) that the funds in hand, or in prospect, would justify
entrance into engagements for the building of at least
two more pavilions, one hotel, and as many additional
dormitories as the amount left over would allow; (4)
that Alexander Garrett should be retained as the treasurer,

with the authority to act as bursar also; and that he
should receive from the State the annuity payable for the
present year (1819).

Central College, as a working corporation, came to
an end on March 29, 1819, when the new Board, with
a full attendance of members, convened for the first time.
The transition was merely nominal; there was nothing
radical in the spirit of the change; it continued to be the
same institution, under the same guiding and controlling
hand. Its aims were the same, and so were its principles.
Jefferson now felt more confident of the successful
consummation of his long matured plans for a really
great seat of learning; and this was perhaps the only alteration
in his outlook for the institution on the broader
stage of operation upon which it had entered. Even
the social customs of the old Board were to be those of
the new so far as his hospitable instincts could bring it
about. "It has been our usual course," he wrote to
General Taylor, when inviting him to Monticello, "for
the gentlemen of Central College to come here the day
before the appointed meeting, which gives us an opportunity
of talking over our business at leisure, of making
up our views on it, and even of committing it to paper
in form, so that our resort to the College, where there
is no accommodation, is a mere legal ceremony for signing
only."

The officers chosen by the Board at their first memorable
session were Thomas Jefferson, rector, Peter Minor,
secretary, Alexander Garrett, bursar, and Arthur S.
Brockenbrough, proctor. Jefferson and Cocke were reappointed
members of the committee of superintendence.
The Board promptly adopted the recommendations of
the Visitors of Central College at their last meeting;
namely, that all but necessary current expenditures

should, in the beginning, be restricted to building, and
that as little as possible should be reserved for the engagement
of professors, until a sufficient number of
pavilions, hotels, and dormitories had been provided to
accommodate them and the pupils expected.

At this time, there was a considerable body of land,
laid off in two lots and owned by John M. Perry, lying
between the tracts,—one of forty-seven acres, the other
of one hundred and fifty-three,—which had been acquired
by Central College, and transferred to the infant university.
The Board, on March 29, instructed the committee
of superintendence to purchase this intervening
area on the condition of a deferred payment; and it was
due to this complication, perhaps, that it was not until
January 25, 1820, one year later, that Perry conveyed
the first lot of forty-eight acres; and not until May 9,
1825, more than five years afterwards, that he signed
the deed to the remaining lot of one hundred and thirtytwo
acres. The first lot was improved with a dwelling
house and curtilages, and its value was estimated as high
as $7,231.00 The second lot was assessed at $6,600.00.
The payment, even in instalments, of these large sums
imposed on the resources of the University an irksome
burden for several years. The acquisition, however,
was rendered compulsory by the fact that the springs
which supplied its cisterns were situated a little without
the observatory tract owned by it, whilst the communicating
pipes had been run entirely within the boundaries
of Perry's property before reaching the actual site of the
University itself. At any time, the owner of that property
could order the removal of the pipes and thus cut
off the natural reservoir from use. Jefferson had long
been aware of this possibility, but until the institution
was incorporated, was lacking in the means to remove

it. One of the first provisions of the new Board, under
his inspiration, was to arrange for this purchase, which,
when accomplished, put an end to the risk of future interference.

An additional section of land,—presumably situated
between the present Staunton Road and a parallel line
running west and east in front of the north portico
of the Rotunda, aggregating about eight acres,—was
bought in 1824, from Daniel A. Piper.[4] These four
parcels of land increased to the extent of one hundred
and eighty-four acres the domain already in the possession
of the University. Another addition was made in
1824: a small parcel was bought of Mrs. Garner. This
also was probably situated on the present Staunton Road,
and if so, lay west of the present Gothic Chapel.

V. Course of Construction

Although Central College had been raised to the platform
of a university, the general outline of the original
plan of building underwent but few alterations. Jefferson
had drafted that plan for a broad and populous
seat of learning, and now that this consummation of his
hopes was assured, he had but to push to a termination
what he had long ago conceived, and what he had already
substantially begun. The scheme of construction which
he submitted to the General Assembly in the Rockfish
Gap Report made no addition to the scheme in harmony
with which the carpenters and bricklayers were already
at work in the old Perry field: and in the letter written
by him to William C. Rives, only three days after the

University was incorporated, he simply canvasses the
ability of the Board of Visitors to provide during that
year for the building of two pavilions, with their dormitories,
besides those already in course of erection. It
it true that the Report referred specifically to an edifice
of large size "in the middle of the grounds," to be used
for certain purposes carefully enumerated, but, as we
have already pointed out, this structure, in the form now
known to us, had been suggested, in a general way, by
Latrobe, and accepted as a part of the plan.

The first and only really important modification that
was made in the setting was in April, 1820, when Jefferson,
confronted with the necessity of choosing the site
of the first hotel, decided that he would not place it on
an extension of the Lawn in alignment with the pavilions,
but instead would erect it on what was afterwards named
Western Back Street, now West Range. Thus began
the existing array of four instead of two parallel rows of
buildings. In the original draft, the distance from the
eastern line to the western was seven hundred and seventy-one
feet; but, in fixing the sites of the pavilions,
Jefferson contracted the interval. The addition of
hotels and dormitories, in the form of parallel East and
West Ranges, enabled him to return to the dimensions of
the original plat. He seems to have at first intended
that each of the lateral ranges should have its front in
precise correspondence with the front of that side of
the Lawn; and he was ingenious enough to devise a
scheme by which the denizens of these lateral ranges
could be prevented from peering from their front windows
into the ugly premises in the rear of the adjacent
parallel pavilions and dormitories. But the expense of
carrying this out was shown to be so great that he ultimately
determined to change the plan to the one afterwards

followed, in which the East and West Ranges,
facing outward, turn their back yards upon the back
yards of the Lawn. Another modification of the original
plan left the projected Rotunda with a lawn on
either side. These two small areas of open ground,
which, with the actual site of the Rotunda itself, had, in
Jefferson's earliest scheme, been reserved for pavilions
and dormitories, were, in the end, occupied by wings,
which, during many years, were in normal use as gymnasia.

Taking the noble group of buildings in the mass as
completed, they enable us to understand clearly Jefferson's
purpose of teaching the principles of architecture by
example in this new seat of culture. It will be recalled
that, in the Rockfish Gap Report, he had recommended
the study of the fine arts; but the General Assembly, in
the Act of Incorporation, had pointedly omitted that
theme in enumerating the courses of instruction. Jefferson
got around this tacit injunction by persuading the
Board of Visitors to enter military and naval architecture
among the subjects to be taught in the school of mathematics.
It was, however, in the peculiarities of the surrounding
buildings that the fundamental lessons of the art
were to be learned. "The introduction of chaste models,"
he wrote to William C. Rives, "taken from the
finest remains of antiquity, of the orders of architecture,
and of specimens of the choicest samples of each order,
was considered as a necessary foundation of the instruction
of the students in this art." And so highly did he
value this aspect of the University edifices that he urged
upon the same correspondent,—at this time a distinguished
member of Congress,—that the capitals and
bases recently arrived from Italy should be exempted
from custom duties because they were designed as much

for illustration as for practical use. With perfect propriety,
said he, these monuments might have been placed
"in our museum for an indefinite period." This was
not done, he added, "because we thought that, to show
their best effects, they would nowhere be exhibited so
advantageously as in connection with their columns and
the super-incumbent entablature. We, therefore, determined
that each of the pavilions ... should present
a distinct and different sample of the art. And these
buildings being arranged around three sides of a square,
the lecturer, in a circuit, attended by his school, could explain
to them successively these samples of the several
orders."

There was another practical reason which Jefferson
gave in justification of that splendid but costly architectural
scheme. It was his conviction that, without a "distinguished
scale in structure," to employ his own words,
foreign scholars of celebrity would hardly be willing to
accept chairs in so new an institution. This was a somewhat
fanciful notion, for certainly the only alien professors
who ever occupied those chairs apparently made no
inquiry at all as to the character of the University's
architecture, when they entered into their engagements.
The prestige of this seat of learning, in our own country,
was unquestionably enhanced from the start by its noble
physical setting, and this, perhaps, has had a calculable
influence in securing for it, throughout its history, the services
of the ablest and ripest American scholars.[5] It is
quite possible,—and it is no discredit to Jefferson to say
so,—that he would have followed the plan which he did
adopt even if there had been no practical recommendations

for it, such as he was led to bring forward to combat
the weight of the ignorant provincial criticisms leveled
at it. He himself had said that it was as inexpensive to
build a beautiful house as it was to build an ugly one.
Within the privacy of his own breast, he probably agreed
with good judges of subsequent generations in thinking
that the architectural charm of the University of Virginia,
like the immortal poet's thing of beauty, was a joy
forever in itself that called for no additional reason to
justify its existence.

The entire setting of the original group was classical
in its character. Beginning at the head of the West
Lawn, it will be found that Pavilion I was an adoption of
the Doric of the Diocletian Baths; Pavilion III, Corinthian
of Palladio; Pavilion V, Ionic of Palladio; Pavilion
VII, Doric of Palladio; and Pavilion IX, Ionic of the
Temple of Fortuna Virilis. Beginning again on the east,
side of the Lawn and descending from the north end, we
observe Pavilion II, Ionic, after the style of the same
temple; Pavilion IV, Doric of Albano; Pavilion VI,
Ionic of the Theatre of Marcellus; Pavilion VIII, Corinthian
of the Baths of Diocletian; Pavilion X, Doric
of the Theatre of Marcellus; and the Rotunda, after the
Pantheon at Rome.

Jefferson reduced, modified, and adapted to new purposes,
but still preserved with fidelity, the art of the originals,
both in their lines and in their proportions. His
inspiration, in general, was derived from Palladio, but
when his own judgment, in any instance, suggested a departure,
he did not shrink from following it, and in doing
so, exhibited always precision and certainty. Sometimes,
he preferred a simpler form, as in his copy of the pilasters
of the Temple of Nerva, because he thought that it was
"better suited to our plainer style." It has been said of

him, in his relation to the architecture of the University,
that, instead of working, like the disciples of Inigo Jones,
downward from Palladio to the debased Georgian imitations
of the classic, he worked upward from that great
artist to the purest and most refined types of the classic.
"He removed from the classic forms of the Cæsars," says
Dr. Lambeth, summing up his merits in this particular
in a remarkable phrase, "the architectural rubbish of the
centuries." His bent was towards the Roman classical,
when all or nearly all his contemporaries exhibited a
leaning towards the Georgian, Italian, Vitruvian, Gothic,
or Renaissance styles. In his report to the General Assembly
in November, 1821, he modestly declares that he
had no "supplementary guide but his own judgment";
and while he does not seem to have looked for even
grudging approval in the general public, yet some instances
of high and generous appreciation of the beauty
of his buildings soon came to his knowledge to gratify
him. John Tyler, the younger, being a citizen of the
Peninsula, and residing not far from the College of William
and Mary, had not been friendly to the University,
yet after inspecting the completed group, he was "so
much impressed with the extent and splendor of the establishment,"
according to Judge Semple, who reported his
words to Cabell, and Cabell to Jefferson, that he regretted
that he had not been a member of the last Assembly
to vote for the cancellation of its bonds.

The same feeling of admiration was aroused in other
men of culture who visited the spot at this time, although
the Rotunda, the most imposing of all the structures,
was not yet fully completed. Thus Garrett Minor, writing
to Cabell, in 1822, said, "I was much pleased and
delighted with the beauty, convenience, and splendor of
the establishment." The word "splendor," used both

by Tyler and Minor, expressed very pertinently the surprise
of Virginians of that day,—who had travelled little,
and had few very fine models of residential architecture
in their own State to educate their taste,—when they
viewed the classical buildings which Jefferson had caused
to rise in the shadow of Observatory Mountain. Ticknor
was perhaps a more competent judge, for he had
passed many years in Europe, had visited all its famous
capitals, and had examined all its edifices of celebrity.
He had thus become both fastidious and discriminating.
In 1824, he happened to be a guest at Monticello, and,
accompanied by his host, rode down to inspect the University
edifices. At this time, ten pavilions, with their dormitories,
and four hotels, with dormitories also attached,
had been finished; and the Rotunda too was so far completed
as to stand forward with a very noble aspect. In
a letter to W. H. Prescott, Ticknor described the group
"as a mass of buildings more beautiful than anything
architectural in New England, and more appropriate to
a university than are to be found, perhaps, in the world."
And it is the general opinion of more modern experts
in the art that this extreme statement of the accomplished
Bostonian was not exaggerated. "Although it cannot
be but regretted," remarked Stanford White, of our own
day, "that it was not possible to use marble where wood
and stucco painted white take its place, yet as the use of
marble was necessarily impossible, the mind, reverting to
the period when the buildings were erected, forgives the
homely substitute in delight at the charming result."
And on another occasion, he spoke of the physical setting
of the University of Virginia as the "most perfect and
exquisite group of collegiate buildings in the world." Dr.
Fiske Kimball, summing up the merits of the structures
in the mass, has characterized the whole as the "greatest
surviving masterpiece of the classic revival in America,
the most magnificent architectural creation of its day on
this side of the Atlantic."[6]

Even the persons who were most enthusiastic in commenting
on the extraordinary beauty of Jefferson's conception
as incorporated in the Lawn and Ranges, could
not blind themselves entirely to the inconveniences of
his plan, and particularly to those connected with the
dormitories. With doors facing either east or west, and
with one small window only breaking the back wall of
each room, there was little prospect of their catching the
southern breeze during the heats of early summer. The
burning rays of the declining sun struck the face of the
western arcade in June and September,[7] the closing and
opening months of the session, and the cold eastern winds
poured against the eastern arcade both in winter and
early spring alike. It was apprehended by some, at the
beginning, that the constant noise of tramping feet under
the cover of the arcades would disturb the students engaged
with their books in their several apartments. The
long, flat roofs of the Lawn, under the thawing of recurring
snows, soon developed a tendency to leak, while
smoking chimneys, within a short time, proved such an
annoyance to the professors that Bonnycastle wrote an
elaborate treatise to demonstrate how this irritating evil
could be remedied.

The lecture-hall reserved in each pavilion became almost
at once a source of perplexity; it was anticipated
that some members of the Faculty would draw classes too
small in size to occupy the whole of their several halls,
whilst others would be so popular in themselves or their

courses, that their halls would not, at any one time, furnish
seats for all their pupils. Naturally, these professors
would find the repetition of the same lecture on the
same day to the students who had been shut out highly
irksome; and the necessity of such repetition, should it
arise, was certain to throw the whole table of recitation
hours into confusion. Cabell, as early as April, 1819,
suggested that the Greek, Roman, and French model of
an oval room, with seats rising one above another, would
give a large area for use; but it was pointed out to him
that such a disposition of space would render the apartment
unserviceable to the professor and his family during
those hours when the lecture was not proceeding. There
was then left but one way of removing the difficulty,—
the enlargement of the lecture-room; but as that would
upset the plan which Jefferson had adopted, Breckinridge,
Cabell, and Cocke, who were impatient with the
existing defect, felt that they must not only act with
caution, but must also act together. "We should move
in concert," remarks Cabell in a letter to Cocke, "or we
shall perplex and disgust the old sachem." As the size
of the rooms was not altered, the old sachem, it is to be
inferred, remained obdurate to the proposal; indeed, to
make the change effective, the scheme of each pavilion
would have had to undergo a structural modification,
which would have added substantially to the already high
cost of building.

According to tradition, the purpose which Jefferson
had in view for these single ground-floor apartments
was blocked, not by formal resolution of the Board, but
by that more delicate and subtle instrument of change, a
woman's will. It is said that the wives of the professors,
finding that they needed the lecture-halls for reception
or dining-rooms, brought furtive conjugal influences to

bear that shut out the students from them except as social
visitors. There seems, however, to have been a more
practical reason for the change than this,—as we shall
see hereafter.

Not only was Jefferson the author of the common
plan for Central College, and its successor, the University
of Virginia, but, in spite of the burden of his increasing
years, he continued to act as the practical superintendent
of the building down to the completion of the
entire group of structures, with the exception of the Rotunda,
which, at his death, was still unfinished in some
details of importance. He was assisted in this supervision
by Cocke, and he possessed in the proctor, Arthur S.
Brockenbrough, a vigilant and well-informed agent; but
the bulk even of the specifications came from his brain
and pen. In the interval between February and October,
1819, he drafted the plans and wrote out the specifications
for five pavilions, with their adjacent dormitories,
and also for five hotels. In 1821, he drew up the plans
and specifications for the Rotunda. He was now in his
seventy-ninth year. After the celebration of his eightieth
birthday, he prepared the plans for an observatory and
an anatomical hall. The entire set of these original
plans, elevations, and specifications have been preserved,
but only a few of the working drawings for the guidance
of the builders have survived, since most of them were
destroyed in their necessarily rough use by the mechanics.
The knowledge which he had acquired of materials in
erecting the Monticello mansion was put to practical
service on a far greater scale in the construction of the
University buildings; he was now as able to test the
quality of brick, stone, mortar, and lumber, and to calculate
their value, as the most expert artisan on the ground,
while his taste in ornamentation was reflected in the

beautiful details which still adorn the interiors of the pavilions.

Under his watchful and experienced eye, the progress
of construction from the day that the Visitors of Central
College turned the property over to the Visitors of the
University was rapid and uninterrupted. The committee
of superintendence, Cocke and himself, had at first
contemplated the erection of a hotel, so as to open the
institution to students during the following winter, but,
as early as May 12 (1819), they had, with the Board's
approval, decided to finish the entire group of buildings
before taking this final step. Workingmen were soon
engaged in digging the foundations for the two additional
pavilions and their dormitories, which had been authorized
in anticipation of the payment of the annuity of the
ensuing year. We obtain a glimpse of the busy scene on
the University grounds in August (1819) from a letter
written by George W. Spooner, who represented the
proctor in the work out of doors during his absence in
Richmond. "Mr. Phillips," he says, "has commenced
to lay in bricks, and has the basement story (of one of the
new pavilions) nearly up. Mr. Ware's foundation will
be ready in a few days, but he is not yet ready for laying,
not having burnt any of his bricks yet. Mr. Perry will
begin as soon as they have succeeded in blasting a rock
which has impeded their progress in digging his foundation.
The two Italians are going on quite leisurely.
They have cut three bases and one Corinthian cap. The
two from Philadelphia I went out to the quarries to see.
They appear to go on quite slowly, owing to the difficulty
of quarrying the very hard rock. Mr. Dinsmore is puting
up modillions in the cornice of his pavilion. Mr.
Oldham is making his frame."[8]

By December 17 (1819), the brickwork of the five
pavilions, with their respective dormitories, situated on
West Lawn, had been completed, whilst the rafters of the
roofs of two pavilions situated on East Lawn were in the
course of being adjusted. By November 21, 1821, six pavilions,
eighty-two dormitories, and two hotels, were in
condition for immediate occupation; and by October 7,
1822, ten pavilions, one hundred and nine dormitories, and
six hotels. Only a small amount of plastering remained
to be finished. The gardens had not been entirely laid off,
nor the serpentine walls, designed to bar them against intrusion,
erected. A few capitals also had not as yet arrived
from Italy. By October 6, 1823, all these deficiencies
had been supplied. But the Rotunda had still
to be carried through the last stage of construction.

VI. Men Who Built the University

We know the mind that conceived the plan of that
noble group of buildings, and the hand which platted that
plan, and drew up its vital specifications. Who were the
men who actually laid the foundations, raised the walls,
set the roofs, and decorated the entablatures? We have
already mentioned the names of the contractors employed
by the Visitors of Central College, and Spooner's
letter, from which we have quoted, gives the names of
most of those who were engaged in the work of construction
after the University had been incorporated. Each
pavilion in Jefferson's scheme represented in his view a
separate school. It is significant that the amount which,
according to his estimate, each would cost was precisely
the same as that which, by his calculation, would be required
to erect each of the district colleges called for in
his famous scheme for popular education. In a very

definite sense, he looked upon each of the University
schools as a distinct institution, not unlike the projected
academies, and, therefore, the man who built one of these
pavilions, which typified in brick and mortar a single
school, was entitled to as much credit as if he had erected
the main structure of a district college.

Starting with the pavilion situated at the northern end
of West Lawn, we find that the bricks used in its construction
were laid by Phillips and Carter, of Richmond,
whilst its woodwork was from the hand of James Oldham.
The brickwork of the second pavilion, on the
same side of the Lawn, was from the hand of Matthew
Brown; the woodwork from that of James Dinsmore.
The contractor for the brickwork of the third pavilion
was John M. Perry, and for the woodwork, Perry and
Dinsmore; for the brickwork of the fourth pavilion,
Matthew Brown, David Knight, and Hugh Chisholm,
and for the woodwork, John M. Perry. Carter and
Phillips furnished the brickwork for the fifth pavilion—
at the south end of West Lawn,—and George W.
Spooner the woodwork. At least three of the pavilions
situated on the East Lawn, beginning at the northern end,
were erected by Richard Ware. The woodwork for the
fourth pavilion seems to have been from the hand of
James Dinsmore. The hotels, A, B, C, D, E, and F,
were built by Perry, Spooner, Nelson Barksdale, Curtis
Carter, William Phillips and A. B. Thorn. Perry alone
had a share in the construction of all the hotels except
Hotel D. The contractors for the numerous dormitories
were the same men as the contractors for the pavilions
and hotels. The bricks for the serpentine walls were
furnished by Perry, Phillips, and Carter; the tin for all the
houses by A. H. Brooks.[9]

We have already referred briefly to the history of John
M. Perry. He not only conveyed to the College and the
University almost the entire area of ground on which the
group of buildings now stands, but he also had a more extensive
part in their erection, as a whole, than any other
person employed in the work. Spooner, who was associated
with him in his carpentry, appears first under contract
to General Cocke at Bremo, where he was a colaborer
with Neilson, afterwards a partner of Dinsmore
in the construction of the Rotunda. He remained at
the University during many years engaged in making the
repairs which were soon constantly required; and he was
so much respected there, that, during a short interval,
he filled the responsible office of proctor. Curtis Carter
and William Phillips were brickmakers in business in
Richmond. The famous Brockenbrough House, afterwards
the White House of the Confederacy, was a monument
of Carter's mechanical skill; and he had manufactured
most of the material used in the thick walls of
the handsome banks of that city in those times. This
firm, responding to the advertisement inserted in the
Enquirer by the proctor in the spring of 1819, sent in a
bid to supply one million bricks for the use of the University,
which was an indication of the great scale of their
operations.

Alexander Garrett, a shrewd and competent judge, and
as bursar in a good position to compare the skill of the
different contractors, pronounced the work of Richard
Ware to be superior to that of all the others. Ware
resided in Philadelphia, where he had built several of
the most imposing public and private edifices adorning
that cultivated city. He had seen the advertisement,—
which had appeared in the journals there,—for the
erection of the University pavilions and dormitories,

and had visited Charlottesville at once to offer his bid in
person; and Jefferson had accepted that bid on the condition
of his procuring his brickmakers and bricklayers
from the North. It was perhaps due largely to them,
and to the superior opportunities for training that had
been open to them there, that the work with which Ware
was credited, received such warm encomiums.

Subordinate to the contractors, there were at least
three stonecutters who deserve some notice: John Gorman
and Michael and Giacomo Raggi. Our first view
of Gorman is in Lynchburg, where, before he was induced
to come to the University by Jefferson, he had been
employed in a large marble quarry. Having been heartily
recommended by Christopher Anthony, a highly
esteemed citizen of that town, he was engaged to chisel
the Tuscan capitals and bases; and was also expected to
do all kinds of stonework that might be required, such
as keystones, and window and door sills. He seems to
have hacked into shape most of those needed for the
hotels and dormitories. He was paid in accord with a
tri-monthly measurement; and the fact that one-half of
the amount due him at the end of each interval was always
held back for six months, would seem to prove that
he was not entirely reliable, and, for that reason, had to
be subjected to a check of some sort.

The Raggis were Italian brothers who had been imported
in accord with the advice of Jefferson. The first
intimation that he gave of his intention to pursue his
architectural scheme on a more ambitious scale than was
reflected in the first pavilion, was his request for authority
from the Board of Visitors to bring in a stonecutter
who had been trained in his art in Italy. Micheli and
Giacomo Raggi were procured through the offices of

Thomas Appleton, the American consul at Leghorn.
They arrived in Baltimore in June, 1819. They proved
to be expensive from the very start: it was necessary to
advance them a large sum of money before they sailed;
and this was swelled by another draft on the bursar to
pay the cost of the journey from Maryland to Virginia.
The stone which they were called upon, after their arrival,
to chisel, had nothing in common with their native marbles;
and this was perhaps one reason why Micheli, at
least, showed almost at once a lazy callousness to the requirements
of his contract. Previous to July 16, some
test of their abilities had been made, for writing on that
day to the proctor, Jefferson said, "If Mr. Micheli
should be sufficiently advanced in his carving of a capital
to judge of its success by to-morrow morning, I would
ride up in the morning to see it." One month afterwards,
Spooner, in a letter to Brockenbrough, then absent
in Richmond, remarked rather pointedly that the "Italians
are going on at the same gait, earning fifty cents a
day." Their services, in the end, promised to be so unprofitable,
owing primarily to the unfit nature of the
stone which they had to work in, that, in September, 1820,
the committee of superintendence decided to release them
both, although the contract of one had still to run for
eighteen months and of the other, for twenty. Giacomo
had given only fourteen months of labor; Micheli, only
twelve; and on that ground, the committee refused to pay
the sum that would be due for their homeward passage.
Although Micheli Raggi, the least industrious and trustworthy
of the two, had been in the University's employment
for twelve months, he had been the cause of an expenditure
on his account of $1,390.56. Giacomo Raggi
did not accompany his brother to Italy; or if he did, he had
returned to Charlottesville by November 22, 1821, for,
by that date, the outlay for his board and lodging had
again become a charge on the funds of the University.[10]

VII. How Materials Were Procured

If we except the marbles imported from Italy, the
fundamental materials for the construction of the pavilions,
dormitories, and hotels were obtained in the
neighborhood of the University. There was a quarry
nearby which afforded a great quantity of stone; the
quality of it, as we have seen, unfitted it for conversion
into capitals and bases; but it served very well for foundations
and for the sills which were required for so many of
the doors and windows. As this local stone was too hard
and flinty for more pretentious forms, the Board endeavored
to find a better sort in other Virginian deposits; and
with that object in view, one of the Italians was sent, in
October, 1819, to Bremo, on the James River, to examine
General Cocke's freestone quarry, and to report whether
or not the blocks were suitable for Corinthian capitals.
He was ordered to bring back a load of four thousand
pounds. Cocke gave him the sample solicited, but he
wrote the proctor that he had no confidence in its real
adaptability to such a purpose. He thought, however,
that the freestone which was to be found in large quantities
on Mt. Graham in his neighborhood, could, with
ease, be used in the carving of Ionic capitals.

Brockenbrough, concluding that it would be cheaper
to purchase in Richmond the stone that was needed, requested
Thomas R. Conway,—who was interested in a
quarry situated near that city,—to send him a sample of

a Tuscan base and capital made of his product, and also
asked him to blast out blocks suitable for the Corinthian
and Ionic capitals. The Italians were so successful in
carving a beautiful Corinthian leaf out of this stone that
Brockenbrough wrote to Cocke in November (1819)
that he had no doubt of his ability to obtain in this new
quarter all the capitals wanted. On December 8, two
blocks were sent from Richmond by Conway, one of which
weighed 5,572 pounds, and the other, 2,856 pounds.
They proved to be very difficult to chisel, and the capitals
fashioned from them were decided to be too brittle to
withstand the disintegrating influence of heat and cold.
But that hope of procuring the right material in Virginia
was not yet relinquished was disclosed, a few months later,
by the search which Gorman and one of the Italians together
made in Augusta, and probably in other counties of
the Valley, for stone better adapted to the carving of
Corinthian capitals. All the specimens, however, which
were tested in this excursion, turned out to be disappointing.

As early as October, 1819, Cocke had urged the dismissal
of the Raggis, and the importation from Italy of the
marbles required. His prediction that this course would
have to be pursued was fully verified in the end. In
April, 1821, the Visitors received from Thomas Appleton,
the American consul in Leghorn, a statement showing
the cost of Ionic and Corinthian capitals delivered on
shipboard in that harbour; and it was found that these
marbles, in spite of the wide ocean, could be transferred
from Europe to the University for a sum smaller than
the one that had been dissipated in the attempted use of
the Virginian stone. The committee of superintendence
were, therefore, instructed to procure from Carrara all
that should be thereafter needed.

The bricks used in the buildings were moulded and
burnt in the neighborhood, as it was too expensive to
transport them from a distance. The chief manufacturers
were Perry, Thorn, Carter, Phillips, and Nathaniel
Chamberlain.

The lumber required by the contractors in such large
quantities was purchased from the numerous sawmills in
the thickly wooded surrounding region. Perhaps, the
most productive of these was the Hydraulic Mill, owned
by Perry, who, through it, was able to supply, not only
himself, but the other contractors with lumber. He also
furnished for use at the University a large quantity of
plank in such manufactured forms as scantlings, ceilings,
joists, rafters, floorings, and sills. Nelson
Barksdale, the former proctor, provided lumber of all
sorts for the same general purpose; so did several members
of the Meriwether family; so did Thomas Draffin,
Warner Wood, and David Owens, of Albemarle, and
William Mitchell, of Orange. The greater part of the
glass and hardware was obtained from firms in Richmond,
the most prominent of which were John Van Lew and Co.,
and Brockenbrough and Hume. The painting and glazing
were principally the work of Edward Lawber, of
Philadelphia, through skilful assistants like John Vowles
and Angus McKay. The ornaments for the entablatures
that adorned the pavilion drawing-rooms,—the ox-heads
and flowers, the rosettes, lozenges, female heads, flowers
on pannels and friezes,—came from the expert fingers
of W. J. Coffee, an artisan from the North.

Among the most expensive items in the general account
for the building of the pavilions, dormitories, and
hotels were the charges for transportation. Many articles
used in their construction were brought overland from
Richmond, and as the number of wagons on the road increased

and fell off with the seasons and the volume of
trade, tedious delays were thus often caused in obtaining
even indispensable materials. The principal highway
from the Valley passed through Rockfish Gap, and thence
zigzagged westward by way of Charlottesville to the
capital of the State. Caravans of lumbering, canvascovered
vehicles jolted along in spring, summer, and autumn,
backwards and forwards, over this road; and the
waggoners were as well known on their route as the coachmen
who drove the tallyhoes between London and Oxford
in the early part of the last century, were on that
great turnpike, or the captains of the Mississippi steamboats,
in more modern times, were on that stream.
Many belonged to the German stock that had settled on
the banks of the Shenandoah, as their names, Jacob Craft,
Jacob Shuey, Philip Koiner, and the like, indicate. Kegs
and barrels made up the freight usually conveyed in these
wagons, while small articles were put in the heavy stages
that carried passengers to and from Richmond. All ponderous
goods were necessarily transported by the lines
of batteaux that navigated the James River; some of
these batteaux, when of light draft, were poled up the
Rivanna to Milton, where their cargoes were unloaded,
to be sent to the University by wagon; but, in many cases,
the boats stopped at Scottsville, on James River, and
from thence their large packages were carted up to Charlottesville
overland.

In the course of the building, the University had use
for the labor of many hired slaves. In 1821, the number
employed there in different ways was thirty-two, some of
whom were still under age. The terms for which they
served did not run over one year, although, doubtless, the
contracts with their owners were most often renewed at
expiration. The overseer in charge was James Herron,

who was responsible for the safe keeping of the necessary
supplies for the men and horses, and also for all the
carts and tools. There seems to have been a large garden
full of vegetables under cultivation for the benefit of the
laborers; and the overseer was required to have it properly
sowed, planted, and tended in season.

VIII. The Building of the Rotunda

The various details dwelt upon in the preceding chapter
are pertinent only to the pavilions, dormitories, and
hotels. The Rotunda was not only separate from these
edifices in a physical way, but the history of its construction
is equally distinct from theirs. Most of the buildings
of the University were erected simultaneously, and
all were practically completed before the excavations began
for the foundations of the dominating edifice. In the
earliest scheme, it will be recalled, the pavilions were
to be placed on each of the three lines forming the
boundaries of the first plat; and there were to be twenty
dormitories attached to each pavilion. When it was decided
to raise an imposing structure in the middle of the
north line, this scheme was altered,—instead of the original
number of pavilions and dormitories to be erected on
the east and west lines respectively, it was necessary now
to build five pavilions, with ten dormitories attached to
each.

Although the Rotunda, the central feature of the beautiful
architectural setting of the University, seems to have
had, in its main lines at least, its germ with Latrobe, yet
in the shape which the suggestion, once dropped in Jefferson's
mind, finally took, that building was more distinctly
characteristic of his classical taste than any other
standing on the ground. It must have been as perceptible

to him as to Thornton and Latrobe that a stately edifice
rising on this conspicuous site would enhance the imposing
aspect of the whole group; and it is quite probable that,
—in the beginning at least,—when there was so slim a
prospect of the College ever becoming a university, his
omission of such a structure was due, as already intimated,
to the dictation of economy. It is easy to conceive of
the artistic delight which he must have felt in planning
for such a building; and it was due to him alone, apparently,
that the Pantheon was adopted as the model.
That temple was considered by many to be the noblest
specimen of the architecture of antiquity surviving to the
present day; and it was reproduced with perfect fidelity
in the plates of Palladio, so well known to Jefferson.

This famous building was in the form of a cylinder
surmounted by a hemisphere. The exterior walls were
of concrete, faced with brick and marble. The dome was
of concrete also, with a bronzed outer surface and a
gilded ceiling. Sixteen granite columns, crowned by Corinthian
capitals of marble, upheld the weight of the
portico. A row of fluted marble pillars ran around the
circumference of the great apartment, while the interior
walls were covered with variegated marbles, upon which,
and upon the floor, shone the rays of the sun falling
through a circular orifice in the top of the dome.

In reproducing this splendid edifice, Jefferson was compelled
to use the humble materials of brick and mortar instead
of brick and concrete; plaster and white-wash instead
of a marble facing; tin plates instead of bronze
tiles. In one detail, however, the building in imitation is
superior to the one copied. The masterpiece of Agrippa
is approached by only five steps, a condition that imparts
a squat appearance to the structure looked at from the
front. The Rotunda, on the other hand, is approached

by fourteen steps, which to the eye lifts it up from the
ground, and imparts to it a lighter and loftier aspect.
By thus elevating the floor of its portico, the height of its
cylindrical dome was so far increased as to be equal in
degree to the diameter. This diameter is one half of
the Pantheon's in extent, and the area of the edifice is
about one fourth more contracted than that of its prototype.
At first, it was Jefferson's design, as already
stated, to lay off a lawn on either side of the Rotunda, but
low-roofed gymnasia were afterwards substituted for
them,—not perhaps because they enhanced the beauty
of the central building, but more probably because the
space was too valuable to be left in a purely ornamental
state.

The Rockfish Gap Report recommended that the Rotunda
should contain apartments for religious worship and
public examinations, and also for instruction in music,
drawing, and similar studies, but that the section of it
which would be immediately under the dome should be
reserved for the storage of books. That the latter was
the principal end which the building was expected to subserve
was demonstrated by the fact that, in the successive
reports of the Visitors, it is ordinarily designated as the
"Library." There was no provision for numerous lecture-rooms
in the proposed structure, the explanation of
which lay, of course, in the assignment of halls for that
purpose in the pavilions; but after the edifice was finished,
the little use which could be made of the apartments below
the highest floor for the objects for which they were
intended,—there being no demand for music and drawing
lessons, and the examinations taking place only at
long intervals,—led to the shifting of the lecture-rooms
from the pavilions, where they caused so much domestic
awkwardness,—to these vacant apartments in the Rotunda.

The first step towards this was the order of
the Board of Visitors that the rooms should be kept for
such schools as were attended by so many students that
they could not be conveniently accommodated in a pavilion
lecture-hall; and on the same occasion, an apartment
in the basement was fixed upon as the future chemical
laboratory.[11]

There were not sufficient funds on hand, during the
early period of construction, to permit of the erection of
so large and costly an edifice as the Rotunda. In April,
1821, the Board of Visitors ordered the committee of
superintendence to refrain from entering into any contract
for its building until they were fully satisfied that the expenditure
"on its account would not interfere with the
completion of the pavilions, dormitories, and hotels," the
erection of which had either begun or would soon begin.
This made it impossible to start upon its actual construction
before the General Assembly had appropriated a
large sum for that purpose. It was not until October 7,
1822, indeed, that the proctor was told to stipulate with
"skilful and responsible undertakers" for its erection
according to the provisions of the plan already in his possession.
Cocke, as a member of the committee of superintendence,
had criticized the disjointedness of the terms

in accord with which the pavilions, dormitories, and hotels
had been built, and he now begged Cabell to support
him in the resolution "not to permit the last grand building
to be carried on in the loose and undefined manner as
to the contracts, which, in the previous parts of the work,
had been productive of so much disappointment to us, and
had been the just cause of so much dissatisfaction to the
public." The persons who, in the beginning, submitted
bids were either too lacking in capital to dispense with the
aid of advances by the University, or they demanded a
fifty per cent. increase in the figures of their estimates.
Neither Jefferson nor the proctor,—perhaps, from
Cocke's warning,—thought it judicious to accept any offer
on these conditions, and for that reason, the Rotunda
was practically erected, piece by piece and stage by stage,
by the University itself, instead of being turned over in
the end to the Board of Visitors, an edifice completed but
still one to be paid for.

Among the builders of the Rotunda were Thorn and
Chamberlain, to whom were assigned the brickwork; for
which they were required to furnish the mortar; and
they also agreed to bring on trained men from Philadelphia
for the actual bricklaying. Thorn received a wage
of fifty dollars a month for overlooking the manufacture
of the bricks, since most of this material was made in
the University kiln by hired labor. From a letter written
in February to Cocke by Neilson, we learn that Jefferson
was full "of brickmaking ideas at present," which
clearly indicates how minute was the supervision which he
gave even to so ordinary a detail. Dinsmore and Neilson
were the principal agents in carrying through the
carpenters' and joiners' tasks for the new building; but
the lumber, in this instance, as in that of the brick, was
furnished at the University's expense, although the firm

made all the purchases; and it was also held responsible
for the accuracy of the bricklaying.[12] The charges for
measuring all the building work periodically as it went
forward were borne in equal shares by the University
and the contractors.

On July 4, Jefferson was able to write to Cabell, in a
spirit of unrepressed exultation, that the Rotunda "was
rising nobly." In the course of 1823 not less than thirty
persons, whether or not regularly engaged in business,
supplied the different articles that were required for this
building, such as lime, lumber, dressed plank, shingles,
hardware and iron; and there were almost uncountable
bills for hauling as well as for providing food for man
and beast employed in its construction. The persons who
furnished the principal materials were the same as those
who had furnished the like for the pavilions, dormitories,
and hotels. For instance, three hundred thousand bricks,
in addition to those burnt in the University kiln, were
purchased of John M. Perry.

The most admirable features of the Rotunda were the
ornate capitals and bases. In September, 1823, Jefferson
and Cocke, as the committee of superintendence, entered
into a contract with Giacomo Raggi, which obliged
him to obtain in person in Italy for that edifice ten Corinthian
and two pilaster bases of Carrara marble. He
was to receive sixty-five dollars for each of the Corinthian,
and thirty-two dollars and fifty cents for each of the
pilaster,—one half of which sums was to be paid before
the bases were dumped on shipboard at Leghorn, and the
other half afterwards. Raggi had spent his hours of
leisure in carving numerous articles in alabaster marble,
and these he hoped to sell privately for his own profit;

but so improvident had he been, in spite of a high wage,
that, in leaving for Richmond by coach on his way to
Italy, he was compelled to ask for an advance of fifty
dollars from the proctor to settle his tavern bill on his
expected departure from that city, and also to cover the
cost of his ocean passage. The contract proved to be
futile and valueless, for while Raggi seems to have gone
to Leghorn with the purpose of carrying it out, he failed,
—no doubt from impecuniosity,—in fulfilling what had
been required of him. The marbles were finally procured
with the assistance of Thomas Appleton, and, in
the course of 1825, were sent over in two vessels, one of
which made port at Boston, and the other at New York.
When he informed the proctor of the arrival of the ship
at Boston, General Dearborn, the Collector of Customs,
who had been the Secretary of War in Jefferson's Cabinet,
and who, from this fact, was interested in the University,
repeated Mr. Appleton's statement to him that
the capitals "would be found probably superior in dimensions,
but certainly equal in architectural perfection to any
in the United States"; and that they were copies of those
which adorned the Pantheon at Rome. There were
twenty-four ponderous cases, and Dearborn recommended
that a petition should be addressed to Congress to
admit them free of duty. As the custom charges would
run as high as $2,057.15, exemption from payment would
save a large amount that might be applied to some useful
purpose. There seems to have been two consignments
unloaded at New York: one, of six cases; the other,
by a different vessel, the Caroline, of thirty-one.

The marbles were transported to Richmond from Boston
and New York by vessel, and there turned over to
Colonel Bernard Peyton, the agent of the University, who
seems to have looked upon the responsibility of taking

care of them as a very clumsy and perplexing burden.
So prodigiously heavy were the capitals and bases that it
was found very arduous to transfer them from the dock
to the canal basin, from which the batteaux plying up the
James set out. They weighed from three to five tons,
and the question arose: were the boats wide and staunch
enough to take them on board without risk? They were
finally carried up the river and unloaded at Scottsville,
and from that village were borne by wagons to the University.
It required the services of a very capable overseer
to bring about their safe delivery; and such was Lyman
Peck, who superintended their removal on board the
batteaux, their passage up stream, and finally their conveyance
overland. Several weeks were consumed in accomplishing
the entire task after the marbles had left
the Richmond wharf. It was not until April 19, 1826,
six months at least after their arrival in the dock there,
that Colonel Peyton was able to report that, before the
end of the ensuing week, the last capital would have been
forwarded by water. Already the marbles which had
reached the University were in the course of being put in
their appointed places.

Jefferson died on July 4, 1826. A few days before he
was forced to take to his bed with his fatal illness, he
visited the University, and in the final glimpse which we
have of him within the precincts of the institution to which
he had given up all his thoughts and energies in his old
age, he is seen seated and looking out through a window
on the Lawn to watch the workingmen as they raised a
capital to the top of the column at the southwest corner
of the portico. So oblivious was he of all besides that
he had unconsciously remained standing until Mr. Wertenbaker
silently brought him a chair. It seems very appropriate
that his last association in his own person with

the university which he loved so absorbingly should have
been with the noblest of all its buildings.

Dinsmore and Neilson were sometimes disposed to act
impatiently in their intercourse with the Faculty. They
were pointedly complained of, on one occasion, as replying
offensively when they were asked to provide shelves
for the books in the galleries of the library. Certain
stairways of this apartment had not yet been finished,
and these builders resented the suggestion that the work
should be hastened on this part at the expense of other
parts equally important, although many volumes thereby
might have been made accessible for use at an earlier
date. Nor did they concern themselves about the deafening
noise raised by their tools. Dinsmore was requested
to remove a workingman whose hammer rendered
it impossible for one of the professors to go on
with his lecture; the only answer from him, according to
the report of the Faculty, was "a gross insult in the presence
of the class." What he had said was, no doubt,
true enough at that time; namely, that "the professors
had no business in the building," and it seems to have
been this fact alone that had caused him to threaten, with
a fierce oath, "to turn them all out." It is quite probable
that the inconveniences of the lecture-halls in the
pavilions had proved so irksome to the teachers,—not
to bring in their wives,—that some of them had been
forced to take refuge in the half-finished lecture-rooms of
the Rotunda, to the natural discomposure of both Dinsmore
and Neilson, who were endeavoring to hurry forward
its completion.

In October, 1826, the noble apartment reserved for
the library was on the point of being finished; only a
flight of steps and the laying of the marble flags on the
floor of the portico were thereafter wanting to complete

the whole building. The adjacent gymnasia, however,
were still in the course of construction. In November,
the proctor was able to announce that the Rotunda, although
the work on it was not entirely concluded, was
in actual use; and that the professor of chemistry was
now in possession of two rooms on the floor below. A
third room was used for the purpose of both chemistry
and natural history; and there was, in addition, a large
lecture-room. There were still to receive the last touches
one large and one small oval room, as well as the general
entrance hall. It was not until 1832 that the stone
steps were finally erected, but, in the meanwhile, wooden
ones had certainly been in use as a temporary substitute.
So defective did the fireplaces, by 1827, turn out to be,
that the Faculty, in disgust, petitioned the Board to set
up stoves, and the ingenuity of Bonnycastle was sharply
tested to find a remedy for the smoking chimneys.

IX. Additions to Main Building

The Rockfish Gap Report had recommended that anatomy
should form a part of the course to be taught in the
School of Medicine, but it was not until March, 1825,
that the Board decided that Jefferson's design for an
anatomical hall should be adopted, and that steps should
be taken to erect it just as soon as the funds then expected
to be paid by the National Government had been received.
In anticipation of the shelter of its roof, two skeletons
were purchased by Dr. Robert Goodhow, of New York;
and this seems to have been the first practical step towards
the establishment of the medical school. By
February, 1826, the construction of the hall had begun
under a contract with Dinsmore and Neilson, and by
August the roof had been completed. As it was necessary

to build with strict economy, the proctor,—who, in
the absence of General Cocke, was overseeing the work,
—complained to him of an expensive Chinese railing
which had been put up on the edge of the roof. So
rapid did the construction go forward that the hall seems
to have been ready for use by February of the following
year, only twelve months after the foundation stone was
laid.

There was no suggestion in the Rockfish Gap Report
of the need of an observatory in the projected university,
and yet astronomy was a study which Jefferson looked
upon as almost as important as architecture. An entry
in his notebook accompanying a plan which he had drawn
for such a building shows that he thought that astronomy,
like architecture, could be taught by the object lesson of
one of the University's structures. "The concave ceiling
of the Rotunda," he remarked, with a characteristic absence
of humor, "is proposed to be painted sky-blue,
and spangled with gilt stars in their position and magnitude
copied exactly from any selected hemisphere of our
latitude. A seat for the operator, movable and flexible
at any point in the concave, will be necessary, and means
of giving to every star its exact position. A white oak
sapling is to be used as a boom, its heel working in the
centre of the sphere, with a rope suspending the small end
of the boom and passing over a pulley in the zenith, and
hanging down to the floor, by which the boom may be
raised or lowered at will. A common saddle with stirrups
is to be fixed as the seat of the operator; and seated
in that, he may, by the rope, be propelled to any point in
the concave."

It was probably the costliness of the projected building
that influenced Jefferson to go slowly in advising the
erection of an observatory, which, in size at least, should

be in proportion to the other structures. In 1820, he
calculated that ten and even twelve thousand dollars
would be needed; and the only prospect of obtaining so
large a sum at this time lay in collecting the balance of
the subscription money, to be supplemented by the rents
expected from the hotels and dormitories so soon as
the institution should open its doors. This prospect vanished
in a short time; and three years afterwards, Jefferson
was disposed to convert the house occupied by the
proctor on Monroe Hill into the building desired. The
isolation and elevation of its site appeared to adapt it
to such a purpose. Not long before his death occurred,
he, with characteristic care and minuteness, after examining
the plans of all the principal establishments of this
kind then in existence, drew up one of his own. The edifice
was to be constructed so massively in its foundations
and walls that it would be impossible for it to be liable
at any time to disturbing vibrations. There was to be a
cupola to shelter the telescope, with openings towards
every point of the horizon, and thus, in every direction,
looking out on a very wide expanse. A very high attitude
for the site, however, would not be required, as the
sky line at the University was not, as in Europe, shut in
by numerous houses, both public and private. On the
reservoir mountain there existed a site which combined
in itself all the favorable conditions that were indispensable,
except that the remotest limits of the eastern heavens
were concealed by the barrier of the Southwest Range.
For that reason, Jefferson seems to have, at one time,
canvassed the expediency of placing the observatory on
the top of one of these intervening peaks. A small
structure was erected on the reservoir mountain about
March, 1828; but it appears to have served no practical
purpose owing to the lack of a proper fitting out, and
in 1859, it was pulled down, and the materials which
entered into it were carted away for building elsewhere.
A small brick house was erected on a knoll just south of
Monroe Hill, was equipped by Lukens, of Philadelphia,
and put in charge of Dr. Patterson, who took many observations
there, and there did other astronomical work
in connection with his classes in natural philosophy.

So soon as the contracts were given out, in the spring
of 1819, for the construction of additional pavilions and
dormitories, Jefferson began to consider the means of obtaining
a permanent and voluminous supply of water.
On April 9, he received a proposal from Mr. Balinger,
of Philadelphia, to bring it within the precincts by means
of pipes that were to tap springs on the side of Observatory
Mountain. A previous bid seems to have been
made in March by William Cosby, who was to have a
share of some importance in the building of the University.
By August, the work of boring the pipes, which
were manufactured by hollowing out large logs of wood,
had begun. The reservoir, however, had not yet been
constructed, for, on October 7, James Wade, who had
recently inspected the ground, advised Jefferson to place
the receiving basin as high up on the mountain as practicable,
so as to avoid the use of pumps. This method,
he said, would be certain to create a strong natural flow
of water for extinguishing a great fire, or for supplying
an ornamental jet d'eau, should one be desired for diversifying
the beauty of the University grounds. He suggested
the construction of a circular reservoir, to consist
of oak plank two and a half to three inches in thickness,
and capable of holding three thousand or even four thousand
gallons, with an arch of brick thrown over it for
protection. The excavation of the ditch to contain the
pipes occupied the interval from May to November.

Either the work of laying them was delayed, or they had
to be replaced or renewed in part, for both in August,
1821, and in May, July, and November, 1832, the University
was subjected to the expense of hauling logs and
pipes. In the meanwhile, a number of cisterns had been
constructed here and there within the precincts by Hugh
Chisholm and William Phillips; and there were also sunk
wells that required as many as ten thousand bricks to be
brought from the Perry kiln.

There has already been a brief allusion to the gardens
which lay in the rear of the ten pavilions. The walls enclosing
these gardens were of a shape which has been
aptly described as serpentine. It will be recalled that
Jefferson, during his mission to France, had made a tour
of the English counties, and in the course of his circuit
of the island, had been very much pleased with the
beauty of the gardens, especially in their relation to landscape.
It was, probably, during this tour that he first
noticed the serpentine walls, which, in those times as in
these, environed so many of the English gardens, and
being delighted with their graceful and unique sinuosity,
he, no doubt, carried this impression with him until he
had an opportunity of reproducing their shape in planning
the garden walls for Central College. In England,
this type of wall, because it presents a larger surface to
the rays of the sun, is thought to be better adapted to
the growth of flowering vines and fruits. The smaller
cost of such an enclosure was, perhaps, an important reason
for its adoption for the protection of the University
gardens. The serpentine wall can be safely raised with
a thickness of one brick to a greater height than an
ordinary straight wall of the same dimensions. The
original serpentine walls at the University were only
half a brick through, and yet from ground to top the distance

is as much as six or seven feet; and the strength
of their framework is proven by the endurance of most
of the first material used, during a period of nearly one
hundred years.

In providing for the buildings for the new seat of learning,
Jefferson did not forget the need of a clock and bell.
In 1825, the proctor obtained an offer from Joseph
Saxton, of Philadelphia, who represented the famous
maker, Lukens, who was then in Paris. Apparently,
this was not accepted, for, in April, Jefferson wrote to
Mr. Coolidge, of Boston,—a city which then had a
high reputation in the art of bell making,—to ask him
for assistance in procuring the bell so soon to be used.
"We want one," he said, "which can be generally heard
at a distance of two miles, because this will always ensure
its being heard at Charlottesville."

Coolidge, in his reply to this letter, seems to have
recommended Mr. Willard, of Boston, but no clock and
bell were manufactured that year, for, on April 3, 1826,
the Board of Visitors empowered the executive committee
to buy a clock and bell, should Congress consent to
remit the duties on the capitals imported from Italy.[13]
The order for the bell given to Willard was countermanded
by Cocke after Jefferson's death, and an order
for a triangle at first substituted; but the clock was

finally made by Willard in accord with the elaborate instructions
which Jefferson had given in his letter to
Coolidge in June, 1826. In the spring of 1827, the
clock appears to have been put in place, for it was during
that year that Willard visited the University for the
purpose. A bell seems to have been ordered at first
from Joseph White, of New York, but it did not give
satisfaction. In November, 1827, a bell was shipped
by Mr. Coolidge from Boston, and this was probably the
one which remained in constant use until 1886, when
having cracked, it became necessary to discard it; but it
still survives as a venerable relic of the many years during
which it sounded through the precincts of the University,
and over the surrounding region of country.

When, in the spring of 1819, the appointment of a
proctor was under discussion, Governor Preston, recommended
Arthur S. Brockenbrough, a member of a distinguished
family, who, at that time, was superintendent
of repairs to the Capitol in Richmond, and was also in
charge of the improvements to the Capitol Square, then
in progress. "Brockenbrough," he wrote, "was judicious,
economical, and industrious, a man of correct
taste, who had been trained in building; and in character,
unexceptional, and in disposition, amiable." These encomiums
were not exaggerated. His ability and fidelity
in performing the practical part imposed on him officially
in the erection of the University have not been awarded
the praise to which they fully entitle him in the history of
the institution. Constant vigilance, unceasing activity,
and the power to direct and use men to advantage, as
well as knowledge of building in its general and special
features alike, were required of him, and all these qualifications
he exhibited. His responsibilities covered a
large field of small details arising continuously, and calling

for sound judgment and expert information to meet
them correctly and promptly. Jefferson pointed out
how intricate were the duties of the office in his letter
inviting Alexander Duke, in 1819, to undertake them.
"They are of two characters so distinct," he said, "that
it is difficult to find them associated in the same person.
One part ... is to make contracts with workmen, superintend
their execution, see that they are, according to
plan, performed faithfully and in a workmanlike manner,
settle their accounts and pay them off. The other is
to hire common laborers, overlook them, provide subsistence,
and do whatever else is necessary for the institution."[14]

It is true that Jefferson relieved Brockenbrough of
much drudgery that would have fallen on him had Jefferson
himself been satisfied with a nominal oversight.
We have seen him laying off the site of Central College,
drawing up the specifications for the buildings from cellar
to garret, prescribing the tests for brick, stone, and
timber, writing out many of the contracts with his own
hand, and preparing the deeds to the purchased lots.
But he very probably did not take upon himself to perform
every one of those duties which he enumerated in
the letter to Duke. Although he visited the University
so frequently, yet it was not possible for him to remain
the entire round of working hours, and there must have
been, in his intervals of absence, however short, a throng
of small matters of business rising up suddenly and requiring
to be at once passed upon. As Bremo, the home
of General Cocke, the other member of the committee
of superintendence, was situated a day's journey off, it
was not possible for him to be constantly within the precincts.

Brockenbrough, on the other hand, resided on
the ground; the affairs of the University rested upon
him, from morning to night, through the entire week,
regardless even of the Sabbath; and when his two superiors
were not present, he alone was responsible for the
correct and orderly progress of the buildings. The accounts
of his office, which still survive, are very voluminous,
and they embrace every side of the original expenditures
for construction.

That his temper was sometimes harassed by the exasperating
intricacies of his duties crops out in the history
of his relations with some of the workingmen. W.
J. Coffee, whose artistic eye and hand fashioned the ornamental
parts of the entablatures of the pavilion drawingrooms,
roundly denounced him, on one occasion, as "illbred,
unhandsome, and insulting," but as there had been
a difference of opinion in the settlement of his balance,
it is quite possible that Brockenbrough was only endeavoring
to safeguard the interests of the University. That
was certainly so in the case of a contention with Edward
Lawber, who supplied the paints for so many of the
buildings. The records indicate that there was but one
suit of importance brought against the institution during
his administration by any of the contractors; this was by
James Oldham; a proof that care had been taken by him
to deal justly and exactly with all the persons who had
a share in constructing it.

After Jefferson's death, Brockenbrough's prolonged
experience under circumstances that sharpened his
powers of observation was very serviceable to both
Cocke and Madison as the executive committee. There
still survives a letter written by him to the latter about
the time that Madison succeeded to the rectorship,
which contains many valuable practical suggestions respecting

the dormitories and hotels, and also the hospital,
which had been projected but not yet begun.

X. Cost of Buildings

What was the outlay required for the erection of the
elaborate fabric of the University? The answer to this
question is an important one, not only from an economical
and historical point of view in general, but also because
it demonstrates in another way the breadth and dignity
of the work which Jefferson performed for his native
State in founding and building that institution. It would
be possible, from the contents of the proctor's vouchers
belonging to the period of construction, to offer tables
that would embrace every detail of the entire cost; but
the prices of a few of the essential and fundamental materials
used by the contractors will be sufficient for our
present purpose.

The chief price list at that time was known as the
Philadelphia Price Book, and we shall find that it governed
many of the charges in the building of the University,
although, in some cases, with modifications called
for by local conditions. Take, for instance, the bids of
the carpenters and joiners in 1819. "From my knowledge
of the manner in which the work is to be done,"
writes James Dinsmore in May of that year, "and of
the difficulty of procuring good workingmen, and also in
the difference in [the price of] the materials between here
and Philadelphia, I shall not consider myself justified in
undertaking by the book (Philadelphia Price Book) as
the standard, at a less advance than the difference of the
currency between Pennsylvania and Virginia. Should it
be more agreeable to the Visitors, I would undertake it
at five per cent. less, provided they get an experienced

Philadelphia measurer to measure the work after it is
executed. At these rates, I should wish to undertake the
carpenter's and joiner's work of the Ionic pavilion, with
the range of dormitories attached to it." It seems that
Dinsmore and Perry, after this letter was written, consented
to reduce the amount of their bid because there
had been a fall in wages since it was first submitted;
and they asserted their willingness now to conform to
the Philadelphia Price Book provided that a Virginia
dollar should be accepted as equal in value to a Pennsylvania
dollar. Perry, testifying, in 1830, in the suit of
James Oldham, said that he recalled "that it was distinctly
understood that the last work let at the University
was to be done at ten per cent. below the first work
undertaken. I recollect I applied to Mr. Jefferson, and
urged it, that, as we were fixed then to do the work, I
did not think it right that we should be required to work
for less than we had done. His reply was, that work had
fallen everywhere and that no more would be given."

The men who had the principal share in building the
University, lacked, with hardly an exception, even a moderate
amount of capital; when they did buy their own
material, payment was usually effected by advances on
their accounts with the proctor; the purchase, in each
case, was really made by him, and a deduction for it was
entered against the balance due the contractor on his
books. But this fact rather increases than diminishes
our ability to find out the most significant charges.

Down to a period as late as 1819, the former habit of
stating all prices in the terms of the old Colonial currency
of pounds and shillings was very often followed.
Thus we find that the edge plank used in the construction
of the pavilions was valued at so many shillings the one
hundred feet; but when the quantity was very large, the

price was expressed in American units. Richard Ware,
in 1820, bought 2,424 feet of W. D. Meriwether at the
rate of thirty dollars the thousand; but this was probably
undressed, as flooring plank furnished by Nelson Barksdale,
the same year, was valued at forty-five dollars for
the same number of feet. The shingles for the kitchen
roofs were purchased at the rate of three dollars and
seventy cents the thousand and scantlings at the rate of
thirty-four dollars. In 1819, John M. Perry agreed to
furnish three hundred thousand bricks in return for fourteen
dollars the thousand for place-brick, and twentyfour
dollars for oil-stock, while the charge of Carter and
Phillips for the same proportions was respectively
eleven dollars and fifty cents, and twenty dollars. The
accounts reveal that the University was able to manufacture
one hundred and eighty thousand bricks within
the space of a month; and the expense of doing this was
estimated at $539.68. This seems to have taken in the
wage of the moulder, the hire of the laborers, and the
cost of their food, as well as the cost of the fifteen cords
of wood consumed in the making.

In the beginning William Leitch, of Charlottesville,
acquired the sole right to supply all the ironmongery for
the buildings; but as this monopoly brought down the
criticism of the trade, and raised up enemies for the new
institution, the contract, with his consent, was cancelled.
As this material was afterwards procured from Richmond,
the prices were very much swelled by the charges
for hauling.

The most onerous single feature in the construction of
the University was the importation of the capitals and
bases from Italy. Writing to Cabell in September, 1821,
Jefferson calculated that the seventeen capitals for
pavilions II, III, V and VIII had cost $1,784.00; and that

the charge for the same number yet to arrive would
be $2,052.00. The freight upon thirty-one boxes from
Leghorn amounted to $264.00. In April, 1823, four
Ionic capitals for pavilion II cost $60.00 apiece; four Corinthian
for pavilion III, $180.00 each; six Ionic for
pavilion v, $55.00 each; and two Corinthian for pavilion
VIII, $110.00 each. Jefferson estimated that the outlay
for transportation added fifty per cent. to the expense at
the quarry. In 1825, the cost of ten whole and two half
capitals for use in the Rotunda amounted to $6,270.27.

The wages of ordinary stonecutters, in 1820, was
twenty-five cents for each superficial foot. It was, however,
fifty cents per foot in straight moulded work, and
seventy-five cents in circular. Alexander Spinks, the
quarrier, received a wage of thirty dollars a month, and
as the charge for board was ten dollars only for the
same length of time, he still retained a satisfactory margin
of profit. In January, 1820, John Gorman was
working at the rate of seventy-five cents the superficial
foot in chiseling the Tuscan bases and capitals. For the
Doric bases and capitals, on the other hand, he was paid
at the rate of eight dollars apiece; for the moulded doorsills,
four dollars and eighteen cents; and for the plain,
two dollars and fifty cents; and for setting the sills, two
dollars respectively.

The work of sheeting the roofs with tin during the
years 1820, 1821, and 1822, was done by the hand of
A. H. Brooks. His scale seems to have been six dollars
and thirty cents for each square. Jefferson soon became
dissatisfied with him because of this high charge, for such
he considered it to be. "The tinning," he wrote Mr.
Yancey, of Buckingham, "can be done as well for one
dollar as he can do it. We were led to it from a belief
that it could not be done without the very expensive and

complicated machine which he used to bind the tin, which
he told us was a patent machine costing forty dollars, and
not to be had in the United States. At that stage of
our business, I got him to come and cover a small house
for me. Seeing his machine at work and how simple the
object was, I saw that the same effect could be produced
by two boards hinged together. I had this done accordingly,
and it did the work as neatly, and something
quicker, than his forty dollar machine, while this could be
made for fifty cents. Any person will learn to do it in
a day as well as in a year."

This letter brings into light, not only Jefferson's unremitting
vigilance in superintending the work of building
at the University, down to the minutest particulars, but
also his shrewd discernment and his mechanical ingenuity.
Brooks seems to have been retained in spite of the discredit
cast upon his machine by this object lesson, for, in
1826, he was employed in laying on such sheets of tin
as the Rotunda needed, at the rate of five dollars and
fifty cents the square,—which was only about one dollar
less than he had charged for the like covering on the
other buildings.[15]

The cost of all the materials used in the construction
was very much increased by the high charge for wagonage
and boatage. We have seen that packages from a
distance, however ponderous,—and there was no one
thing of its size heavier than a marble capital or base,—
were conveyed either in the overland vehicles, or in the
river batteaux that put Charlottesville and Richmond into
commercial intercourse by water. The rates for local
hauling were moderate in comparison, but formed a serious
expense on account of the quantity of lumber and

the like weighty articles dumped by carts within the precincts
of the University. The hardware purchased in
Richmond was transported by wagon at an average return
of one dollar the hundred pounds; and this was also
the rate for blocks of stone. If the overland freight consisted
of but one or two casks, the charge was seventyfive
cents the hundred pounds. On one occasion, William
Estes hauled twenty-five boxes of tin from Richmond
for eighteen dollars and fifty-eight cents; and this
seems to have been the rate customary with his associates
on the road: William Dietrick, James Myers, and
Thomas Priddy. There is on record a charge by another
wagoner, John Craddock, of forty cents the hundred
pounds in the instance of one box of general merchandise
and six boxes of tin. The rate for articles of ordinary
weight brought by boat to the Milton landing was usually
about fifty cents the hundred pounds; on four barrels of
Roman cement transported thither in 1821, and from
thence carted to the University, the aggregate charge was
six dollars. When the Ionic and Corinthian capitals
were imported in 1823, the boatage from Richmond to
Scott's landing in Albemarle, was found to be very expensive,
—Peter Rutherford and William Megginson were
the owners of the batteaux used, and to one of them the
sum of one hundred and twenty-five dollars was paid;
and, no doubt, the same amount to the other. Not less
than six persons were employed for the wagonage to the
University, each of whom received five dollars for every
day of service. Some were occupied with the work at
least eight days and some only four. If the hauling was
from the immediate neighborhood, and the materials
were wood, rock or lumber, the charge by the day ranged
from four dollars to five.

One of the continuous expenses which had to be met

was the hire of slaves and the purchase of provisions for
their support. In 1820, the outlay on this score
amounted to $1,099.08; in 1821, to $1,133.73; in 1822
to $868.64; and in 1825 to $681.00, a steadily falling
scale from year to year. The charge for each negro was
gauged by his age and physical condition. Sixty dollars
was the average amount. When the slave was returned
at the end of his time, he had to be fitted out with outer
and underclothing, and double-soled shoes. The monthly
wages of a white or free colored laborer ranged from
ten to sixteen dollars. These men were either boarded
by the University at a weekly rate, or they were supplied
with meal and bacon, large quantities of which were
bought for them, and also for the slaves, at the rate of
ten cents the pound for the bacon, and two dollars the
barrel for the corn. John Herron, the overseer, received
one hundred and twenty dollars annually for his
services; and this income was increased by his wife, an
industrious seamstress, whose time was chiefly taken up
with sewing for the hired workingmen.

The amounts required for the purchase of separate
articles would fail to give even an approximate idea of
the total expenditures for erecting the several buildings
of the University. There are figures available to show
what was the aggregate outlay which each of these edifices
entailed. In 1820, Jefferson, writing to Cabell,
enclosed for his examination the following estimates:
ten pavilions were to cost six thousand dollars each; six
hotels, three thousand, five hundred dollars each; one
hundred and four dormitories, three hundred and fifty
dollars each. Independently of the Rotunda it was his
belief that the entire group could be constructed for
$162,364.00. In 1821, he stated that the average expenditure
for the pavilions which had been finished was

$8,982.49; for sixteen of the dormitories, $13,898.35,
and for nineteen others, $11,083.63. The estimated
amount to be paid for the pavilions not completed was
$33,563.15, and for dormitories in the like condition,
$39,462.60. Down to this time, the total estimated
cost of buildings unfinished was $110,911.49; the actual
cost of buildings finished, $84,188.51. The divergence
between the expended outlay and the actual outlay for
such structures as were completed before November 29,
1821, is thus explained in the report of the Board drawn
up on that day: "The two (first) pavilions and their
dormitories were begun and considerably advanced when
all things were at their most inflated paper prices, and,
therefore, have been of expanding cost; but all the buildings
since done on the more enlarged scale of the University
have been at prices of from 25 per cent. to 50 per
cent. in reduction. It is confidently believed that, with
that exception, no considerable system of buildings in
the United States has been done on cheaper terms, nor
more correctly, faithfully, and solid of execution, according
to the value of the materials used."

An impression that the outlay for constructing the
University was far larger than was justifiable was very
wide-spread in 1822; Cabell conceded that the charge of
extravagance was now on the lips of even the "intelligent
circle of society"; but he did not think that there was
any substantial foundation for it. Writing to Jefferson
in March, he said, "The admissions of our own friends,
and the known opinion of a part of the Board of Visitors,
have mainly contributed to give currency and weight to
the prejudice prevailing on this subject." He insisted
that, instead of prodigality, there had been strict economy
in the expenditures; but it is probable that the opposing
opinion of Cocke, who was not so much under Jefferson's

influence, and who had had practical experience
as a builder, was, in the main, correct. There can be no
doubt, however, that Jefferson was rigidly accurate in
saying, as he did do in the course of the construction,
that, with the exception of one payment of seventy-five
cents, every penny had been fully accounted for in properly
signed vouchers. Cocke's disposition to question
arose from his disapproval of some of the details of the
style of architecture adopted, which required so much
to be spent in apparently useless ornament. The expression
"raree show," which he jocularly applied to the
whole grouping, indicated that he thought that some of
the sacrifices of money for sake of mere beauty were unnecessary.
He was looking at the structure from the
point of view of a man who was scrupulously keeping his
eye on the amount of the balance in bank, whereas Jefferson
never really considered that balance at all, because, in
his anxiety to carry out his whole scheme in its perfection,
he was sanguine that the General Assembly could be wheedled
into providing the funds in the end. As a member of
the committee of superintendence, Cocke, a very prudent
and conservative man of business, would have crept forward
in the expenditures with even more caution than if
the buildings had been his own property, and not the property
of the University. Cabell occupied no such relation
to the actual construction as this, and he was naturally
more complacent in accepting Jefferson's perfectly honest
but too hopeful estimates, and more indignant than Cocke
or Chapman Johnson when public criticism was leveled
at the sachem for being too liberal in the use of the large
sums already put at his disposal.

The following tables show the actual cost of the pavilions,
hotels and dormitories, which were in existence when
the University was thrown open.

                     

Pavilions		Hotels		Dormitories
I.	$9,992.05	Hotel A	$4,499.21		$78,509.58
II.	10,863.57	Hotel B	6,278.29
III.	16,528.47	Hotel C	4,525.38
IV.	11,173.30	Hotel D	6,245.39
V.	11,723.41	Hotel E	4,638.71
VI.	9,793.40	Hotel F	6,013.68
VII.	9,399.73
VIII.	10,786.86
IX.	8,785.04
X.	11,758.06

The balance sheet of the proctor for 1828 disclosed
that, up to that year, the residential buildings of the University
had called for an expenditure of $236,678.29,
and the Rotunda, of $57,749.33. The figures for the
latter edifice clearly exhibited Jefferson's proneness to
undercalculate the cost of construction, for he had agreed
with the proctor in thinking that $46,847.00 would be
sufficient for its erection. John Neilson,—who was pronounced
by Cocke to be one of the few men employed
in the work at the University who was competent to
make an estimate,—had predicted that the outlay necessary
for the Rotunda would not fall short of fifty-five
thousand dollars; and this anticipation turned out to be
almost precisely correct. In 1830, the entire property
belonging to the institution was valued at $333,095.12,
in which account the lands were assessed at $9,465.75,
and the books and apparatus at $36,308.07.

XI. The Fight for Appropriations

From what sources were obtained the voluminous
funds that were necessary to carry through the elaborate
and expensive programme of building which has been
described? It will be recalled that, before the College

was converted into a University, the only means of collecting
money consisted of the subscription list. Had the
University, like the College, been compelled to depend
upon this alone, it would have had a very precarious outlook
from the start. The General Assembly foresaw
that, in incorporating the institution, it would be imperative
to afford it a definite measure of support. The sumto
be appropriated annually for its benefit, namely fifteen
thousand dollars, was not enough in itself for the erection
of the buildings, but it would at least be sufficient to pay
the salaries of the professors, and at a pinch, be used
as interest upon a loan negotiated to embrace the remaining
cost of construction. The annuity, small as it was,
was granted somewhat grudgingly, and there were to be
times in a future not at all remote when a warning threat
of discontinuing it was to be heard.

There was one man who never for a moment was satisfied
with fifteen thousand dollars as the annual limit to
the State's assistance; that man was Jefferson. The
petition for aid which he wished to submit to the General
Assembly while Central College was still in existence,
seemed to him more imperative than ever after it had
been merged in the University. He was clearly aware,
that, should he not succeed in obtaining the appropriation
of very large sums by the Commonwealth, in addition
to the annuity, he would not be able to complete the
buildings in the splendid form upon which he had set his
aspiration in the beginning. He, and his staunch coadjutor,
Cabell, and their few unwavering supporters in
the Legislature, never suffered any sort of set back, however
staggering, to balk them long in their crusade.
How deeply Cabell's heart was enlisted in it is revealed
in one of his letters to Jefferson: "I returned (to Richmond)
over stormy rivers and frozen roads," he wrote,

"to rejoin the band of steadfast patriots engaged in the
holy cause of the University"! The holy cause of the
University! That was the view which both of them
took in their unceasing fight for appropriations; and, as
we shall see, neither of them,—as, for instance, in opposing
the transplantation of the College of William and
Mary,—allowed any sentimental scruples to palsy the
resolute energy of their purpose.

There was in the avidity with which Jefferson fixed his
eyes on the Literary Fund,—the only source from which
more of the State's money could be got,—something that
would appear pathetically ludicrous but for its unselfish
and disinterested spirit. That Fund was barred to the
University beyond the annuity by numerous influences
which could be broken down only with painful difficulty;
among them were (1) the disposition of the General Assembly
to restrict all large appropriations from this
fund to the use of the elementary public schools, such as
they were; (2) the sour feeling against Jefferson himself,
which lingered among his political foes of the past;
(3) the impression among the friends of the College of
William and Mary that the waxing of the University
would be accompanied by the proportionate waning of
the College; (4) the jealousy and rivalry of small institutions
like Hampden-Sidney College and Washington
College; (5) the belief among the several denominations
that the University was friendly to irregligious tendencies;
and finally, (6) the provincial indifference to the
claims of literature and education, which was then so
much abroad in Virginia. As these hostile influences existed
in the State at large, they were, of course, reflected
in a concentrated form in the popular representation in
the General Assembly. It was Cabell who had to ride
down this powerful array, for it was he, and not Jefferson,

who, under the roof of the capitol, was brought face
to face with it in its most threatening shape. "The
University," wrote General B. J. S. Cabell, who was a
member of the Legislature during these years, "had the
warm support of a number of enlightened men in both
Houses, but he it was whose generous enthusiasm and
burning zeal always called and marshalled the forces
to battle. It was remarkable that, though promptly
opposed and sometimes beaten in the vote, with what elasticity
he would rise again in a few days, and return to the
charge stronger than ever; and a session rarely passed
without his having obtained a signal victory for the
University. It is no disparagement to the memory of
his patriotic colleagues to say that he was the Ajax Telemon
of that sacred war. I know several of his enlightened
compeers, devoted patriots, men of exalted worth
and talents, who delighted to honor him as their leader
in that great work."

Among the most conspicuous and indefatigable of
these "compeers" was William F. Gordon, a delegate in
the House, and afterwards a representative in Congress,
the author of the Sub-Treasury Scheme, and as a member
of the Convention of 1829–30,—in itself a badge of civic
distinction,—the proposer of the plan that settled the
vehement controversy between the East and West that
was so near to the verge of breaking up that great body.
He had been in the first rank of those who strove to establish
the University on the site of Central College; and
he stood always at Cabell's elbow, whenever, as General
Cabell expressed it, "a charge" was to be made for an
appropriation. Chapman Johnson, William C. Rives,
George Loyall, General Breckinridge, General Blackburn,
R. M. T. Hunter, and Philip Doddridge, were
some of the other high-minded and public-spirited men,

who, either in the Senate or the House, could, like Gordon
himself, be always relied upon to use their influence
with their colleagues to ensure the passage of any measure
that was favorable to the interests of the University.

With characteristic promptness and singleness of purpose,
Jefferson began the fight for the appropriations of
large sums to the University only three days after its incorporation.
Would it not be possible, he inquired of
William C. Rives in January, 1819, to induce the General
Assembly to turn over to the institution all that portion
of the annual reservation for the charity schools which
remained derelict because not accepted by them? "I
mean so much of the last year's $45,000 as has not been
called for, or so much of this year's $65,000 as shall not
be called for. These unclaimed dividends might enable
us to complete our buildings and procure apparatus and
library, which, once done, the institution might be maintained
in action by a moderate annual sum. Could it
have any ill effect to try this proposal with the Legislature?"
Cabell, and very probably Rives also, disapproved
of this course, because it would revive the popular
impression that the University was covertly seeking to
absorb the entire income of the Literary Fund. This
alone would make certain its defeat. The interests which
had striven to divert the location of the University from
Charlottesville were still sore and angry over their discomfiture.
"They will seize upon every occasion,"
wrote Cabell in February, "and avail themselves of
every pretext to keep it down." "Better," he urged "to
put off to another session the petition for a special appropriation."
But Jefferson was not disposed to accept this
advice. "We should go on in our duty," he said sturdily,
"and hope the same from them, and leave on them
the blame of failure." And it was not until Cabell

pointed out to him that the income from the Literary
Fund was, for the time being, exhausted, and that the
Assembly would refuse to create a special fund, that he
desisted.

By January 22, 1820,—the Legislature, in the meanwhile,
having been in session during several weeks without
making the appropriation so eagerly desired and
expected,—Jefferson began to grow impatient and reproachful.
"Kentucky," he said "has a University with
fourteen professors, and two hundred students, though
the State was planted after Virginia. If our Legislature
does not heartily push our University, we must send our
children for education to Kentucky or Cambridge. If,
however, we are to go a-begging anywhere for our education,
I would rather it should be to Kentucky than any
other State, because she has more of the flavor of the old
cask than any other. All the States but our own are
sensible that knowledge is power, and we are sinking
into the barbarism of our Indian aborigines, and expect,
like them, to oppose by ignorance the overwhelming mass
of light and science by which we shall be surrounded.
It is a comfort that I shall not live to see it."

About a month later,—perhaps, under the influence of
Jefferson's temporary dejection of mind,—Cabell was
inclined to make an effort to obtain that portion of the
income of the Literary Fund which remained unappropriated
after there had been paid out the regular annuities
to the University and the public schools. It seems
that this surplus had now swelled to forty thousand dollars.
Nothing of practical value, however, was done by
the State for the institution until February 24, 1820, when
the General Assembly impowered the Board of Visitors
to borrow sixty thousand dollars for the purpose of finishing
the group of buildings. Security for the payment

of the interest, and for the redemption of the principal,
was to be created by the pledge of a definite proportion
of the annuity. In March, forty thousand dollars of the
authorized loan was obtained from the President and
Directors of the Literary Fund. The Visitors, at their
meeting in April, decided to apply one-half of this amount
to the liquidation of the University debt, and the other
half to the completion of such buildings as were already
in the process of construction; and should there remain
a surplus, this surplus, together with all the annuity for
1821,—except the portion needed to pay the interest
on the loan,—was to be expended in the erection of additional
pavilions and dormitories. And the Visitors further
determined to borrow of the Literary Fund the additional
twenty thousand dollars which the General Assembly
had allowed.

Jefferson very correctly thought that the loan of the
sixty thousand dollars should have been an appropriation
for the benefit of education, and as such should not have
been accompanied by a proviso as to interest and redemption.
He soon began to swing the club which he was
always to find so effective. Now, he was fully aware of
the fact that the public expected the lectures to begin at
an early day, and that the members of the Assembly were
responsive to the popular desire. What was more likely
to make an impression on them than the warning that,
unless they were liberal in their grants of money to the
institution, there would be but a slim prospect of its
throwing open its doors within any limit of time that
could then be reasonably predicted? He was shrewd
enough to recognize that it would be short-sighted to
admit students while the buildings were only partly completed,
for if it were known that the University was obtaining
an income from this source, the members of the

Assembly would be more inclined than they were then to
be apathetic to his insistent calls for financial assistance.

We catch the tone of a cold but polite rebuke in the
report of the Visitors for October 3, 1820, which was
written by him and reflected his attitude of mind: "If
the Legislature shall be of opinion that the annuity
already apportioned to the establishment and maintenance
of an institution for instruction in all the useful
sciences, is its proper part of the whole (Literary) Fund,
the Visitors will faithfully see that it shall be punctually
applied to the remaining engagements for the buildings,
and to the reimbursement of the extra sum lately received
from the General Fund; that, during the term of its application
to these objects, due care shall be taken to preserve
the buildings erected from rain or roguery; and at
the end of that term, they will provide for opening the
institution in the partial degree to which its present annuity
shall be adequate. If, on the other hand, the Legislature
shall be of the opinion that the sums so advanced
in the name of a loan from the General Fund of education
were legitimately applicable to the purposes of a university;
that its early commencement will promote the
public good (1) by offering to our youth, now ready and
panting for it, an early and near resource for instruction,
and (2) by arresting the heavy tribute we are annually
paying to other States and countries for the article
of education, and shall think proper to liberate the present
annuity from its charges,—the Visitors trust it will
be in their power, by the autumn of 1821, to engage and
bring in place that portion of the professors designated
by law to which the present annuity might be found competent;
or by the same epoch, to carry into full execution
the whole object of the law, if an enlargement be made of

its participation in the General Fund adequate to the full
establishment contemplated by the law."

These words, respectful as they are, barely veil Jefferson's
contempt for the niggard spirit of the General
Assembly; and they also put forward something broader
than a hint for a larger share of the income of the Literary
Fund. The public suspicion that he was really
aiming to divert most of that income to the University
was not altogether without foundation. "One hundred
and thirty-five thousand dollars," he remarked a few
weeks later, "had been appropriated, in the course of
three years, to the primary schools. How many children
had been instructed during that time?" "I should
be glad to know," he adds, "if that sum has educated one
hundred and thirty-five poor children. I doubt it much.
And if it has, it has cost us one thousand dollars apiece for
what might have been done with thirty dollars. Divide
the income of the Fund, amounting to sixty thousand dollars,
between the University and the primary schools, and
there would be an ample sum for both."

Again he bitterly reproaches his native State for its
apathy to education. "The little we have, we import
like beggars from other States, or import their beggars
to bestow on us their miserable crumbs. And what is
wanted to restore us to our station among our equals?
Not more money from the people. Enough has been
raised by them and appropriated to this very object. It
is that it should be employed understandingly, and for
their great good."

When the session of the General Assembly for
1820–21 opened, Jefferson was as fixed as ever in his
resolution to obtain a large appropriation from the State
for the benefit of the University. Cabell informed him

that the condition of the Literary Fund was, at this time,
so parched that its revenue would, perhaps, not be sufficient
to pay the annuities; and if a surplus should be
proven to exist, it would be so small that it would afford
but a few crumbs to the numerous mouths now wide open
to receive them. He soothed Jefferson's impatient
spirit by suggesting that, just so soon as the first loan to
the University had been put "on the proper basis for
managing it," a petition should be sent to the Legislature
for authority to borrow the further sum of fifty thousand
dollars.

Cabell was now suffering from an alarming weakness
of the heart, and he became so dejected, in consequence,
that he determined to resign his seat in the Senate; he
declared that he could not, without risk of bringing himselve
"to the grave," expose his person to the rigor of
the long rides from courthouse to courthouse in order
to address his constituents. Jefferson received this entirely
rational announcement with a Spartan's remonstrance.
"I know well your devotion to your country
and your foresight of the awful scenes coming on her
sooner or later. With this foresight, what service can
we ever render her equal to this? What object of our
lives can we propose so important? What interest of
our own which ought not to be postponed to this?
Health, time, labor, on what in the single life which nature
has given us can be better bestowed than on this immortal
boon to our country? The exceptions and mortifications
are temporary; the benefit, eternal. If any member
of our College of Visitors could justifiably withdraw
from this sacred duty, it would be myself, who quadragenis
stependis jam dudum peractis, have neither vigor
of body nor mind left to keep the field. But I will die
in the last ditch. Do not think of deserting us, but view

the sacrifices which seem to stand in your way as the
lesser duties, and such as ought to be postponed to this
greatest of all. Continue with us in these holy labors
until, having seen their accomplishment, we may say with
old Simeon, nunc dimittis Domine."

This appeal to friendship, duty, and patriotism, which
reflected the sturdy and resolute spirit of the writer, was
irresistible, and Cabell, in spite of his declining health,
decided to retain his seat. With renewed energy and
fidelity, he took up again the great work of cooperation;
and so successful was he during this session (1820–21),
that on February 24, the General Assembly authorized
the President and Directors of the Literary Fund to
make a second loan of sixty thousand dollars to the
Board of Visitors for the purpose of completing the buildings,
and thus enabling the University to throw open its
doors at an earlier day than had, for some time, been anticipated.
Jefferson, it will be recollected, had, during
some years, been inclined to disparage the usefulness of
the College of William and Mary,—perhaps, because
it was still a rival to be counted with. This feeling, on
his part, was aggravated at this time by the opposition
which the friends of that institution raised to the passage
of the Act of February 24,—a fact which should
be borne in mind when we come, at a later stage, to describe
the rather ruthless way in which he endeavored to
deprive the College of its endowment fund after he had
used his powerful influence to frustrate its purpose of removing
from Williamsburg to Richmond, a step, at that
time, apparently imperative, if it was to continue to exist
at all. Cabell happened to be seated in the Senate chamber,
just above the hall of the House of Delegates, when
the Loan bill passed the latter body; and his first intimation
of its success was obtained from the tumultuous clapping

of hands with which the upshot of the voting was received
by its supporters.

XII. Fight for Appropriations, Continued

There is an amusing side to the almost nervous eagerness
with which Cabell started in at once to discourage
his persistant co-worker at Monticello from looking upon
this second loan as simply a spur to another application
to the General Assembly for money. Jefferson's attitude
towards appropriations for the University was very
much in the spirit of the Frenchman's definition of gratitude:
he was never satisfied with what he was able to
drag out of the reluctant Legislature,—it was always the
favors to come, and not those already received, which he
kept in view. No one understood better than he how
much expenditure was required to complete the University
in the grand manner which he thought indispensable;
and his eye, therefore, was never withdrawn from the
future appropriation, however much he might be pleased
with the past one.

"It is the anxious wish of our best friends," wrote
Cabell, who was uneasily conscious of this peculiarity of
his correspondent, "and of no one more than myself,
that the money now granted may be sufficient to finish the
buildings. We must not come here again on that subject.
These successive applications for money to finish
the buildings give grounds of reproach to our enemies,
and draw our friends into difficulties with their constituents."
On March 10, he wrote again in the same strain.
The Legislature, he now hints, may indirectly force the
Board of Visitors to throw open the doors before the
University is completed, by requiring the unencumbered
part of the annuity to be reserved for the payment of the

salaries of the professors. "The popular cry," he adds,
"is that there is too much finery, too much extravagance."
In April, he was convinced that the University
had lost ground of late among the great body of the
people. How was the public confidence in the institution
to be restored and strengthened? "By a call upon all
the friends of literature and science in the State to see
that their influence was directed to the choice of the very
best men in each community for the next Assembly."
He repeated with alarm the censorious utterances of the
Presbyterians at Hampden-Sidney College, and of the
Episcopalians at the College of William and Mary. "I
learn that the former sect, or rather the clergy of that
sect, in their synods and presbyteries talk much of the
University. They believe, I am informed, that the
Socinians are to be installed at the University for the
purpose of overthrowing the prevailing religious opinions
of the country." It is quite possible that this preposterous
suggestion had its fountain-head, not so much with
the denomination to which it was attributed by rumor,
as with the opponents of further loans to the University
within the ranks of the General Assembly itself. Not
long after the session of 1821–22 began, Mr. Griffin, of
the House of Delegates, endeavored, in a private interview
with Cabell, to ascertain whether the University
would desist from asking for more appropriations, should
the Legislature consent to cancel its bonds. On that condition
alone would the debt be released. Cabell declined
emphatically to give the pledge, and his supporters in the
Assembly, anticipating Jefferson's indignation at such a
proposition, heartily approved his reply.

Whilst this tortuous and ceaseless struggle for State
assistance was going on, Jefferson was threatened with
disability in the use of the only weapon which he had at

his immediate disposal. When, during the session of
1821–22, Cabell asked him to write to numerous influential
members of the Assembly in support of the Unisersity,
he replied, "You do not know, my dear sir, how
great is my physical inability to write. The joints of my
right wrist and fingers, in consequence of an ancient dislocation,
are become so stiffened that I can write but at
the pace of a snail. The copying of our report and my
letter lately sent to the Governor, being seven pages, employed
me laboriously a whole week. The letter I am
writing has taken me two days. A letter of a page or
two costs me a day of labor, and of painful labor." But
this fact did not permanently curb his industry, or diminish
his assiduity in pushing the cause which he had so
closely at heart. Estimating in January, 1822, the
amount still required for the completion of the buildings
at $55,564, he started in to secure the release of the annuities
for the years 1822 and 1823 from the interest
charges imposed by the Legislature; and he even had
the quiet hardihood to ask for a substantial increase in
the allotted fifteen thousand dollars. In the meanwhile,
the obstacles which Cabell as spokesman had to overcome
grew more numerous and alarming. He still ascribed
many of the stones in his way to the influence of the
clergy. "William and Mary," he wrote in January,
1822, "has conciliated them. It is represented that
they are to be excluded from the University. ... I
have made overtures of free communication with Mr.
Rice, and shall take occasion to call on Bishop Moore.
I do not know that I shall touch on this delicate point
with either of them. But I wish to consult these heads
of the church and ask their opinions."

While Cabell, in this state of perplexity, was turning
from one group of opponents to another, in the hope of

bending them all to his purpose, he received a suggestion
from Jefferson which, for a short interval, shifted
his attention elsewhere. It appears that, during the war
of 1812–15, when the British, having landed on the
Patuxent, were threatening to invade the Northern Neck,
the State, not having time to obtain pecuniary assistance
from the National Government, borrowed a large amount
from the Richmond banks, upon which it had since been
compelled to pay a high rate of interest. After the war,
a claim was entered at Washington for the reimbursement,
not only of the principal, but of this interest also.
The principal was promptly paid, but not the interest.
It was the State's claim to the latter which Jefferson
hoped would be transferred in part at least to the University.
The accumulated interest due amounted to several
hundred thousand dollars; but so small was the
prospect of its being paid that Cabell said that an effort
to secure it was "like working for a dead horse." Nevertheless,
he was convinced that a petition for the appropriation
of this prospective fund was the only one which
the Assembly, at that time, would consider with favor.
"The members," he wrote in January (1822), "seem
liberal in giving lands in the moon. ... Some of our
friends are much dissatisfied with what is called the intended
Dead Horse bill; but all estimate it is better than
nothing."

But Jefferson and himself did not allow so precarious
a hope as this to keep them from pressing for some substantial
advantage from the General Assembly. In February
(1822), a bill was submitted which provided for
the suspension of interest on the loans during five years,
and also arranged for the final extinguishment of principal
and interest by means of the amount to be collected
from the Central Government. There was now a faction

in the Assembly which was urging the transfer to the
State treasury of the entire Literary Fund, on the ground
that the sum annually granted for the education of the
poor had been loosely spent; and this wing, combining
with those members who were opposed to giving aid to
the University, was successful in defeating, not only the
bill which would have liquidated the University's debt,
should the Government pay the interest claim, but also
the bill suggested by Jefferson, which, had it been enacted,
would have authorized the interest charge on the University
annuity to be temporarily suspended. Perhaps, the
Legislature was not so niggard as it appears to have been
from this action, for there was still a widely dispersed
report that economy had not been shown so far in the
erection of buildings; and that this wastefulness was
likely to continue.

Were the two co-workers disheartened? If so, only
for a very short period, for hardly had a new session
begun in December (1822) when Cabell decided to obtain
the General Assembly's consent to a loan of fifty
thousand dollars for the building of the Rotunda, and at
the same time to secure the passage of an Act that would
place the University's obligations on the footing of the
other debts of the Commonwealth, which would bring
about their ultimate extinction along with those debts.
"Let us have nothing to do with the old balances, or
dead horses, or escheated lands," he said to Jefferson,
"but ask boldly to be exonerated from our debts by the
powerful sinking fund of the State. This is manly and
dignified legislation, and if we fail, the blame will not
be ours."

William C. Rives, it seems, had already put the interrogatory
to Jefferson: "Which would you prefer, the
remission of the principal debt or an advance for the erection

of the Library?" Very emphatically and characteristically,
and shrewdly too, Jefferson replied,
"Without question, the latter. Of all things the most
important is the completion of the buildings. The remission
of the debt will come of itself. It is already remitted
in the minds of every man, even of the enemies
of the institution. ... The great object of our aim from
the beginning has been to make the establishment the
most eminent in the United States, in order to draw
to it the youth of every State, but especially of the
South and West. ... The opening of the institution in
a half state of readiness would be the most fatal step
which could be adopted. It would be an impatience defeating
its own object by putting on a subordinate character
in the outset, which never would be shaken off, instead
of opening largely and in full system. Taking our
stand on commanding ground at once will beckon everything
to it, and a reputation once established will maintain
itself for ages. To secure this, a single sum of fifty
or sixty thousand dollars is wanting. If we cannot get it
now, we will at another trial. Courage and patience is
the watchword."

This sagacious advice, accompanied by words so convincing
and so inspiriting, prevailed. Cabell wrote on
the 30th of the same month that the University's friends
in the General Assembly had agreed almost unanimously
to solicit a loan of sixty thousand dollars, and, for the
present, to cease all agitation in favor of the State's assumption
of the debt. "We propose," he said with a
politician's astuteness, "to move for one object at a
time in order not to unite the enemies of both measures
against one bill. Should we succeed in getting the loan,
we may afterwards try to get rid of the debt." The bill
authorizing the loan having passed the House, was

adopted by the Senate on February 5 (1823). During
the discussion in the House, William F. Gordon highly
distinguished himself in his advocacy of the measure; and
on February 10, he submitted a resolution calling upon
the Committee of Finance to report "the best means of
paying off the debts of the University"; but, the members
being of the opinion that enough assistance for the present
had been extended to the institution, it was rejected
by a large majority; and that majority was still larger
when a similar resolution, offered by George Loyall, was
voted upon the ensuing day. There was an impression
in the Assembly that the friends of the University were
asking for too much at one session, and this soon created
a disposition to censure and obstruct them; but, in selfdefense,
they urged, that, as they had found both the
House and the Senate more kindly disposed towards the
University than they had been during several years, it
seemed to be only the part of common sense to take the
utmost advantage of the prevailing and, perhaps, evanescent,
feeling.

Two days before the final passage of the bill, Cabell
had written to Jefferson, "We must never come here
again for money to erect buildings. ... Should the funds
fall short, I would rather ask for money hereafter to
pay off old debts than to finish the Library."[16] Cocke
advised that all these debts should be liquidated first,
and that, afterwards, the cost of the Rotunda should be
made to conform to such surplus as remained. Already
by March 24,—barely a month after the authority was
given to borrow sixty thousand dollars for the completion
of the buildings,—both Cabell and Cocke were apprehensive
lest the "old sachem" should be contemplating
another call upon the Legislature for financial aid.

"It appears to me," Cabell wrote to him, "that the plan
you have adopted of engaging for the hull of the Library
is a prudent one. I earnestly hope that the house may be
got in a condition to be used with the proceeds of the last
loan, and that we may be able to make this assurance to
the next Assembly when we apply for the remission.
Mr. Doddridge requested me to state that he had supported
this third loan, but that his patience was worn out,
and that another application could not and would not be
received. ... There is a powerful party in this State
with whom it is almost a passport to reputation to condemn
the plan and management of the University. ...
Perhaps, this may be the result of old political conflicts."

Some impression seems to have been made on Jefferson
by these half unreserved, half hinted remonstrances,
for his next step was to apply for the remission of the
interest on the loans. In the report for October 6, 1823,
he informed the General Assembly that the University
could be opened at the end of 1824, should the annuity,
in the meanwhile, be released from the burden of its incumbrances.
He intimated that, should this be refused,
no just reason for complaint would exist if the doors were
to continue tightly closed indefinitely. The charge for
interest on $180,000, the amount of the loans, would be
$10,800, and two or three thousand dollars more would
be required to keep the finished buildings in repair. As
this would leave a surplus of only about two thousand
dollars for the redemption of $180,000, it would be necessary
for an interval of twenty-five years to go by before
the principal could be expected even to approximate liquidation.
"This," Jefferson remarked, with dry sarcasm,
"is a time two distant for the education of any person

already born, or to be born for some time to come; and in
that period, a great expense will be incurred in the mere
preservation of the buildings and the apparatus."

In December (1823), Cabell was able to say with confidence
that there was a rising sentiment in the State
favorable to the remission, not simply of the interest, but
of the entire debt. This new feeling was to be attributed
either to impatience with Jefferson's patent determination
to keep the University shut up until it was fully completed,
or to admiration for his stubborn and disinterested
zeal in its behalf. Prematurely it would appear, Cabell
wrote, on the 29th, that the National Government had
finally passed affirmatively on the State's claim to interest
on the advances made during the war of 1812–15. Had
this been really so, there would have been added at once
to the principal of the Literary Fund an amount so large
as to produce a surplus in interest sufficient to supply the
University's needs in the way of books for the library and
apparatus for the laboratories. There was, during the
session of 1823–24, no prospect of obtaining a further
sum for building; but as the purchase of books and apparatus
would indicate an intention to throw open the
lecture-rooms at an early date, the General Assembly,
Cabell thought, might be willing to make an appropriation
for that purpose out of the surplus of the Literary
Fund. "Am I right in supposing," he inquired of Jefferson
in February, 1824, "that fifty thousand dollars,
payable in ten annual instalments, for the purchase of
books and apparatus, with a power to the Visitors to
anticipate the money for those purposes only, would be
a good measure next to be adopted? I am thinking of
it." "Perhaps," he writes three days later, "forty thousand
dollars would be more apt to succeed." Jefferson
was confident that not a cent less than the latter sum

would be required. While the two friends were debating
as to the exact amount to be asked of the General Assembly,
that body became so impatient for the University
to begin its career that, in January, 1824, it relieved the
Board of the obligation to pay interest on its bonds and
imposed the whole amount of that charge upon the surplus
revenue of the Literary Fund. This proved that
Jefferson had whirled his club with success; but how was
the fifty thousand dollars needed for the purchase of
books and apparatus to be obtained?

Cabell now sprang a stratagem on the Assembly, which
kindled an angry flame both without and within the walls
of the capitol. The Farmers' Bank, at this time, was petitioning
the General Assembly for the renewal of its
charter. Here was an opportunity to be pounced upon;
and this he promptly did with a glee which he was unable
to repress in his report to Jefferson. "I kept my secret
even from the Visitors, and my brother, and most intimate
friends," he said. The House of Delegates passed the
bill without requiring any proviso, but when it came up in
the Senate, he moved that the charter should only be renewed
on condition that the bank should pay the University
a bonus of fifty thousand dollars. Seventeen of
the Senators went over to his side; the rest bitterly opposed
him. Elsewhere also, as he expressed it, he stirred
up "a hornet's nest." The whole number of the stockholders,
debtors, directors, and officers combined, "in the
midst of a prodigious ferment," to combat and defeat
the proposition; and the majority in the Senate, under
this pressure from the outside, quickly fell away. In spite
of this fact, Cabell kept up the fight, but without success.
He found a dubious compensation for his failure
in the action of the General Assembly, on March 6, 1824,
in empowering the Board of Visitors to receive, for the

University's benefit, fifty thousand dollars of the money
which the National Government was expected to pay.

Before this sum could be collected it would be necessary
for him to concentrate on Congress the full force of
his extraordinary powers of persuasion. A bill, introduced
in the House of Representatives by James Barbour,
authorizing the payment of the interest as legally due,
had failed. Cabell endeavored in vain to prevail on
Jefferson to draft a memorial to that body to show how
this interest, should it be recovered, was to be spent.
The claim offered the only prospect of obtaining the
funds needed, for Cabell admitted that the General Assembly's
liberality was exhausted. He visited Washington
in April to press it, and on his arrival there, found
that it was in a state of suspension. A meeting of the
Virginia delegation was held, and Barbour was instructed
to bring the claim before the War Department, which
quickly recommended that Congress should settle it.
Monroe was now President, and Cabell wrote to him on
the subject, with full knowledge of his interest in the
University, and his willingness to assist it by every influence
that he could legitimately employ. Monroe was
now told that, so soon as Congress should recognize the
claim as just, the General Assembly would order an equal
amount to be advanced out of the Literary Fund, in anticipation
of its reimbursement by the Government.

XIII. Removal of William and Mary College

While the claim against the Government was in a state
of suspense, there arose before the watchful eyes of the
two protagonists the prospect of securing an endowment
fund in another quarter; and for some time, afterwards,
their energies seemed to have been diverted from the

pursuit of a legislative appropriation. In a letter which
Cabell wrote Jefferson from Williamsburg in May, 1824,
there occurs the following curt but pregnant sentence:
"A scheme is now in agitation at this place, the object
of which is to remove the College of William and Mary
to the City of Richmond." He acknowledged that, with
the exception of the professor of law, every member of
the Faculty favored the transfer. The College, in spite
of the broadening of its courses of instruction, and the
devotion and ability of President Smith, had been dwindling
in prosperity, and it was expected that transplantation
to Richmond, where a practical school of medicine,
rendered possible by hospital facilities, could be engrafted
on it, would arrest the progress of this decay, which
threatened it with ultimate ruin. It was anticipated too
that the new site in the capital of the State would restore
some of that prestige which it had formerly derived from
its location at the seat of Government.

The endowment of the College of William and Mary,
at this time, was about one hundred thousand dollars, the
largest fund in the possession of any institution situated in
Virginia. So soon as he was informed of the design to
remove the College to Richmond, it occurred to Cabell
that this endowment fund might be taken from it, and laid
out in the establishment of the series of intermediate
academies which Jefferson had always advocated. "We
were told some winters ago by the College party," he
said, "'we do not want a university—we want preparatory
seminaries over the whole face of the country.'"
From this arbitrary attitude on his part, there was, for a
moment, a generous revulsion of feeling. "To oppose
an institution struggling to save itself," he remarked,
"and to thwart the natural endeavors of literary men to
advance their fortunes, is truly painful." Then the feeling

subsides, and loyalty to the supposed interests of the
University comes back. "Are we," he adds, "to suffer
the labors of so many years to be blasted by an unnecessary
and destructive competition? Most assuredly, we
must not."

Jefferson was very much startled by the project of
transplanting the College. "It is a case of a pregnant
character," he replied to Cabell, "admitting important
issues, and requiring serious consideration and conduct."
It is plain that, like Cabell, he looked upon the plan of
removal as carrying in its bosom a very grave peril to
the welfare of the University. How far was he really
justified in taking this view? On its face, at least, the
attitude of almost unscrupulous hostility which he now
assumed towards the ancient College, his alma mater, in
its hour of pecuniary difficulty, appears to be discreditable
to himself and to the institution which he had founded in
the noblest spirit of liberty and equality. What can be
said in his defense? As we have seen, he had a very
exaggerated conception of the advantages which a seat
of learning would enjoy, if it were established in the
capital of the State. Had Williamsburg remained that
capital, he would have looked upon the College of William
and Mary as a far more powerful rival to contend
with than it was now, because it would, through that fact,
have been able to retain its original dignity and influence.
A university was an institution, which, in his opinion, bore
a direct relation to the civic duties of the people, and
where could this function of educating citizens be so fully
carried out as on the spot where the central administration
was at work? Remove the College of William and
Mary to Richmond, and with its large permanent fund, it
would soon recover its prestige, and the prosperity which
it had lost when Williamsburg ceased to be the capital.

As Richmond was necessarily the first city of Virginia, so
an old and highly endowed college, like the College of
William and Mary, replanted there, must also become the
first seat of learning in the State.

Jefferson, as revealed by the numerous quotations from
his letters already given, was always apprehensive that
something might occur which would lower the University
of Virginia to the level of the two principal subordinate
colleges of the Commonwealth, Washington and Hampden-Sidney.
It was a practical feeling which caused him
to be so solicitous for its prestige. This feeling had led
him, apart from any appreciation of architectural beauty,
to erect the splendid group of buildings at Charlottesville.
Without such buildings, he believed that it would
be hopeless to engage European professors of the first order
of talents and learning, and without that cast of instructors,
the institution, being young, would start without
distinction. It was the same sort of far-sightedness
that now caused him to oppose the removal of the College
of William and Mary, for it seemed to foreshadow a new
rivalry that might, in some measure, overcloud the dreams
of greatness in which he indulged for his own university.
Had the latter been underway, with a corps of foreign
scholars lecturing to large classes, he would probably have
accepted the thought of this future rivalry with far less
acrimony, and shown more tolerance and magnanimity
in anticipating it.

The apparently ungenerous and inconsistent spirit of
hostility which he displayed perhaps had its origin, in a
measure, in two additional reasons of a more definite
character. Jefferson must have tacitly recognized, although
he never directly admitted the fact, that one of
the important deficiencies in the course of studies which
he had projected for the University was the entire absence

of hospital facilities. Without those facilities, a medical
school, independently of anatomy, must always remain
principally an historical school, a school of theory, a descriptive
rather than a practically illustrative school.
Richmond, on the other hand, even in those times, offered
the clinical advantages which the village of Charlottesville
entirely lacked. Was not the University's medical
school bound to sink at once to a subordinate position,
should the College of William and Mary be put in possession
of all the facilities for a practical medical education
which that city abundantly afforded? A second, and
perhaps as important a reason for his opposition, was to
be discerned in the fact that the capital of the State was
the home of John Marshall and of a coterie of Federalists
of great distinction. Their influence, in time, might
control the whole political spirit of the transplanted College,
and thus be able to spread the poison of their dangerous
principles of a centralized government throughout
the atmosphere of Virginia and the South.

So soon as Jefferson had fully taken in the menace which
he was convinced would follow the removal of the College,
he began to devise the means to defeat the project,
and in doing so, allowed no sense of loyalty or gratitude
to his alma mater, no recollection of his own great principle
of equal opportunities to all and special privileges
to none, to shake his will or palsy his energy. In the
fixity of his purpose, he did not stop at the mere frustration
of the ancient College's plan of re-establishment elsewhere,
but even aimed to destroy it on the very ground
on which it stood by transferring its funds, in whole or in
part, to his own seat of learning. "When it was found,"
he wrote to Cabell on May 16, 1824, "that that seminary
was entirely ineffectual towards the object of public education,
and that one on a better plan, and in a better situation,

must be provided, what was so obvious as to employ,
for that purpose, the funds of the one abandoned,
with what more was necessary to raise the new establishmen?
And what so obvious as to do now what might
reasonably have been done then, by consolidating the two
institutions and their funds? ... The hundred thousand
dollars of principal which you say still remains to
William and Mary, by its interest of $6,000, would give
us the two deficient professors, with an annual surplus
for the purchase of books."

Comprehending, perhaps, that it would be impolitic
to show such a naked hand, Jefferson pressed upon Cabell
the wisdom of "saying as little as possible on this whole
subject." "Give them no alarm," he added; "let them
petition for the removal, let them get the old structure
completely on wheels, and not until then put in our claim."
Seated under the serene roof of Monticello, at a remote
distance from all the persons who were anxious for the
change, and insensible to the memories of the youthful
years spent in Williamsburg, he was not in a position, or
the mood, to understand the weight of the influences,
which, after awhile, made his coadjutor disposed to modify
his attitude of hostility. As the months passed on,
the transplantation became the subject of still hotter
public debate; and Cabell was so much impressed by the
arguments in its favor, that he informed Jefferson, in
December, that he had decided to vote for the measure,
provided that the College would consent to be brought under
the control of the General Assembly. What did he
mean by the expression, "control of the General Assembly"?
Its purport, he said, was that the Assembly should
have the power to "reduce the capital of the College, leaving
a moiety here (Richmond), and transferring the residue
to Winchester and Hampden-Sidney, or other points in

the State connected with the general system." "It
would be utterly impracticable," he added, "to procure
any portion for the University"; and he, with great earnestness,
urged Jefferson to abandon "every such idea, if
any plan of the kind had ever been formed."

The short interval of four days had hardly vanished
before Cabell's views underwent again what he described
as "a material change." He had, as we have just seen,
contemplated a compromise, in order, as he expressed it,
to avoid the appearance of illiberality. Subsequent reflection,
he said, had convinced him that he ought to vote
against the removal. In taking this course, he added, "I
oppose the wishes of my nearest and dearest relatives
and friends." Indeed, no one among them condemned
this new decision with more brusqueness and pungency
than his own brother, William H. Cabell, a former Governor
of the State, and during many years, the President
of the Court of Appeals. His letter is worthy of reproduction
in full as throwing a vivid light on the social penalties
which Cabell was now inviting by his apparently
unreasonable and inequitable loyalty to the supposed interests
of the University. If his own brother could not
restrain his impatience, it may be clearly perceived what
a flood of censure he had to encounter from less kindly
critics.

"Do you think it possible," wrote W. H. Cabell, "that
Smith and Company (the President and Faculty of the
College) can ever make the people of Virginia consider
William and Mary, when removed, as the rival of the
University? It would be as easy to believe that the frog
could swell himself to the size of the ox. The indirect
means which the friends of the University have been
forced to adopt, in obtaining money from the Legislature,
have excited strong hostility in many quarters against

them and the University. Here is a good opportunity
of soothing the public mind by showing that there is no
disposition to sacrifice everything to the University, but
that the advancement of the cause of literature had been
the real principle. The friends of William and Mary
ask no money from the Legislature. They ask only that
the College may be removed to a place where its present
funds may be employed advantageously for the public,
and I think, and all with whom I have conversed, think,
advantageously to the University. ... The short and
long of the affair is that I really think it would ill become
the friends of the University, who have got for that
institution so much of the public money, now to oppose
the wishes of a large portion of the State to remove another
institution, already endowed, to a place where it
will be made more useful to the public than it is now.
... As a friend of the University, I would, if I were
in the Assembly, aid the removal with all my heart, and
I should be happy, if you could take the same view of the
subject. I believe it would tend to remove some of those
jealousies and heart burnings which your earnest zeal for
the University, has, however unjustly, excited towards
you. To oppose the removal is attributed to motives of
interest, to that sort of feeling that actuated the dog in
the manger, and to seize on the funds without the consent
of the professors would be to abandon all respect for
those laws which protect property. ... I have taken up
more time on this subject, because I have been much concerned
at the strange lengths, as they seem to me, to which
your zeal for the University has unknowingly carried you,
—lengths to which, I believe, no man in the Commonwealth
is willing to go, except, perhaps, a Visitor of the
University,—lengths which excite the surprise and concern
of all your friends."

Having finally determined to oppose the transplantation
of the College, Cabell refused to yield to the remonstrances
and reproaches of friends, and remained indifferent
to the acrimony and obloquy of enemies. In this
course, he was sustained by his repeated communications
with Jefferson, who marshalled his arguments against the
College, and in favor of the University, with consummate
vigor and plausibility.

Jefferson seems to have taken it for granted that, even
if the General Assembly should permit the College's removal,
the funds in its possession would be distributed.
As he looked at it, there was some benefit to be expected,
no matter what should be the upshot of the controversy:
if the College remained in Williamsburg, there would be
no further cause for apprehension on the score of competition;
if, on the other hand, it was re-established in Richmond,
it should, in return, for the advantages of this new
situation, give up the whole or, at least, the larger part
of its endowment for the erection of the district academies.
In his enthusiasm over the prospect of carrying out
this part of his original plan of public instruction, by the
use of the funds of the older institution, he seems to
have accepted with philosophy Cabell's prediction that the
University would not be directly benefited pecuniarily by
the removal. He foresaw, in the creation of the academies,
a full compensation for this, for he was confident that
they would prove to be a means, not only of preparing
students for entry into his own establishment, but also of
raising up a well-informed body of yeomanry. "This
occasion of completing our system of education is a godsend,"
he exclaimed, "I certainly would not propose that
the University should claim a cent of these funds in competition
with the district colleges." This letter was
shown to numerous members of the General Assembly.

Chapman Johnson promptly and emphatically denied the
State's right, under the charter of the College, to dispose
of the latter's funds as Jefferson had suggested. It was
generally thought that, whether the Commonwealth possessed
this right or not, a distribution, during that term,
at least, would not be authorized by the Legislature. In
the meanwhile, a resolution was submitted, but not
pressed, that pointed out the supposed injustice of permitting
the College's transfer to Richmond without forfeiting
a portion of its endowment for the benefit of other
sections of Virginia. Early in the session, Cabell reported
that the College's petition was losing ground, but
that there was no prospect as yet of the adoption of Jefferson's
plan for the use of its funds. "This measure,"
he said, "was too bold for the present state of the public
mind. We will not bring it forward as an original proposition,
but should there be occasion, as a substitute for
the measure of removal to this place. The hostile party
... report that you have sent orders to the Assembly
to plunder the College and bribe the different parts of
the State."

Jefferson's sensibilities seemed to have been wounded
by the animus rather than by the pertinency of this accusation.
"The attempt," he replied, "in which I have
embarked so earnestly, to procure an improvement in the
moral condition of my native State, although in other
States it may have strengthened good dispositions (towards
me), it has certainly weakened them in my own.
The attempt ran foul of so many local interests, of so
many personal views, and of so much ignorance, and I
have been considered as so particularly its promoter, that
I see evidently a great change of sentiment towards myself.
... It is from posterity we are to expect remuneration
for the sacrifice we are making for their service, of

time, quiet, and present good will. And I fear not the
appeal. The multitude of fine young men, who will feel
that they owe to us the elevation of mind, of character
and station they shall be able to attain from the result
of our efforts, will ensure us their remembrance with gratitude."

The confidence with which Cabell had anticipated the
failure of the College's petition was suddenly shaken by
a change in the Assembly's attitude. In January (1825),
he unexpectedly informed Jefferson that there was now
an increasing danger that the advocates of removal would
be able to obtain a decisive vote in their favor; but there
was one device, he said, by which they could yet be
thwarted, and this was to bring in a bill to appropriate
the funds of the College to the establishment of the system
of district academies. "Delay is all we want," he
exclaimed, "so as to get the representatives of the people
away from the Richmond parties, and to give the
people the power to act. I beseech you to prepare a bill
immediately and send it as quickly as possible by mail.
... Let the funds be equally divided among the districts
whatever they may be. Give me but this bill, and I think
I will yet defeat them."

Jefferson received this letter on January 21 (1825),
and by the following evening, he had drafted the bill
and deposited it in the post. "I am so worn down by
the drudgery," he stated in enclosing it, "that I can
write little now." By the 28th, it had reached Cabell's
hands. "I shall keep it as private as possible," he replied,
in acknowledging its arrival. "The opposite party
are triumphing in anticipation, but I think we will yet
defeat them." He now published a very able letter in
the Constitutional Whig, over the signature of "A Friend
to Science," in which he quoted at length from the Plan

for Public Education which had been drafted by Jefferson
in 1817. The object of this was to be able, when the trap
was sprung, to point out that the plan was not a new one,
but had been matured some years before the question of
removing the College to Richmond had come up, or the
suggestion put forth of dividing its funds for the benefit
of the district academies. He again admitted that the
public mind was "not prepared for so bold a measure";
"but," he added, "if I am not mistaken, it will enable us
to defeat the scheme of removal."

His prediction turned out to be correct, for, on February
7, he was able to announce that the College's petition
had been denied by a majority of twenty-four votes.
"But," said he, no doubt to Jefferson's keen disappointment,
"our friends and myself concur in thinking that it
would be improper to bring in the bill for dividing the
funds of the College. ... My friends assure me that
the essay under the signature of 'A Friend to Science,'
with the extracts from your letter and bill ... broke the
ranks of the opposition completely. ... Richmond is
now hors de combat." This was the end of the controversy.
The College of William and Mary remained on
its original site, and the bill for the distribution of its
funds, which had been used as such a powerful instrument
to prevent its removal, was not again revived. There is
no just ground for supposing that, had the ancient College
been re-planted in Richmond, it would have become a
ruinous competitor of the University. It had a moral
and a legal right alike to establish itself there, and the
part which Jefferson and Cabell took in balking that right,
forms the only chapter in the history of the University
of Virginia which is darkened by the spirit of an illiberal
and ungenerous policy,—a policy, indeed, only relieved
from the taint of positive unscrupulousness by the fact that

it was dictated, not by personal selfishness, but by the
supposed welfare of a great institution, struggling to get
upon its feet, in the midst of numerous influences destructive,
not simply of its success, but of its very existence.

The Committee on Claims in the House of Represenatives
had recommended the payment of the interest due
the State of Virginia on advances made during the War
of 1812–15, but the majority in favor was only one, and
Jefferson, in February, 1826, admitted that it had still a
long gauntlet to run before it could pass the House itself.
In the meanwhile, however, the rents from the dormitories
and other buildings offered the supplementary resource
needed for the expenses of the moment.

So far unable to secure the approval of the interest
claim by Congress, and hesitating to go to the Legislature
for an independent appropriation while that measure
was pending, both Cabell and Jefferson heartily favored
the resuscitation of Jefferson's Bill for Public Education,
drafted in 1817–18. The Garland bill, now before the
General Assembly, authorized the establishment of twenty-four
district colleges; but the Jefferson bill was considered
by Cabell to be preferable, provided that it should
be so altered that the local districts would be required
to contribute at their own expense the land and buildings
that would be needed. Under the terms of this bill,
should it become law, the University would acquire from
$25,000 to $32,000, which would be sufficient to complete
the Rotunda and Anatomical Hall. This indirect
measure for obtaining money for the institution, however,
ended in disappointment, for the State was not yet ripe
for any broad and costly scheme of public instruction.

In addition to the appropriations by the General Assembly,
a very considerable sum was collected from the
persons who had signed the original subscription list.

We referred, in the history of Central College, to the
large amount which was promised by the friends of learning
in many parts of the State for the erection of that institution.
As the time for the payment of these contributions
was spread over several years, most of the instalments
only matured after the incorporation of the University.
On November 23, 1822, the balance still due
was estimated at $18,440. By September, 1823, $4,828.77
of this sum had been paid in; $2,069.88 more
was collected by September, 1824; $2,734.89 by September,
1825; and $644.85 by September, 1826. The
residue outstanding on September 30 of that year was
$8,161.68. So long as there were other funds available
for the building, the Board of Visitors determined that
it would be inexpedient to press those among the subscribers
who were delinquent; but when there arose a
danger of these obligations lapsing, an agent was employed
to collect the remaining sums. In the end, of the
$43,808 originally subscribed, only $4,500 proved to be
desperate, and a large proportion of this had become so
only because some of the subscribers had emigrated to
other States or had sunk into insolvency. The Board
had considered it unwise to base on the last collections
any stipulations which required punctuality in their fulfilment.
They had reserved this money while still unpaid
as a supplementary and contingent fund, to form a part
of the general revenue as it dribbled in, and only to be
used in covering up errors in estimating the cost of particular
buildings.

XIV. System of Education

The founding of the University of Virginia was not
confined solely to erecting a stately group of edifices,

which would, with equal splendor and comfort, furnish
dwelling-houses for the teachers and pupils, and halls for
the lectures, recitations, and scientific experiments. The
adoption of a course of studies, the selection of professors,
the purchase of a useful library, and the organization
of a system of administration, were as preliminary and as
essential to the completion of that work as the laying of
the brick and stone, the hoisting of the capitals, the
moulding and painting of the entablatures, the construction
of pillar and portico, cornice and arcade, sloping roof
and rounded dome. These we now propose to consider
in turn, in detail, as supplementary to the actual building.

Jefferson, it will be recalled, had very often expressed
his conviction as to what departments of knowledge should
be embraced in the platform of instruction of every higher
institution of learning. On the seventh of April, 1824,
before the Rotunda had been finished, the Board of Visitors,
under his guidance, adopted a scheme of studies which
was precisely the same in general character as the one
recommended by himself in the Rockfish Gap Report.
The chair of anatomy was only omitted because the poverty
of the funds did not, at that time, supply the amount
needed for an additional salary; but on October 6, of the
same year, this deficiency was removed. The several
schools prescribed on that date, in anticipation of the
opening of the University in the ensuing February, comprised
the following: I.—Ancient Languages: Latin,
Greek and Hebrew; and there were to be taught in the
same school in addition, belles-lettres, rhetoric, ancient
history, and ancient geography; II.—Modern Languages:
French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English in
its Anglo-Saxon form, while modern history and modern
geography were also to be included in the same
course; III.—Mathematics in all its branches, to which

was to be appended military and civil architecture; IV.
—Natural Philosophy: the laws and properties of bodies
in general, such as mechanics, statics, hydrostatics, hydraulics,
pneumatics, acoustics, and optics; and the science
of astronomy was also to be attached to this chair;
V.—Natural History: the sciences of botany, mineralogy,
zoology, chemistry, geology and rural economy;
VI.—Anatomy and Medicine: the sciences of anatomy
and surgery, the history of the progress and theories
of medicine, physiology, pathology, materia medica,
and pharmacy; VII.—Moral Philosophy: the science of
the mind, general grammar, and ethics; and VIII.—
Law: common and statute law, chancery law, federal
law, civil and mercantile law, law of nature and
nations, and the principles of government and political
science.

The eight broad courses of study embraced in this
short but pregnant list represent the three prime divisions
of the Higher Education; namely, the disciplinary, the
scientific, and the vocational. In their association in that
list, they resembled three great apartments, entirely distinct
from each other, but so closely connected as to be
standing under the same roof. As a whole, the scheme
was not more disciplinary than scientific, nor more scientific
than vocational. It reflected an equal respect for
the humanistic studies, which are essential to the intellectual
cultivation of men, and the practical studies, which
fortify their physical well-being, and enhance their
worldly prosperity. The follower of Locke, who looked
upon education as precious for its intellectual drill rather
than for the facts learned, would have detected in it
enough to satisfy his requirement, while the pupil of the
modern Spencer, in spite of his exclusive and intolerant
convictions, would have been unable to reject it altogether.

There was the classical course for mental discipline; there
was the scientific course for practical knowledge in general;
there was the vocational course for equipment for a
special pursuit. Utilitarian and rationalistic in spirit as
Jefferson was, he did not regard all education as only useful
so far as it prepared its recipient for a calling in life.
The culture of the moral and intellectual sides of the
individual was, in his view, of incalculable benefit in itself,
independently of its influence in sharpening the capacity
for winning success in some future business or profession.
Pestalozzi, it will be remembered, placed the
Latin and Greek languages in the class of studies that
were interesting only as curiosities. On the other hand,
Jefferson, who admired the methods of that revolutionary
teacher, and had as just an esteem for Real Knowledge
as the Germans themselves, nevertheless reckoned the
value of classical learning as high as Milton or Johnson,
and would have looked upon his system as radically incomplete
had not the ancient languages been included; and
he would have considered it to be equally defective had
not the most important natural sciences also been brought
within its scope.

Apart from the catholicity and perfect equilibrium that
distinguished the course of studies thus selected, the general
scheme possessed three practical features of an uncommon
character: (1) the division into schools; (2)
the ability of each school to expand more or less as the
funds of the institution increased; and (3) the unhampered
right of election which the student enjoyed instead
of his being bound down to an inflexible curriculum. It
will be seen hereafter that, when Jefferson came to draw
up rules to govern the choice of professors, he revealed
his dislike of single attainments, however great, by requiring
that the men to be selected should be so broadly

qualified that they could converse with ease with each colleague
on the subject which that colleague was employed
to teach; and yet by this division into schools, he created
a powerful influence for the production of specialists,
which his elective system was to confirm and make absolute.

Each school was confined to one great subject of study.
At the start, a single professor was in charge of each
school, but with a larger attendance of students, and a
rising income, the number was increased. Thus arose
what were designated as departments, which, in every
instance, were devoted to the study of at least one branch
of one fundamental subject. In 1851, the School of Law
was subdivided into two departments,[17] which were under
the direction of two professors; and in a broader manner,
the School of Ancient Languages expanded into two
schools in 1856, when the single chair was abandoned,
and the course in Latin was taken up by one professor,
and the course in Greek by another.

Each of the original schools of 1824 was independent
of the rest; each not only had an exclusive property in its
professor, but possessed, in that professor's pavilion, an
academic building of its own, in which its students were
required to assemble from day to day in their private
lecture-hall. In the beginning, each of these pavilions,
as we have stated, was expected to cost as much as one
of the intermediate academies which Jefferson had so
carefully planned as the secondary part of his scheme of
public education. His attitude towards each school and
its pavilion was almost as if he looked upon the two
combined as an institution as distinct as one of these district

colleges, but still, like the district college, a link in
the chain of a system. The tendency of his mind seemed
to be to disapprove of whatever leaned towards consolidation.
His preference was always for numerous bodies
held together by some sort of centripetal power, but existing
and moving in their own separate orbits. The principle
that he advocated in the relations of the States, he, in
a different way, put in force in the establishment of these
new schools, and in the regulations which he devised for
their practical working. Had he been an astronomer
also, it might be said of him that, as an upholder of statesrights,
and as the creator of university schools, he had
caught his inspiration while following the revolutions of
the Heavens, where every star is at once dependent and
independent.

In the curriculum that prevailed in other colleges, definite
courses were assigned to the freshman, sophomore,
junior, and senior years respectively, and no departure
from the rule was tolerated. On the other hand, in
the system of schools which Jefferson created for his university
in 1824, there were to be no such limitations as
these. If the student aspired to graduate in the entire
round of studies provided for in the general scheme, he
was to be at liberty, not only to begin and end with such
as he preferred, but he was to be under no compulsion
even in selecting his grades; if he wished, he was to be
permitted to attend, for instance, the senior class in Latin,
the intermediate class in Greek, and the junior class in
mathematics during the same session. In the curriculum
college, time was an element of controlling power. In
Jefferson's system of schools, on the other hand, time was
expected to play no part whatever. The student might
pass ten years, or even twenty years, if he liked, in the
endeavor, successful or unsuccessful, to graduate in one

or all of the schools; or if he had the physical strength
and the intellectual capacity as well required for so extraordinary
a feat, he might spend only one year in winning,
or strenuously striving to win, the whole number of
diplomas which the institution awarded. Each school
was to confer its own diploma, and the acquisition of this
single diploma was to entitle the winner as much to the
designation of "Graduate of the University of Virginia"
as if he had gathered in the entire eight. This fact very
naturally tended to increase further the dignity of the
separate school.

The diploma was to be won by the study of text-books
that were to be chosen, not by the Board of Visitors, but
by the professor himself. The incumbent of the chair
of law alone was not to enjoy this right; for that course,
from some points of view the most important of all, the
text-books were to be selected by Jefferson and Madison,
in accord with their own political doctrines. This was a
significant departure from the principle of independence
which had been adopted as the mainspring of the other
schools. "In most public seminaries," Jefferson remarked
in a letter to Cabell, "text-books are prescribed
to each of the several schools as the norma dociendi in
that school, and this is generally done by the authority
of the trustees. I should not propose it generally in
our university, because I believe none of us are so much
at the height of science in the several branches as to undertake
this, and, therefore, it will be better left to the
professors until occasion of interference be given." The
conclusion thus expressed was the one suggested and confirmed
by common sense. With all his versatility of
knowledge, Jefferson was too wise to think that he possessed
the exact as well as the varied information required
of one who was called upon to select the text-books for

such a diversity of courses as those embraced in the round
of at least seven of the schools. The obvious part of
discretion was to leave their choice to the experts who
were to fill these professorships. In the subjects of law
and political economy, on the other hand, he not only felt
that he was as much of a specialist as any man who might
be chosen to teach those subjects, but he was fully determined
that such principles alone should be imparted in
both as were satisfactory to his convictions.

As one of the purposes for which the University was
founded was to propagate and fortify what he considered
to be the only sound principles of government, it was
right, from his point of view, that he should show the
utmost jealousy in restricting the professor of law to
text-books which had been picked out by him with discriminating
care. But in its broadest aspect, this spirit
of exclusiveness,—which, it is significant, he exhibited
in connection with no other school as a whole,—was inconsistent
with the general character of independence
which he endeavored so sedulously and so successfully
to stamp upon the institution. When it came to political
theories, his attitude of liberal impartiality vanished at
once. A limitation of thought and action took its place.[18]
The intolerance which he justly condemned in sectarianism,
only too perceptibly animated him in the bent which
he deliberately gave to his school of law on its political
side. That school, instead of teaching the Federalist
and Republican respective views of the National Government
on a footing of historical and academic equality,
put its emphatic imprimatur upon the Republican theory,

with the result of giving the University a definite bias,
from a purely party point of view, from the start,—a
bias which, fortunately for the broad and universal usefulness
of its general work, was restricted to a single school.
If he went too far in his insistence upon the inculcation of
his own partisan convictions only in the new University,
time has corrected the possible evil effect of this exclusiveness
by transferring some of his dogmas to the domain
of past history, and leaving those that have survived in
practice to be studied in a spirit of impartial comparison.

Secondly: While the number of schools established
on the threshold was only eight, there was embedded in
the whole system the elastic principle which allowed, not
only expansion within each school by the broadening of
its several courses of instruction through the employment
of additional professors, but also an indefinite increase
in the number of independent schools. We have seen
that the plan of building rendered possible an unlimited
extension of the double lines of pavilions and dormitories.
This physical feature was adopted in anticipation both
of a spreading out within the existing schools, and of the
augmentation of their number. Jefferson looked forward
to the time when many subjects which received but
meagre consideration in his day would become an indispensable
part of every general scheme of higher education.
He foresaw, for instance, the importance of technical
philosophy, manual training, agriculture, horticulture,
veterinary surgery, and military science,—to designate
only a few departments of vocational instruction.
His provisions for teaching architecture and astronomy
were necessarily restricted, but he laid the foundation for
the acquisition of the fullest knowledge of both sciences,
although time has assured ample facilities only in the

case of astronomy.[19] Had the condition of the University
at the beginning allowed it, he would have set up Schools
of Commerce, Manufacture, and Diplomacy. He did
plan for thorough instruction in the theory of music and
other arts of a similar embellishing nature. It can be
asserted with accuracy that there have been few, if any,
large divisions of learning added to the courses of study
in any of the higher American institutions since the establishment
of the University of Virginia, which Jefferson
did not suggest in the various schemes of general education
that he formulated from time to time in his long
career, and for which his system of independent schools
was so precisely adapted.

Thirdly: The adoption of the elective principle was
the consistent, though not the inevitable, consequence of
the first division into schools, and of the power to add
new schools to the old indefinitely. The rapid increase
in the number of subjects, which, in our times, have forced
themselves upon the attention of teachers as indispensable
to a liberal education, has compelled the introduction of
elective courses even in colleges that remain loyal to the
formal curriculum. Had the number of schools at the
University of Virginia been permanently restricted to
those adopted at first, there would have been no impediment
in the way of prescribing a curriculum that would
have embraced them all. But Jefferson was hostile to
such a system by the sheer force of principle; and he foresaw,
that, in time, with the vast expansion of knowledge,
it either would become impossible in practice in his university,
or would have to be so stretched that it would
amount to the general right of election.

In 1816, Dr. Timothy Dwight, of Yale College, ventured
to assert,—amid growls of sour dissent, no doubt,
—that there was not a single university in the United
States at that time. There were seven, he intimated,
that pretended to that broad and liberal framework, but
tested by the standard of the great seats of learning in
Europe, only one in his judgment, Harvard College, approximated
it. Eight years after this bold and sweeping
pronouncement, the Board of Visitors of the University
of Virginia, which was not yet in operation, adopted the
following rule: "Every student shall be free to attend
the schools of his choice, and no other than he chooses."
This principle did not spring up now for the first time
even in the United States, for, many years before, it had
been put in limited practice at the College of William and
Mary.[20] Now, however, it was flung down as a tacit
challenge to Dr. Dwight amid far more imposing surroundings,
and with far brighter prospects of success,
than had ever greeted it before in America. It was to
become, indeed, the corner-stone of the institution; and
through it that institution was to claim identity in spirit
at least with the universities of the Old World, which had
enjoyed renown for ages. "I am not fully informed of
the practices of Harvard," wrote Jefferson to Ticknor,
in 1823, "but there is one principle we shall certainly
vary, although it has been copied, I believe, by nearly
every college and academy in the United States, that is,
the holding of the students all to one prescribed course
of reading, and disallowing exclusive application to those
branches only which are to qualify them for the particular

vocation to which they are destined. We shall, on
the contrary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lectures
they shall choose to attend, and require elementary
qualifications only and sufficient age."

Jefferson had a clear perception of the difference between
the college and the university. It was not a part
of his original plan that his own institution was to undertake
the work of a college even to a moderate extent.
The work which he designed it to do was graduate work,
and the only academic diploma—independent of the
doctrinate granted for advanced graduation—which
it was authorized to award was the graduate's diploma.
The adoption of the degrees of master of arts and bachelor
of arts was not in harmony with the principle upon
which his university was built, in its theory at least, and
was a distinctly regrettable, though perhaps, for practical
reasons, an unavoidable departure from its fundamental
character. It was special culture and not general
culture, which he had primarily in view, although the system
permitted also of general culture in the highest measure,
should the student succeed in passing through all
the classical and scientific schools. But it was not to the
aspirations of this set among the young men that he directed
his most earnest gaze; it was rather to the ambitions
of those who had come up to acquire knowledge
along some special line, scientific or classical, that appealed
to their individual tastes. It is true that, under
the existing regulations, each student was required, except
in cases of parental dispensation, to pursue at least three
courses of study; but these three he was at liberty to
choose; and it was always in his power, if he wished to
perfect himself in one school, to find two other schools
that would be more or less closely related to it.

It was not because of any defect in Jefferson's scheme

that the University of Virginia was, in the beginning,
more of a college than a university. The ideal college
stands midway between the school and the university;
the college looks backward,—the university looks forward;
the one treats of the conservation of truth,—the
other of its discovery or of vocational training. The
University of Virginia, at the start, when, in theory, it
was so purely a university, was more taken up with instruction
than with research; with undergraduate studies
than with graduate. This was due primarily to the incomplete
system of secondary education prevailing in
Virginia at that time, upon which, it will be recalled,
Jefferson had, with palpable exaggeration, animadverted
with sarcastic bitterness,—a shortcoming which so far
as it existed, his own institution was, in time, as we shall
see, so largely to correct. If the full fruit of such a
system of instruction as he framed for his own seat of
learning is to be garnered, then the community which it
is to benefit should contain, not simply public or private
secondary schools, however meritorious, but numerous
colleges of a high order to pour a constant stream of students
into the reservoir of the University at the top.
Jefferson sought to create these institutions by urging
the General Assembly to adopt a scheme of district colleges,
which would have enabled the student to complete
his undergraduate studies before beginning his graduate
studies at Charlottesville.

The need of these advanced colleges, as distinguished
from the large number of superior private schools that
existed, was perceived more and more clearly by the
Faculty as time passed. "Without an ample provision
for intermediate colleges and academies, and a judicious
distribution through the State," wrote Professor Lomax
to Cabell, in January, 1827, "the University can never

display the utility of which it is capable, and be secure of
having its proper support." Professor Dunglison had arrived
at the same conviction: "It will be an important
event for the institution when efficient academies are established
to do away with the necessity of the professors
of ancient and modern languages and mathematics
fulfilling those duties which ought previously to have been
performed in the schools." Jefferson himself could not
repress his impatience in contemplating this fact: "We
were obliged to receive last year," he wrote to W. B.
Giles in December, 1825, "shameful Latinists in the classical
school of the University, such as we will certainly
refuse as soon as we can get from better schools a sufficient
number of the properly instructed to form a class.
We must get rid of the Connecticut tutor."[21]

At this time, there were not in Virginia sufficiently
numerous facilities for preliminary instruction of a high
order, to equip every student to the degree required by
the standards of the University; and the depressing influence
of this fact on some of the junior classes of that
institution, during the early years of its existence, was
so much exaggerated by report, that colleges like Washington
and Hampden-Sidney apparently looked on it at
first, not as a superior, but as a common rival, engaged
like themselves chiefly in undergraduate work. And this
was also the prevailing attitude of the College of William
and Mary, although that institution had a better right,
both from an historical and a scholastic point of view, to
assume it.

XV. Plans for Filling the Chairs

Jefferson was not one of that bigoted stamp, perhaps
as numerous in his times as in our own, who honestly believe

that America is so faultless that it cannot be improved
upon,—at least, not so from without. No one
could surpass him in unselfish devotion to his own country;
and yet no one was more candid in acknowledging
its deficiencies, and more anxious to correct them, even if
the only way was to introduce foreign substances, talents,
and devices. Whether it was an Italian species of rice,
or an English variety of vegetable or thorn for hedges;
whether it was a Scotch threshing machine, or a French
barometer; whether it was an English strain of rams,
bulls, or boars, or the ward system of New England;
whether it was a novel chemical discovery in a Parisian
laboratory, or a serpentine wall noted in a casual stroll
through an English garden; whether it was the entire
faculty of a Swiss university, or the philologians, mathematicians,
and scientists of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh,
—his inquisitive eyes looked abroad unerringly for
the best in the practical or intellectual life of every foreign
land in order to employ it for the betterment of his
own. He was resolved to make the genius of every race
contribute to the beauty, the commodiousness, and the
enlightenment of the sphere in which his own people
moved. In politics and ethics alone did he seem to feel
that there was no need of foreign illumination and fortification.

Jefferson was a provincial in his intensely partisan interest
in the welfare of his own country, but he was a cosmopolite
in his discernment in recognizing what was most
useful in alien lands, and in his solicitude to reproduce
it on this side of the water. The spirit of his mission
to France, apart from its purely diplomatic aspects, was
summarized in the ever present thought: what advantages

to America in a scientific or scholarly way can I gather up
here for the promotion of its wealth, its comfort, its
moral and intellectual condition? There was no limit to
the personal inconvenience which he was ready to defy to
obtain information which he knew would be beneficial to
the existing and the future generations.

Such was his mental attitude in considering the vital
task of selecting the professors of the new university,
when, after the completion of the buildings, and the adoption
of the system of instruction, it became imperative to
choose the entire number. He was fully determined to
appoint only the most erudite, not only because his standard
was as high in the respect of scholastic training as it
was in all others, but because he was shrewdly aware that
it was only the most shining acquirements that could give
prestige to a seat of learning which was still in its infancy.
The distinction of the teachers alone could overcome the
absence of that glamour which tradition and a long history
of achievement are so fecund in imparting. Without
this distinction, the University could not only assert
no superiority over its fellow institutions of older origin,
—it could not even claim an equality with them. The
first question, which, he said, should be asked of a candidate
was: Is he highly qualified? Nor was he to be accepted
as so qualified simply because he knew thoroughly
his own topic. On the contrary, Jefferson insisted
that "he should be educated as to the sciences generally;
able to converse understandingly with the scientific
men with whom he is associated; or to assist in the councils
of the Faculty on any subject of science on which
they may have occasion to deliberate. Without this, he
will incur their contempt, and bring disrespect on the institution."

It is to be inferred from this expression of opinion, that

Jefferson was inclined to estimate breadth of acquirements
more highly than mere specialism, however profound.
Such amplitude of accomplishments were more common
in his day than it is in our own, and the success of his
original selection of professors was, in no one particular,
more conspicuously illustrated than in the facility with
which the majority of them could pass from the chair of
languages to the chair of mathematics and from the chair
of mathematics to the chair of natural philosophy. It
was his conviction that something besides lucrative salaries
and comfortable accommodations was needed to
ensure the acquisition of a faculty of the highest reputation
for talents and learning. He thought, with a just
refinement of view, that scholars of extraordinary merit
are influenced to accept a chair as much by the distinction
of the university to which that chair belongs as by the
actual emoluments that went with it. What was the only
means by which this distinction could be created before
professors of celebrity had been chosen? By the nobility
of its architectural setting. No doubt, as we have pointed
out, Jefferson found an acute satisfaction in stately edifices
apart from their practical utility, but there is also
reason to suppose that, in adopting the classical style in
his own seat of learning, he also had before his mind's
eye the reputation for imposing beauty which that style
would give. Such a reputation was an important asset in
itself. "Had we built a barn for a college and log-huts
for accommodations," he said somewhat scornfully,
"should we ever had the assurance to propose to a European
professor of the first order?"

He knew from his own personal observation while
abroad that, among the most splendid structures in Europe,
were those that housed the ancient colleges and universities;
and he could easily comprehend the feeling of

repulsion which the first view of the rude barracks even
of great institutions like Princeton, Yale, and Harvard,
would arouse in the breast of a fellow of Magdalen College,
Oxford, or Trinity College, Cambridge. It was
partly in order to create the deepest impression for
beauty that he insisted that the University should remain
shut up until the entire round of buildings had been completed,
when alone the effect of the whole in its perfection
could be fully taken in and discriminatingly relished.
This seemed to him to be the more imperative because
Charlottesville, at this time, was a small village, with no
architectural charm and no social advantages; and while
the surrounding country contained a large number of refined
and well educated families, and many attractive
homes, yet all of them were too dispersed to make the
pleasing impression on cultivated and travelled strangers
which they would have done, had they been closely and
conveniently grouped.

Had Jefferson been able to go from one American seat
of learning to another and pick out the very men whom he
preferred, it is quite possible that he would not have directed
his gaze so soon towards the universities of Europe.
During the existence of Central College, as will be
recalled, he turned first to Dr. Cooper, who, although of
English birth, had resided long enough in Pennsylvania
for his original democratical opinions to be confirmed.
Dr. Knox was a citizen of the United States. Jefferson
clearly perceived the practical advantage of employing instructors
who were already in sympathy with American
political principles and social customs, and who, he knew,
would be satisfied with the still raw American environment
because they were born to it. As early as March,
1819, the Board of Visitors, under the spur of his prompting,
instructed the committee of superintendence to overlook

no opportunity of engaging for the University
"American citizens of the first order of science in their
respective lines"; and during the following year, both
Mr. Bowditch and Mr. Ticknor, of Massachusetts, were
approached with offers of definite professorships. Nathaniel
Bowditch, who was famous as a self-taught mathematician
and navigator, and as the translator of Laplace's
Mechanique Celeste, had already declined to enter the
faculty of either Harvard or West Point. Ticknor was,
perhaps, the most accomplished man in the United States
at that time; had travelled far and wide in the Old World;
and was to win a great reputation as a teacher and as a
writer. Each refused such liberal inducements to accept
as a pavilion, an annual salary of two thousand dollars,
and a fee of ten dollars for each student belonging to his
class, with a total emolument of twenty-five hundred
dollars specifically guaranteed.

The failure to secure these distinguished men seems to
have discouraged Jefferson in his pursuit of American professors.
"It was not probable," he concluded, "that
they would leave the situation in which they were, even if
it were honorable to seduce them from their stations."
"It was easy enough," he added, "to fill the chairs with
the employed secondary characters. But this would not
have fulfilled the object or satisfied the expectation of our
country in the institution." The impossibility of obtaining
in the United States the teachers of the scholarship
by him considered to be indispensable, fully justified him
in deciding to look henceforward across the ocean for
their counterparts. And he may have done this with the
less hesitation because he was aware that a foreign professor
was, at that time, certain to be invested with the
greater prestige because he would be able to show a
diploma from some one of the famous European universities;

or what was a still higher distinction, had even occupied
a chair in one of them.

Naturally, Jefferson concentrated his earliest attention
upon the country which spoke the same language and
possessed the same points of view as Americans, and were
of the same racial descent, political principles, and social
instincts. He was too sensible to presume that an infant
university seated in the far-off New World, as yet without
reputation because still a pile of fresh bricks, and
with no large endowment fund, would be able, by the few
inducements that it could hold out, to draw to itself historical
scholars like Robertson, or classical scholars like
Porson and Parr, or scientists like Playfair. They, he
said, "occupied positions which could not be bettered anywhere."
It was upon the accomplished members of a
younger generation that he cast his eyes,—the men who
were already treading impatiently upon the heels of the
veterans; and who, within a few years, would be usurping
their shoes, and, as their successors, showing even higher
qualifications than the veterans themselves had exhibited.
The rivalry among these younger English scholars of
equal claims to recognition, he knew, was sharp and unceasing;
and he was sanguine that there would be found
among them some, who, as he said, would prefer a comfortable
certainty in Virginia to a precarious stipend in
England. So universal and so relentless, indeed, was
this competition in the struggle there for a moderate income,
that he had been told, he added, that "it was
deemed allowable in ethics for even the most honorable
minds to give exaggerated recommendations and certificates
to enable a friend or protégé to get into a livelihood."

Jefferson was well-informed as to the English universities
which must be sounded by him in his search for the

competent professors who were needed: to Oxford, he
must go for the classical scholar; to Cambridge for the
mathematical; to Edinburgh, for the anatomical expert;
and perhaps to that city also for the teacher of natural
philosophy and natural history. The professor of modern
languages should be procured from one of the continental
seats of learning.

The first foreign instructor to send in his testimonials
to the Board of Visitors was George Blaettermann, a
German by birth and education, who had been recommended
by George Ticknor and General Preston. This
was in 1821. Again, in 1823, he applied by letter to
Jefferson for the appointment, for which he had, in the
interval, prepared himself by collecting, during a tour of
France, Germany, and Holland, materials for a series of
lectures to be delivered at the University. Richard Rush,
the American minister to London, had been asked to inquire
as to his character and qualifications. It is possible
that, at one time, Jefferson was sanguine that all the
professors could be selected through the intermediary offices
of Rush; but this expectation, if ever nursed, was
soon abandoned as impracticable.

It was natural and judicious that he, in casting about
for an agent, should first think of Joseph C. Cabell, a man
upon whose good sense he had always, as we have seen, relied
implicitly, and who, by a previous visit to Europe, and
by personal acquaintance with many distinguished persons
there, seemed to be exceptionally fitted to carry out successfully
the mission which was now to be performed.
Cabell asked for time to consider the request. "I cannot
conceal," he wrote, "the gratification I feel at the confidence
the proposition discovers." At the moment, he
was debating in the closet of his own mind whether he
should not resign his seat in the Senate, and withdraw

into private citizenship again; his affairs had begun to
suffer alarmingly from the neglect that had followed his
long absences from home; and he had also pleasing visions
of devoting the leisure hours of his future plantation life
to science and literature. The suggested visit to Europe
would not be inconsistent with these agricultural and
scholarly plans, for it would not absorb a longer period
than six months at the most. Cabell, in the end, however,
determined, with Jefferson's hearty approval, to
remain in public office; and this decision, fortified, doubtless,
by his constant anxiety about his health, caused him
to decline the invitation to undertake the foreign mission.[22]

At the meeting of the Board of Visitors held on April
5 (1824), Francis Walker Gilmer was chosen in his
stead. As Jefferson had known Gilmer intimately from
boyhood, the selection was quite certainly the direct result
of his advice. From every point of view, it was both
a judicious and an interesting one. Gilmer belonged to
the same caste in Virginia as Cabell, and had passed his
early life in the midst of precisely similar social influences;
indeed, the home of Dr. George Gilmer, the father
of Francis Walker, was the exact counterpart in domestic
refinement, elevated tastes, and simple occupations, of the
home of Colonel Nicholas Cabell, the father of Joseph.
The mould in which the characters of both young men
had been shaped was the typical country-house of the
Old Dominion, with its English traditions of manliness,
uprightness, and culture of head and heart. Both were
animated by the same lofty ideal of intellectual accomplishments
and public services. Distinction in literature,

science or politics was the beckoning star of their aspirations;
they had, from their earliest youth, nursed a generous
ambition to win personal renown by such achievements
in at least one of these walks as would be distinctly promotive
of the happiness and prosperity of their fellowmen.

Cabell and Gilmer resembled each other even in their
flaws of temperament: the one exhibited on the threshold
of his active life, the other, throughout the whole of
his shortened existence, a definite infirmity of will, which,
by shifting their energies from one channel to another,
created an impression of instability and inconstancy of
character. Cabell, acquiring, by inheritance and marriage,
a large fortune, was able in time to concentrate his
powers in a brilliant political career, which he followed
uninterruptedly until the verge of old age. Gilmer, as
we shall see, wavered, not so much in his general spirit, as
in his particular aims, and died while still young, leaving
behind a memory that was held in all the more tenderness
by his numerous friends because it was invested with the
pathos of arrested achievement and unfulfilled promise.
Both Cabell and Gilmer were sufferers from weakness of
the lungs; and Gilmer succumbed to it before his powers
had fully ripened. The capriciousness and fickleness
which marked his conduct at times were probably due, in
no small measure, to the haunting thought of this terrible
disease, which naturally tended to confuse his plans for
life and debilitate his will in their pursuit. The impression
left by the study of his career is one of brilliance that
bordered on futility, and of ambition of the noblest order
that lacked the necessary fixity of purpose to blossom into
full efflorescence.

XVI. Francis Walker Gilmer

Gilmer was born at Pen Park, near the steep banks of
the Rivanna, and in the long morning shadow of the
Southwest Mountains. It was a cultivated and refined
neighborhood, as we have shown, in which his childhood
and youth were spent. His father, who was of direct
Scotch ancestry, and had received his medical education at
Edinburgh, was noted, in the community, for his literary
culture, his taste for science,—more particularly for botany
and chemistry,—and for an uncommon knowledge of
the fine arts. William Wirt, who married his daughter,
Mildred, described him as being an accomplished gentleman,
gay in temper, witty in utterance, and on occasion,
capable of eloquence of great force and dignity. He enjoyed
Jefferson's friendship,—largely, perhaps, because
they were both so deeply interested in every branch of
scientific inquiry. Wirt imagined that he detected in
Francis as early as his fourth year the general cast of his
father's remarkable character. His early education
seems to have been discursive and desultory, but it was
sufficiently concentrated for him to acquire a great fund
of classical learning. His first lessons of importance were
received in the family of Thomas Mann Randolph; and
here, under the tutelage of Mrs. Randolph, who had been
educated in Paris, he obtained a very respectable knowledge
of the French language. Afterwards entering
Georgetown College near Washington, he passed thence
to the College of William and Mary, where he seems to
have impressed Bishop Madison as favorably as Cabell
had done, for his genial manners, his refined tastes, and
his ripe scholarship.

While a student there, he was thrown into the society
of his distinguished brother-in-law, William Wirt, for the

first time since his childhood, although the two had very
often, during the interval, exchanged letters. Wirt soon
formed an enthusiastic opinion of his capabilities and
his attainments. "In learning, he is a prodigy," said he.
"His learning is of a curious cast, for having no one to
direct his studies, he seems to have devoured indiscriminately
everything that came in his way. He had been removed
from school to school in different parts of the
country,—had met at all those places with different collections
of old books, of which he was always fond, and
seemed also to have had command of his father's medical
library, which he had read in the original Latin. It was
curious to hear a boy of seventeen years of age speaking
with fluency, and even with manly eloquence, and quoting
such names as Bochaave, Van Helmont, Van Sweiten, together
with Descartes, Gassendi, Newton, and Locke, and
discanting on the system of Linnaeus with the familiarity
of a veteran professor."

Bishop Madison quite naturally was solicitous to associate
such an unfledged prodigy of learning as this with
the College of William and Mary; and perhaps it was
only Gilmer's youth which stood in the way of the offer of
a more conspicuous station in the institution than the
ushership of the grammar school. But he seems to have
been already looking forward to a more active career than
teaching. We learn from a letter addressed to his
brother in October, 1810, that he was, at this time, planning
a sojourn of several years in Albemarle county,
where he expected to devote his time to a special course
of reading, for which he would find the necessary volumes
in the libraries of his friends. Now begins the somewhat
sauntering habit of life which he was to keep up more or
less to the end, and which seems to reveal a certain waywardness
of spirit in the pursuit of his purposes. He

speaks of his "natural indolence," and fear that it will
interrupt the proposed course of reading, although undertaken
with no higher object than mere pleasure. In the
spring of 1811, he plunges into a debate with himself
whether or not he should seriously begin the study of
law, but before doing so, he decided, with a characteristic
disposition to diverge from his main path, to read
Xenophon as giving a part of that moral science which,
from its affinity to jurisprudence, should, in the order of
things, he said, precede its study.

His friends, among whom were many men of distinction,
fortified him with words of encouragement: "I
consider you," wrote W. M. Burwell, a representative in
Congress from Virginia, "destined to be eminently useful."
"You set out," said William Wirt, "with a stock
of science and information not surpassed, I suspect, in the
example of Mr. Jefferson, and not equalled by any other,
I do not except Tazewell." And he tells his young
brother-in-law that he will not be satisfied with mediocrity
in his career. "Whatever line of life you propose to
pursue," wrote Jefferson, "you will enter on it with the
high profits which worth, talent, and science present.
There would be nothing which you might not promise
yourself were the state of education with us what we
could wish."[23]

Gilmer, in 1811, accepted an invitation from Wirt to
study law in his office in Richmond, the customary method,
at that time, of qualifying for the profession. Wirt was
not only the most brilliant member of the local bar, but

had also won distinction by his success as an author; indeed,
the British Spy had already given him a national
reputation, independently of his forensic triumphs. Personally,
he was the most delightful of companions; and
this geniality, with his influential connections by marriage
and by friendship, made him perhaps the most notable
figure in the highest social group of the city. The charming
benefits which Gilmer reaped from his familar association
with this accomplished man was only one part of
his social harvest: he became intimate with the families
of the Wickhams, Hays, McClurgs, Brockenbroughs,
Cabells, and Gambles, and others of equal standing;
formed a close friendship with Tazewell and Upshur;
shouldered a musket in the defence of the city against
British invasion; and barely got off with his life from the
burning of the Richmond theatre, which snuffed out so
many useful and distinguished lives.

In the spring of 1814, Gilmer determined to open a
law office in Winchester; but during the many months
which he passed at leisure before acting on this decision,
he seems to have employed his time in the several kinds
of literary composition to which he was impelled by the
didactic spirit of that day. It was during this interval
that he was first thrown with Abbe Corrèa; and as they
had many tastes in common, their friendship quickly
ripened. Corrèa was a Portuguese, who, for some years,
had acted as secretary of the Lisbon Academy, but sympathizing
with the French Revolution, had been forced to
fly his native country and to take refuge in London.
There he won such unreserved consideration that he was
appointed the British representative in Paris, and remained
there from 1802 to 1813. He was held in high
repute by scientists for his knowledge of botany; and he
seems to have visited the United States for the first time

to deliver lectures on this topic. At a subsequent period,
he served as the Portuguese minister at Washington; and
having become an intimate of Jefferson, he was frequently
a visitor at Monticello.

Gilmer was irresistibly attracted to him, not only by his
universal learning, but also by his knowledge of plants, a
subject which had always interested the young Virginian.
"Corrèa," said he, with generous enthusiasm, "knows all
the languages, all the sciences. He is the most extraordinary
man who ever lived." The two very often exchanged
roots and seeds, and on at least two occasions,
they made long and delightful excursions together in
search of rare species of flowers. "The Abbe wishes
you were always with him," Henry St. George Tucker
wrote from Winchester; and we find Corrèa constantly
sending him letters that breathe both affection and admiration.
"Go on ascending the ladder," he tells him
in February, 1816, "but remember that a genius like
yours must not make it the only business of his life, but
employ the ascendancy he got by that means to better
the mental situation of his nation." Through Corrèa,
Gilmer forwarded an essay to the Philosophical Society
of Philadelphia to be read at its ensuing meeting; and he
also became a correspondent of Du Pont de Nemours, to
whom he discoursed on the topic of roads built at the
national expense, or of a paper currency that rested on no
basis more solid than the public confidence.

He was established in Winchester by 1814. His mind,
however, was still so little set upon the profession of
law, to the exclusion of all other interests, that Corrèa
was able to seduce him into a botanical excursion to the
Carolinas. He was also secretly engaged in literary
composition. In 1816, a thin volume entitled Sketches
of the Orators written by him, but without acknowledgment

of its paternity on the title page, was published in
Baltimore, and the authorship soon leaking out, it led
to an interesting correspondence with several persons of
literary distinction. George Ticknor had already made
his acquaintance,—no doubt at Monticello,—and perceiving
his genial disposition and extraordinary literary
and scientific culture, had been drawn to him with affectionate
sympathy. In 1815, Gilmer planned a short
tour in Europe. "Shall you set yourself down," wrote
Ticknor, "amidst the literary society of Paris, and pass
there in solitary study, or intellectual intercourse, the
greater part of the time you can allow yourself to be
abroad ... or shall you visit with a classical eye and a
classical imagination, the curious remains of art and an
tiquity in Italy?" It 1817, Ticknor stopped over in
Geneva purposely to purchase for him a set of French
and Latin volumes in tally with a list which had been
sent to Dabney Carr Terrell, a young Virginian, then a
student in the university of that city; and during his stay
at Göttingen, he was warmly interested in buying for him
additional works relating to jurisprudence and political
economy. Ticknor's generous friendship for Gilmer
never grew cold. In a letter written the same year,
he revealed his affectionate solicitude for him by begging
him to take care of his health. "The world," he
said, "expects a great deal from your talents. I have
placed a portion of my happiness on the continuance of
your life."

Another correspondent was the versatile Hugh L.
Legarè, who, like himself, had an almost inordinate esteem
for literary culture and classical learning.

During his residence in Winchester, where he was able
to earn his expenses by his profession, Gilmer was daily
brought in the most familiar association with Henry St.

George Tucker, Judge Carr, and Judge Holmes, three
men of remarkable attainments themselves, who felt for
him an almost fraternal affection. But in spite of the
genial attractions of their society, and the goodwill and
respect of the community at large, he began to grow restive
by the end of the second year. Where should he
next settle, was the question that then arose to perplex
his mind. He consulted his friends. Judge Cabell
urged him to come back to Richmond. "Wirt," he
wrote, "has removed to Washington, and his business to
start with will fall to you." "Hard study, hard labor,
and patient waiting," he added, "are necessary to success.
I have no doubt of your success if you will be but
true to yourself." Gilmer's progressive weakness of the
lungs was one of the causes of his increasing restlessness.
"You can easily fulfil expectations," Cabell continued,
"if you will preserve your health by adapting your
habits to the nature of your accommodations."

He thought at first of establishing himself in Baltimore.
Robert Walsh, a prominent resident of that city,
whose advice he sought, threw cold water on this plan.
"The competition is crowded here," he said, "though
not powerful. Much depends on accident and family
influence. As for political advancement, the chances are
more favorable in Winchester." On the other hand,
Wirt, to whom he also turned, counseled him to decide
in favor of Baltimore. That wise friend urged him to
give up entirely the diversion of writing books until he
had accumulated a fortune by his practice; ten years at
least should pass before he should permit himself to
gratify his literary ambitions. "Be content," adds
Wirt, "with the beautiful and captivating specimen of
your taste in composition which you have already given."
Gilmer, unfortunately, perhaps, for his success as a lawyer,

was in possession of a small income from invested
funds and the hire of negroes,—a fact, which, by removing
the spur to constant exertion in his profession,
allowed him to become more enamored of the literary
pursuits in which his heart was really embarked.

The length of residence required by the Baltimore
rules before he would be granted a license, finally decided
him to enroll his name in the membership of the Richmond
bar. He had not been long settled in that city
when he was mentioned for the presidency of the College
of William and Mary, and under the influence of
his leanings as a scholar, he would very probably have
accepted it had it been offered, if Jefferson had not somewhat
indignantly protested against his suffering himself
to be drawn into what he described as a cul de sac.
"You must get into the Legislature," he added, "for
never did it more need of all its talents, nor more so
than at this next session." The success which Gilmer
won at the Richmond bar at this time proves that, had
he been able to concentrate his thoughts and energies on
the profession of law, he would have fulfilled all the sanguine
expectations of his friends. Wirt, whose amiable
temper, perhaps, led him to form an exaggerated estimate
of other people's abilities, had not yet ceased to
regret that his young brother-in-law had decided against
a residence in Baltimore. "Had you gone thither," he
said, "a few years might have placed your name next to
Pinckney's." Now, Pinckney was, at this time, the most
celebrated advocate in the American courts, and to predict
that the young Virginian would, by proper exertion,
rise to a position only second to his was to attribute to
him the possession of the most extraordinary capacity.
Whether his powers were really so great or not, Wirt
followed his legal career with affectionate interest; and

receiving a very favorable report of one of his earliest
arguments, after the removal to Richmond, expressed his
gratification at the reputation which Gilmer was rapidly
winning. "I hear you have broken a lance with the Attorney-General.
Did you unhorse him? They tell me
there was no pomp, no ostentation, no bombast, no
pedantry about you, no verbiage for verbiage's sake,
but that your words were full of thought, your manner,
manly and moderate, yet energetic and cogent."

During one year, Gilmer served as the official reporter
of the Court of Appeals, and his name was even suggested
for the Attorney-Generalship of the State; but in
spite of his apparent attention to the obligations of his
jealous profession at this time, he seems to have still
had little proclivity for it. His most earnest meditations
were, as formerly, constantly directed towards literature
and science. "I had not the least suspicion of
your talent for poetry," wrote Corrèa, who had just received
a copy of verses from his pen. Later, he is found
rebutting Jeremy Bentham, and the self-complacent Edinburgh
reviewers, in a treatise on usury, which was greeted
with warm encomiums by both Jefferson and Wirt. A
more imaginative production was an essay, in which he
represented himself as lost at night in Westminster Abbey,
and listening unseen to a conference between the marble
figures, which had turned to flesh and blood and resumed
their powers of motion and speech. In a second
essay of a scientific cast, he offered an ingenious explanation
of the phenomenon of the lunar rainbow.

He never lost his keen taste for the study of botany.
Corrèa, in December, 1818, urged him to join him in an
excursion to the Dismal Swamp in search of wild plants
and flowers; and also, the following summer, to accompany
him to the neighborhood of Charleston, for the

same purpose. These invitations apparently were not
accepted simply because Wirt protested. "Your future
success," he said, "must depend on disproving the whimsicality
and instability which the mind is apt enough, without
any overt act, to attach to genius." Gilmer seems
to have nursed a vague plan of establishing some sort of
botanical school in the Alleghanies. "What in the
deuce," wrote Corrèa, "put you in the mood of a rural
establishment in the mountains, with herb hunting, and
lectures, and do nothing?" A letter from Thomas M.
Randolph, written to him in 1818, mentions their former
wanderings in the vicinity of Richmond in search of
flowers; and a jocular note of Littleton W. Tazewell,
some years later, quizzes him about a box full of rare
blossoms which he had just received from Charleston,
with directions to send it on to his address.

It was, during this year, that he became a candidate
for the Secretaryship of Florida; but his motive apparently
was not to secure a semi-tropical field for the gratification
of his botanical curiosity, but to settle himself in
a region that would prove more favorable to his precarious
health. Wirt, to whom he applied for a backing,
was discouraging in his reply. He again, with renewed
impatience, enjoined upon him "to bid adieu to the
sciences and literature for a season, and let the world
see that your soul is in your profession. Avoid the reputation
of fickleness. Your next move must be your
last." Unfortunately, perhaps, for himself, Gilmer
failed to obtain the appointment, and the next few years
were passed in Richmond, broken only by the performance
of his mission to England, which will be subsequently
described. His pursuits continued to be of a desultory
cast. We find him in correspondence with Philip
Norborne Nicholas, who retailed, for his amusement,

the social gossip of Washington and the floating public
news of the hour; with William Pope, of Powhatan
county, the local humorist, who wrote that John Randolph
had recently spoken of him as the "best informed
man of his age in Virginia"; with Abel P. Upshur, Secretary
of State in Tyler's Administration; with Benjamin
Watkins Leigh, who consulted him confidentially about
the agitation of his name as a candidate for the Senate;
and with Captain Thomas Miller, a cultivated Englishman,
who asserted that he had received more "information
and pleasure" from Gilmer's conversation than
"from all the people he had seen in all his travels."

These kind words, coming from men of such public distinction
or private worth, must have been deeply soothing
to Gilmer's disquieted spirit, now that his fatal disease
was making such rapid and destructive progress. So
extreme was his debility, that, towards the close of 1825,
he made up his mind to return to his native county of
Albemarle, in reality to die. Thomas W. Leigh, a man
like himself of extraordinary promise, and like himself
destined to pass away before his prime, wrote to him,
after his departure, that "absence and separation would
never weaken the sentiment of gratitude, and affection,
and admiration with which I shall continue your friend";
and Dr. John Brockenbrough regretted that "one of the
greatest pleasures we had is gone," now that he is no
longer a citizen of Richmond. "No more friendly chitchat
soirées, and no substitute for them," he adds in words
that show his sincerity.

Before Gilmer went back to the familiar scenes of his
youth and early manhood, he sought the benefit of a
change in a visit to Norfolk. Chapman Johnson encouraged
him, after his return, by saying that, as a result
of the trip, he was "less hoarse and coughed less." "I

am perfectly persuaded," he added, probably with
feigned hopefulness, "you want nothing but a tranquil
mind, and mild climate to restore you." Gilmer had
spoken of visiting Philadelphia to consult Dr. Physic.
Johnson urged him instead to seek the affectionate nursing
of his friends in Albemarle. "Make up your mind,"
he said, "to get well or to go to Heaven without another
murmur or complaining word, and you will find the prescription
worth a thousand times more than all the doctors
can do or say for you." Gilmer wisely followed this
advice, for his case was beyond the skill of the most
competent physician; only a few months later, the religious
state of his mind was revealed in his gift of plate
for the altar of the Episcopal church in Charlottesville.
On February 15 (1826), General Cocke reported his
condition as so low, in the opinion of Dr. Dunglison, that
he could not survive a fortnight. His last thoughts
seemed to have travelled to the kindest and most affectionate
of all his friends, the genial, the generous, the
true-hearted William Wirt. "Farewell to you," the
dying man wrote, with his brother Peachy's assistance,
"and to all a family I have esteemed so well. I have
scarcely any hope of recovering, and was but a day or
two ago leaving you my last souvenir. I have not written
to you because I love and admire you, and am too low
to use my own hand with convenience." Wirt's reply
was full of an agonized tenderness. "I have learned,"
he wrote, "that your disease has taken a turn alarming
to your friends. But this note surpasses all my fears.
... You have the love and present prayers of every
member of my family. God Almighty bless you. If
we have to part, I trust it will not be long ere we shall
meet again to part no more."

The last scenes in Gilmer's life remind us in many

ways of the closing hours in the life of Keats. Both
died young, both unmarried, and both of the same
disease; and although the verses of the poet assured him,
as he knew, an immortal chaplet of fame, there was, in
his fading consciousness, that pang of thwarted hopes and
unfulfilled desires which also wracked the heart of the
young Virginian, sinking under the same deadly malady.
As Keats's haunting sense of his own futility was
summed up in the mournful epitaph which he wrote for
himself, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water,"
so the pathetic words engraved upon the tomb of the accomplished,
aspiring, and high-minded Francis Walker
Gilmer express all the sadness of a spirit, which only
found surcease from the disappointments of hope and
ambition when the frail body which had imprisoned it
had been consigned to its native sod:

XVII. The Mission to England

Such in general was the spirit and the quality of the
man who was selected to visit England in order to make
the necessary choice of foreign professors. Jefferson
offered him the mission by letter on November 23, 1823;
but it was not until April 5, 1824, that he received a
specific direction from the Board to leave for Europe to
engage "characters of due degree of science, and of
talents for instruction, and of correct habits and morals."
The persons to be sought for and contracted with were to
be the professors who were to occupy the chairs of mathematics,
the ancient languages, anatomy and physiology,—
which should take in the history of the main theories of

medicine also,—physics, with astronomy added, and
natural history, embracing botany, zoology, mineralogy,
chemistry, and geology.

Gilmer was impowered to offer to each a fixed salary
of a thousand dollars as the minimum, and fifteen hundred
as the maximum, and also the tuition fees belonging
to the chair to be filled. A guarantee was to be given
that, during the first five years, the remuneration of the
incumbent was not to be allowed to fall below twentyfive
hundred dollars. Two thousand dollars was to be
deposited in an English bank to enable Gilmer to make
an advance of money to such of the professors as should
need it before shutting up their homes in England; he
himself was to receive fifteen hundred dollars to cover the
expenses of his journey, and also to pay for his services
in carrying out the mission; while a sum of six thousand
dollars was to be appropriated for the purchase of apparatus
for the use of the mathematical, chemical, physical,
and astronomical classes. As the University was expected
to be in a condition to receive students by February
1, 1825, it was hoped that he would be able to engage
all the professors by the middle of November, 1824.
His power of attorney was dated April 26, 1824. A letter
of introduction from Jefferson to Richard Rush, the
American minister in London, which accompanied this
document, recommended him to Rush's good offices as
the "best educated subject we have raised since the Revolution,
highly qualified in all the important branches of
sciences, particularly that of law. ... His morals, his
amiable temper, and his discretion, will do justice to any
confidence you may place in him." Madison, in a supplementary
letter, was equally complimentary. "He
will quickly recommend himself," he said, "by his enlightened
and accomplished mind, his pleasing disposition

and manners." "It is a sufficient testimonial of
his merits," he added, "that he was selected for this
mission"; and Rush was asked to bring him into communication
with persons in England of the type of Sir James
Mackintosh, who would be able to point out the scholars
to be approached.

With numerous copies of the Rockfish Gap Report in
his baggage, as Jefferson's gifts to his English correspondents,
like Dugald Stewart and Major John Cartwright,
and fortified with bills of exchange on Gowan
and Marx of London, Gilmer set sail from New York on
May 8, in the packet Cortez, which steered straight for
Liverpool; but, buffeted by fierce headwinds in St.
George's Channel, turned into the harbor of Holyhead,
in Wales, from which town he travelled overland to the
original port of destination, where he arrived twentynine
days after dropping out of sight of Sandy Hook.
Stopping at Hatton, after his departure from Liverpool,
to talk with Dr. Parr, he was told that he was absent
from home. During the first eight days of his sojourn
in London, he was, against his will, left in a state of restive
idleness by the crush of Mr. Rush's engagements; but
at the end of that interval, was able to obtain from
Lord Teignmouth and Mr. Brougham the letters which
he needed for Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh. He
held personal interviews with these two distinguished
Englishmen, both of whom he discovered to be very much
interested in the objects of his mission; but Sir James
Mackintosh was either too indolent, or too much absorbed
in his political duties, to give any assistance.
Lord Teignmouth's four letters were addressed to the
highest dignitaries at Oxford and Cambridge,—among
them, Dr. Edward Coplestone, afterwards Bishop of
Llandaff,—while Brougham's three were to persons described

by him as "the fittest" at Cambridge and Edinburgh,
one of whom was Dr. Martin Davy, master of
Caius College, and a friend of Dr. Parr's. Brougham
offered to introduce Gilmer to Davy in London; and was
so solicitous for his success as to put him on "his guard
against the various deceptions or rather exaggerations"
which would be practiced upon him, should he let the
purpose of his mission "be known to any but a very
few."

Before leaving London, Gilmer signed a contract with
Dr. Blaettermann, who, not expecting the appointment,
had recently rented and furnished a large house.[24] It is
to be noted that he was not guaranteed the salary of
twenty-five hundred dollars which Gilmer had been authorized
to offer; and it was even intimated to him that
the fifteen hundred dollars which he was to receive at
the outset, might, during the second year, be reduced to
one thousand. No real ground of objection to Blaettermann
seems to have been discovered; but as the terms
extended to him were less liberal than those granted to
the other professors, we can only infer that Gilmer's
impression of the man was not of the most favorable
nature in the beginning. He spoke with a distinct foreign
accent, which may have aroused a feeling of prejudice
against him. His salary was to begin to accrue
from the day of his sailing; he was to receive, in addition,
fifty dollars from every pupil who studied his courses
only; thirty, if the pupil attended one other school; and
twenty-five, if he attended two other schools. He bound

himself to follow no additional calling during the period
of his engagement.

Gilmer set out from London for Cambridge on June
22, carrying with him such letters of introduction as he
had been successful in obtaining; and on arriving there,
found that the long vacation had begun, and that Dr.
Davy was absent. He filled up the interval before the
latter's return with an endeavor to decide whether it
would be wise to engage the scientific professors among
the fellows of this University; and he finally concluded
that only incumbents for the chairs of mathematics and
natural philosophy should be selected there, as small attention
was paid in that institution to natural history.
While busy pushing this vital inquiry, he was the recipient
of the warmest hospitality from the masters of the
colleges and the undergraduates alike, to whom he was
recommended, not only by his scholar's mission, but also
by his handsome presence, pleasant manners, varied information,
and cultivated mind. He was invited to
occupy rooms in Trinity College, and dined almost daily
in its hall. The original letters of Sir Isaac Newton, the
manuscript of a portion of Milton's Paradise Lost, the
mulberry tree planted by the poet, his noble bust, and
other memorials of literary interest, were shown him
by the Bishop of Bristol in person. It was with a pleasant
emotion of surprise that he noted among people of
all ranks a genuine feeling of kindness for his own
country.

Before leaving Cambridge, he visited several famous
spots in its vicinity,—among them, the stately cathedral
at Boston, standing on an eminence that rose to a greater
height than the capitol at Richmond from a wide plain
recently rescued from the fens; and also the church at
Grand Chester, which was then thought to be the scene

of Gray's Elegy, from the belfry of which he heard, at
nine o'clock, the curfew tolling across the fields "the
knell of parting day." A little later, he was writing a
letter to William Wirt from the room at Stratford in
which Shakespeare was born. The lower floor of the
house was, at that time, used as a butcher's stall; and so
neglected was the great poet's fame in his native town
that Gilmer had to inquire of half a dozen passers-by before
he was able to find the grave.

From Stratford, he continued his journey to Oxford,
which was now deserted, for professors and students
alike had dispersed for the summer vacation. "I have
seen enough of England and learned enough of the two
Universities," he wrote from that place, "to see that the
difficulties we have to encounter are greater than we supposed,
—not so much from the variety of the applications,
as from the difficulty of inducing men of real abilities
to accept our offer. ... Education at the Universities
has become so expensive that it is almost exclusively
confined to the nobility and the opulent gentry, no
one of whom could we expect to engage. Of the few
persons at Oxford or Cambridge who have any extraordinary
talent, I believe ninety-nine out of a hundred are
designed for the profession of law or the gown, or aspire
to political distinction; and it would be difficult to persuade
one of these, even if poor, to repress so far the
impulse of youthful ambition as to accept a professorship
in a college in an unknown country. They who are
less aspiring who have learning, are caught up at an
early period in their several colleges; soon become fellows
and hope to be masters; which, with the apartments,
garden, and 4, 5 or 600 pounds sterling a year, comprises
all they can imagine of comfort or happiness."

An additional obstacle which Gilmer had to overcome

in securing competent men was the necessity, created by
poverty, which forced the University of Virginia to
assign several subjects to the same professor,—chemistry
and astronomy, for instance, to the already laborious
chair of natural philosophy. A second obstacle was
the shortness of the vacation in that institution; and
above all, the season at which it fell. In Oxford and
Cambridge, all study ceased between July 1 and October
10. "If the heat is insufferable in England," he exclaims,
"what must it be in our July, August, and September,
when there is to be no vacation!" He admitted
that, at this hour, he felt discouraged and depressed.
"Whether I can find professors elsewhere in England
is most doubtful; in the time (fixed by the Board of Visitors),
I fear not. I shall not return without engaging
them, if they are to be had in Great Britain or Germany.
I have serious thoughts of trying Göttingen."

Leaving Oxford in this mood, Gilmer visited Dr.
Parr in his home at Hatton. Parr was too infirm to be
of service to him in securing the professors sought for,
but was of assistance in preparing a catalogue of classical
books for the library. From Hatton, Gilmer travelled
on to Edinburgh, the city where his father had matriculated
fifty years before, and where a brother had died
from over-exertion in the prosecution of his studies. On
the day of his arrival, he obtained his first glimpse of a
tangible success in carrying out his mission. During his
sojourn in Cambridge, he had been introduced in the
rooms of the poet, William Mackworth Praed, to
Thomas Hewett Key, who, at that time, was a student
of medicine, after winning distinction in the academic
courses of that University. Gilmer, subsequent to their
parting there, invited him by letter to accept the professorship
of mathematics. It was the favorable reply to

this letter which reached Gilmer in Edinburgh, and gave
him a feeling of encouragement in place of the dejection
which had so harassed him. Key confessed that, at the
request of his father,—himself a physician in large practice,
—he had determined to withdraw from the pursuit
of pure science and literature. "Indeed," he added,
"nothing but your liberal proposition would have in–
duced me once more to turn my thought to that quarter.
... I shall be happy, should I find it in my power to
agree to your offer. The manners, habits, and sentiments
of the country, will, of course, be congenial with
my own. ... Nor would it at all grieve me, in a political
point of view, to become, if I may be allowed that honor,
a citizen of the United States."

Although Key suggests in this letter that the final arrangement
should be delayed until they should have the
opportunity to talk fully and intimately together at his
father's in town, he now submits a number of practical
questions for definite answers which would assist him in
deciding. What branch of science was he expected to
teach? What duties to perform? Would he be entirely
under his own or others' directions? How far should
he have the right to control his own time? What was
the existing state of the University as to government?
What were the number, age, and pursuits of its students?
Had Gilmer the authority to make a private arrangement?
And would the expense of the journey to the
University be partly met at his own charge? To these
numerous and searching interrogations, Gilmer was able
to return a prompt and satisfactory reply by letter. Key
would be expected to teach the mathematical sciences by
lessons or lectures, as he himself should prefer; he could
only be dismissed by a vote of two-thirds of the Board;
he could dispose of his time as he liked, provided that he

should follow no other calling that would be a source of
emolument to himself; and he was entitled to such an
advance of funds as would defray the expense of his passage
to Charlottesville.

An interesting paragraph of this letter related to the
number of students that would probably be in attendance
the first year. The estimate of that number which Gilmer
now gave was scrupulously honest, but it was so
exaggerated, in the light of the reality disclosed within
a few months, that it must have left a painful impression
on Key in recalling it after his arrival in Virginia.
Repeating Jefferson's sanguine prediction, Gilmer asserted
that not less than five hundred would matriculate
so soon as the doors of the University were opened to
receive them; and he was confident that at least two
hundred of these young men would enter the mathematical
course. As each pupil would be required to pay a
fee of twenty-five dollars at least, the amount that would
accrue to Key from students alone would be five thousand
dollars, and when the sum due from the University as a
fixed salary, namely, fifteen hundred dollars, was added,
the total would rise to the imposing figure of six thousand,
five hundred dollars. As no rent was to be asked for the
occupation of a pavilion,—which would have reduced
this figure,—the prospect was well calculated to dazzle
a young medical student like Key, who had been looking
forward in England to a protracted period of impecunious
probation.

So soon as Gilmer arrived in Edinburgh, he personally
interviewed a number of persons who had been recommended
to him in London. Among the first of these
was Professor John Leslie, who had, at one time, been a
tutor in the Randolph family, in Virginia. If Leslie had
not since become a scientist of indisputable acquirements,

his letter to Gilmer would appear to be distinctly presumptuous
and condescending: "I stated to you," he
wrote, "that it appeared to me that even the temporary
superintendence of a person of name from Europe might
contribute to give éclat and consistency to your infant
university. On reflecting since on this matter, I feel not
averse, under certain circumstances, to offer my own services.
I am prompted to engage in such a scheme, partly
from a wish to revisit some old friends, and partly from
an ardent desire to promote the interests of learning and
liberality. I could consent to leave Edinburgh for half
a year. I could sail from Liverpool by the middle of
April, visit the colleges in the New England States, New
York, and Philadelphia, and spend a month or six weeks
at Charlottesville. I should then bestow my whole
thoughts in digesting the best plans of education, etc.;
give all the preliminary lectures in mathematics, natural
philosophy, and chemistry; and besides, go through a
course comprising all my original views and discoveries in
meteorology, heat, and electricity. Having put the
great machine in motion, I should then take my leave to
visit other parts of the Continent. But I should continue
to exercise a parental care over the future of the university,
and urge forward the business by my correspondence.
To make such a sacrifice as this, I should expect
a donation of at least one thousand pounds, which would
include all my expenses on the voyage."

Leslie's expansive offer, which was reported to the
Board by letter, discloses upon its face that he was too
costly a luxury to be in the reach of a poorly endowed
university, still in its swaddling clothes. Gilmer, for
some days, cherished the hope that he would be able to
secure the talents of Professor Buchanan for the chair
of natural philosophy and chemistry, two courses which

he soon found it necessary to unite under one instructor.
Buchanan objected to a session prolonged through the
entire summer, on account both of the heat and the obstacle
which it would create to his revisiting his native
country at the only season when it would be convenient
for his British friends to entertain him. He finally declined
the invitation; and so did Dr. Craigie, who was offered
the chair of anatomy, for which he was extraordinarily
well equipped. It is not a cause for surprise to find
that Gilmer was disposed to feel somewhat bitter over
his failures. "When I saw needy young men," he wrote
Jefferson afterwards, "living miserably up ten or twelve
stories, in that wretched climate of Edinbrough, reluctant
to join us, I did not know where we could expect to
raise recruits."

It seems, however, that not all the scholars were so impoverished.
The pedagogic calling in Scotland had become
lucrative. "Even the Greek professor at Glasgow,
Leslie tells me," Gilmer wrote in the letter just quoted,
"receives fifteen hundred guineas a year. Some of the
lecturers here receive above four thousand pounds sterling.
Besides this, we have united branches which seem
never to be combined in the same person in Europe.
... I have, moreover, well satisfied myself that, taking
all the departments of natural history, we shall, at Philadelphia
and New York, procure persons more fit for our
purpose than anywhere in Great Britain. The same may
be said of anatomy. ... As at present advised, I cannot
say positively that I may not be condemned to the
humiliation of going back with Dr. Blaettermann only."

Socially, he found the city of the North quite as attractive
as Cambridge or Oxford. While there, he was
entertained by the distinguished advocate, Murray, a
kinsman of Lord Mansfield; and was also kindly received

by Lord Forbes, a retired officer of the army.
The numerous acquaintances made by him were, he said,
astonished to discover that he had been in Great Britain
only six weeks or seven weeks, "and yet spoke English
quite as well as they, to say the least. I believe many
of them, on both sides the Tweed, would give a good deal
for my accent and articulation, which, I assure you, are
nothing improved by this raw climate, which makes every
one hoarse." Gilmer had an opportunity to be introduced
to Jeffrey, and so pleasing was the impression which
he made upon that celebrated critic, his wife, and the
members of their particular coterie, that he was pronounced
by them to be the most winning and popular
American who had ever visited Edinburgh.

XVIII. The Mission to England, Continued

Gilmer stopped with Key in London, and through
Key, he was brought into communication by letter with
George Long, then about twenty-four years of age, a
fellow of Trinity. To Long, he made precisely the
same general offer which he had submitted to Key.
Long's reply was at once that of a scholar and a man
of business: it was sensible, candid, and straight-forward.
The peculiar circumstances of his situation, he began,
induced him to throw off all reserve. He had lost both
his father and mother, and also a considerable property
in the West Indies, which he had relied upon to yield him
an easy and permanent income. Upon his exertions were
almost entirely dependent two younger sisters and a
brother under age. He had been studying privately to
become a member of the bar, with the expectation that it
would afford a subsistence for these relations, as well as
gratify his ambition to rise in the world. "Did that

part of America, in which the University of Virginia was
situated," he inquired, "open up the prospect of his family
obtaining a satisfactory asylum there? Were newcomers
there liable to be carried off by a dangerous epidemic
disorder? Were common articles of food, apparel,
and furniture cheap there? Was the scheme
of the University a permanent or experimental one?
Would the fixed fee of fifteen hundred dollars possess any
chance of doubling when the institution got fully underway?
Was the society of Albemarle or Charlottesville
so good as to compensate an Englishman, in some degree,
for the only comfort which an Englishman would hesitate
to leave behind him? What vacation would the
professors be granted, and at what seasons? What
would be the costs of the voyage, and who would defray
them? What sort of outfit for it would be required?"

Such were some of the pertinent questions put by Long.
"I have no attachment to England as a country," he concluded;
"it is a delightful place for a man of rank and
property to live in, but I was not born in that enviable
station. ... If comfortably settled, therefore, in America,
I would never wish to leave it." Gilmer replied at
length to this letter; and one week afterwards, Long,
who had, in the meanwhile, consulted Adam Hodgson, a
merchant of Liverpool familiar with Virginia, accepted
the original offer.

In reporting Long's acceptance to Jefferson, Gilmer
stated that there were two objections to him: (1) he
made no pretension to knowledge of Hebrew; but as this
study was little esteemed in England, it would require a
search that would extend over at least another year, to
discover a competent man for the chair of ancient languages,
should instruction in the Hebrew tongue be pronounced
indispensable: (2) as an alumnus of Trinity

would be necessary for Long to return to that college in
July, 1825, to stand the examinations for his mastership
of arts, the condition of his retaining his fellowship.
Both of these obstacles to his appointment could be easily
surmounted,—the one by leaving him, after his arrival in
Virginia, to acquire the requisite acquaintance with
Hebrew; the other, by giving him permission to be present
at Cambridge at the time that had been assigned.
In accepting the chair of ancient languages, Long stated
that "he took it for granted that the professors were
not compelled to subscribe to any particular religious
principles, or aid in propagation of any doctrine or speculative
tenets, about which sects differ." "Allay your
fears, I pray about religion," replied Gilmer. "Far
from requiring uniformity, we scrupulously avoid having
clergymen of any sort connected with the University, not
because we have no religion, but because we have too
many kinds. All that we shall require of each professor
is that he shall say nothing about the doctrines which
divide the sects."

When Gilmer submitted his original offer to Long, he
also, by way of precaution, wrote to Rev. Henry Drury,
of Harrow, soliciting his assistance towards filling the
chair of ancient languages, should Long be unable to
accept it. It will be seen from this that a clergyman's
aid was not despised by him, but no offer of a minister
of the Gospel to become a professor was seriously considered.
On September 15, he wrote to Jefferson that
he was in a position to engage the services of another
most competent man for the ancient languages, but as
he was a clergyman, he had turned his name down as ineligible.
This was probably the person whom the headmaster
of Shrewsbury School, Samuel Butler, afterwards
Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, had recommended; or

it may have been the brother of the Rev. Henry Drury
himself, also a clergyman, who was warmly urged by the
Rev. Henry for the chair, although he was honest enough,
at the same time, to acknowledge that the Rev. Benjamin's
principal reason for wishing to emigrate was that
he was up to his neck in a slough of irremediable pecuniary
embarrassments.

By the time Long's consent had been obtained, Key
had also agreed to accept the chair of mathematics.
Both Key and Long, it seems, noticed the disparity between
the offer submitted to them in Gilmer's letters,
and the one actually embodied in the contract which they
were asked to sign. They raised the objection now,
they said, so that there should be no room for dispute
after their arrival in Virginia. "There is no doubt,"
wrote Key on September 27, "that I shall receive a
salary of fifteen hundred dollars for the five years, independent
of the fees. This is stated in both of your
letters, but you wish virtually to reserve to the Visitors
the power of diminishing this under certain conditions
and limitations. I grant that this power is not to be enforced
except at discretion, and for good reasons appearing
to the Rector and Visitors. But it is still a power
in their hand, which may be employed at their sober
discretion, and independent of us. Now the limitation
you put to the power of the Visitors is to restrain them
from diminishing the fixed salary unless the whole receipts
exceed twenty-five hundred dollars. But if the
receipts will never be less than four thousand, and the
Visitors have the power of diminishing the salary as soon
as the whole receipts exceed twenty-five hundred dollars,
is this not giving them an unconditional power of diminishing
the salary? Ought not the limit to be at the very
least forty-five hundred dollars. ... I have just written

to Liverpool to take my place with the packet that leaves
that port on (October) 16th."

The last sentence is a proof that Key had no intention
of withdrawing from the engagement because of a supposed
contradiction in the terms of the contract. Before
this letter was written, Gilmer had been employed in the
search for incumbents for the other professorships. "I
have had more persons recommended for anatomy," he
wrote Jefferson in August, "than for any other place,
but immediately they find they will not be allowed to practise
medicine abroad, they decline proceeding further."
This difficulty, however, was finally overcome with the
experienced assistance of Dr. George Birkbeck, the
founder in Glasgow of the first Mechanics Institute, afterwards
a prominent physician in London, and during
many years, interested in the progress of popular education.
Birkbeck suggested the name of Robley
Dunglison, widely known already as a writer on medical
topics. He accepted the anatomical professorship on
September 5. On the same day, Gilmer visited Woolwich
to talk in person with Peter Barlow, then an instructor
in the Royal Military Academy, a member of the Royal
Society, and a celebrated investigator in magnetism and
optics. Barlow was absent; but afterwards by letter,
readily agreed to assist him, and as the first step, promised
to write to the son of a distinguished mathematical
professor, whose name, however, he withheld. This
person was undoubtedly Charles Bonnycastle, the son of
John, who had filled the chair of mathematics at Woolwich
with conspicuous ability and learning. As Bonnycastle
was not in England at that time, for he was in
the employment of the Government, Barlow wrote also
to George Harvey, of Plymouth. But Bonnycastle was
finally selected.

It seems that he had given bond for about five hundred
pounds to the British Government, and this he forfeited
when he accepted Gilmer's offer. He expected to cancel
the obligation by an advance from the University, and
there occurred some misunderstanding on this score between
Gilmer and himself. Gilmer admitted in April,
1826, in a letter to Jefferson, that he had been compelled
"to take Bonnycastle more on trust than the others,"
as he was anxious to close all engagements in time to
get the professors overseas by November. He was under
the impression that he had made no promise, in the
University's name, to relieve Bonnycastle's sureties,
but he declared that, should the Board of Visitors be
unwilling to advance the amount, he would do so out
of his own pocket. The money was, in the end, paid by
the University in full. There was a somewhat furtive reflection
on this professor's capacity in a letter which Gilmer
received in January, 1825, from George Marx, the
member of the banking firm which had honored his letters
of credit in London: "I do not know whether it is
my duty to tell you in strict confidence," he wrote, "that
some opinion has been given me that Mr. Bonnycastle
is not adequate to his situation." The conspicuous efficiency
afterwards exhibited by him at the University of
Virginia is a tacit refutation of this innuendo launched
by some unknown and hostile tongue. "The son," said
Dr. Birkbeck, "I am persuaded, will extend the fame of
the parent. Had I entertained the slightest idea of his
being in your reach, he would have been the first recommended."

By the nineteenth of September, Gilmer was in a position
to report that he had succeeded in engaging four of
the five professors sought for. It had been his expectation
that he would certainly be able to embark for home

at an earlier date, but, said he, "At this season of the
year, no man in England is where he ought to be, except
perhaps those of the Fleet and of Newgate. Every little
country school-master, who never saw a town, is
gone, as they say, to the country; that is to Scotland, to
shoot grouse, to Doncaster to see a race, or to Cheltenham
to dose himself with that vile water. With all these
difficulties, and not without assistance, but with numerous
enemies to one's success (as every Yankee in England is),
I have done wonders. I have employed four professors
of the most respectable families, of real talent,
learning, etc., a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge,
and a M.A. of the same University. Then, they are
gentlemen, and what should not be overlooked, they all
go to Virginia with the most favorable prepossessions
towards our country. If learning does not raise its
drooping head, it shall not be my fault. For myself, I
shall return to the bar with recruited health and redoubled
vigor. I shall study and work and speak and do
something at last that shall redound to the honor of
my country. My intercourse with professional and literary
men here has fired again all my boyish enthusiasm,
and I pant to be back and at work. Virginia must still
be a great nation. She has genius enough; she wants only
method in her application."

It only remained to procure a professor of natural history.
By the advice of Dr. Birkbeck, Gilmer wrote to
Dr. John Harwood,—at this time delivering a series of
lectures in Manchester,—who, in his reply, on September
20, expressed regret that his engagements with the
Royal Institution made it impracticable for him to consider
the offer before the ensuing May. In the meanwhile,
he intimated, his brother William Harwood, who
had given instruction in natural history, might take the

place as a temporary stop-gap, or as the permanent incumbent,
should it not be convenient for himself to leave
England in the spring. A few days later, however, Dr.
Harwood stated that there was an acquaintance of his in
Bristol,—whose name he failed to mention,—who was
well fitted by his attainments to assume the chair. This
proved to be Frederick Norton. On the same occasion,
he again recommended his brother William, who supported
his claim in a letter over his own signature. "I
confess," he wrote, "that I shall have much pleasure in
accepting the appointment provided that my qualifications
may meet your approval. I have been long devoting
myself to the study of natural history, but more especially
to the branch, geology. I am not so familiar with natural
history, but I flatter myself with a pretty good acquaintance
with chemistry."

Dr. John Harwood, in a letter which Gilmer received
just before his departure from England, again revealed
his desire that his brother should act as his stop-gap;
and so anxious was William Harwood to assume this
part, that he crossed to the Isle of Wight to talk with
Gilmer in person on shipboard, only to be informed that
it was too late for a written agreement to be drawn and
signed; but he was advised to run the risk of going out to
Virginia without a contract. To this suggestion, he very
sensibly demurred. Frederick Norton arrived on the
ground a few hours after the ship had set sail (October
5).

During the last week of his sojourn in England, Gilmer's
time had not been altogether taken up with the
pursuits of possible candidates for University professorships.
Among the distinguished persons whom he met
in general society was Thomas Campbell, who was interested
in America from the association of at least one of

his poems with its scenery, and also from the presence of
a brother there. Campbell was prevented from entertaining
him at his own home by the mental condition of
his son. Gilmer, on several occasions, dined with Major
John Cartwright, the author of a laborious disquisition
on the English Constitution, and a man of radical leanings,
as proven by his sympathy with American and
Spanish rebels, and by his advocacy of the reform of Parliament
and abolition of slavery. He, like Dr. Parr, was
more interested in suggesting a list of editions to be
bought for the University library, than in proposing the
names of possible professors. Dugald Stewart had been
paralyzed in 1822, but he expressed the hope, in a letter
dictated to his daughter, that Gilmer would sail from a
Scotch port, as this would give the infirm old philosopher
the opportunity to make his acquaintance. "I am
sorry," he said, "to think that my good wishes are all
I have to offer for his (Mr. Jefferson's) infant establishment."
Dr. Parr was so much pleased with the young
Virginian that he promised to "marry him in England
without requiring the payment of a fee." In a letter to
Gilmer only a few days before he embarked, he said,
"To Mr. Jefferson present, not only my good wishes,
but the tribute of my respect and my confidence. I shall
write of him what Dr. Young said of Johnson's Rasselas,
'It was a globe of sense.' I use the same word with the
same approbation of Mr. Jefferson's letter to me."

Gilmer, while in London, spent some of his leisure
hours in Lambeth Palace Library, and became so much
interested in the manuscript of John Smith's History of
Virginia preserved there, that he had a copy of it written
out for publication in the United States.

During his voyage to New York, he was entirely prostrated
by seasickness, and in this unhappy condition, fell

into a raging and devouring fever aggravated by want of
medicine, food, rest and attendance. "I am reduced to
a shadow," he said, "and am disordered throughout my
whole system." A carbuncle appeared on his left side and
as the ship-doctor was too incompetent to lance it, he
himself was forced to lay open the angry lump with a pair
of scissors and with his own hands. "We had no caustic
and had to apply bluestone, which was nearly the same
sort of dressing as the burning pitch to the bare nerves
of Ravillac. All the way, I repeated,
Such is the martyrdom I have endured for the Old Dominion!
She will never thank me for it, but I will love
and cherish her as if she did." After his arrival in New
York, he was detained by illness during several weeks,
but, as will hereafter appear, he was, in spite of his
feeble condition, ardently interested in engaging a professor
for the vacant chair of natural history, the only
chair which he had been compelled to leave still unprovided
for when he set out from England.