University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XXVII

THE BEGINNING OF AN ERA

When the University was established there was
no institution in the world that closely resembled it.
With two exceptions, the others had proceeded from
the purse of some rich churchman, or from the
treasury of the State as the issue of its union with
the church, or from the collection of some denomination
whose faith sought educational aid in its
propaganda; but the University of Virginia came
from the brain of one man, and that man's purpose
in education was the new one to safeguard the liberties
of his country by increasing the moral and intellectual
stature of the citizen.

In many respects a great chasm separated it from
Harvard, Princeton, and the other dominant institutions
eighty years ago—a chasm equal to the difference
between accepted methods and a vast experiment
dealing with many ideals and tendencies.
Then this University stood alone in its refusal to
subject its matriculates to what its founder regarded
as the harmful tyranny of the curriculum, in the independence
of its schools, in the liberty of its students
to select their own studies, in the disregard of
time, except a minimum, as an element affecting the
fortunes of a candidate for any degree, in the absence

of entrance examinations, in the requirement
of examinations consisting of written answers to
written questions, which subjected every student to
the same test, and the grading of the examinee on
his written answers only; and in the fact that all of
its degrees must be earned by resident study. It is
peculiar in other important respects. For a rather
long time it was alone in America in teaching together
the language and the history of a people;
and it was the first to dare to dignify the study of
modern languages with an independent chair filled
by a scholar, to make English its official language,
and constitute it the medium through which its
honors have always been declared. In these and
many other avenues that were new eighty years ago
Jefferson set the feet of the scholars of his University,
and they journeyed without companions for
many long years; at the same time he pointed out
fields which his University has not occupied effectively;
among them the important ones which have
since been entered by the military academies, the
technological schools, and the agricultural and
mechanical colleges, which have developed so remarkably
during the last twenty years.

Today the chasm between the University and the
other dominant institutions is not so wide as it was
even fifty years ago, but its strength is still derived
from the old sources; its old ideals continue vital.
There have been changes, but they were mainly in the
nature of rearrangements and expansion of existing
and essential conditions. Something has been imported;
but more has been exported, to the infinite
advantage of other American universities. The
gifts Virginia has bestowed have contributed far
more than those she has received to the formation

of a resemblance between Jefferson's institutional
creation and those of like age and eminence. There
has been less change of fundamentals here than elsewhere.

The most significant departure was the abandonment
of the Jeffersonian system of faculty government
through the medium of a chairman.[1] Even in
the lifetime of Mr. Jefferson, and among his most
intimate friends, there must have been a sentiment
in favor of substituting a presidential government,
for it is scarcely probable that, in the absence of a
rather strong conviction of the kind, the Visitors
would have cared to create the presidency in defiance
of the rector's wishes, even with the laudable purpose
of securing Mr. Wirt as professor of law. That the
chairmanship, with a presidential salary attached,
was not offered to the distinguished lawyer as an inducement
to accept the professorship seems to show
that the office of chairman was regarded as inferior
in dignity to that of president.

The presidency was often thought of as offering
an avenue of escape from administrative perplexities,
and it was pondered for other reasons also. In
1846 it was warmly discussed by the board as a
means of correcting errors which some of the Visitors
believed had been made in the chairman's effort
to deal with the problems of discipline so painfully
accentuated by the disorders of the current session.[2]
Beyond Mr. Rives's advocacy of the presidency the
board's minute-book tells little, but it is certain that
if the office had been created at that time the action
would have been defended by alleging the failure of

faculty administration to achieve a reasonably stable
discipline.

The era in which the usefulness and the very life
of the institution were more than once at the mercy
of the turbulent spirits who paced the arcades and
colonnades in the first quarter of a century after the
death of the founder was now at an end. The noble
example and patient efforts of great teachers had
been rewarded by the growth among student ideals
of a manliness which put aside forever the inexcusable
lawlessness of past years. But other problems
arose. The war came on and left its scars upon a
people, and discovered a nation's heroes. Some of
the Visitors perhaps, certainly many of the alumni,
urged that the chief of these heroes, Robert E. Lee,
be made president. Perhaps it was a simple impulse
of homage—au grand homme la patrie reconnaissante.
No doubt Mr. Jefferson ruled the Visitors
from his urn, for they abandoned the movement.

The sentiment would not down, however, and in
1897 it was so strong in the Board of Visitors that
an election was prevented only by the breaking of
the quorum. From that time until June, 1904, the
question was constantly before the Visitors and was
debated wherever and whenever alumni met. The
reasons usually given for opposing the change were
that it would violate the fundamental theory of the
organization of the University which had worked
successfully for seventy years and vindicated the
wisdom of its framer; that it would be expensive
and experimental; that it would subtract from the
independence of the professor by subjecting him, to
some extent, to the will of the executive; that the
professor would necessarily descend from the high
estate awarded him by the founder which made him

in dignity a senator who did not have to regard the
rescripts of any emperor or president; that it would
subvert the theory that the University is a collection
of schools, each presided over by a distinguished
and independent master, and substitute a monarchy
for the republic of letters.

The advocates of the presidency were convinced
that the combined duties of the offices of chairman
and of professor were beyond the competency of one
man. They did not assail the democratic purpose of
Mr. Jefferson in ordaining this office, nor did they
question the soundness of the principle of individual
equality and independence upon which it was partly
based. But changed conditions, they said, emphasized
the fact that the professor who, in this day, is
charged with official duties in addition to those appertaining
to his chair was no longer on an equality
with his colleagues who were not so burdened. It
could not be affirmed, they admitted, that the chairmanship
had not always and successfully met the requirements
of the institution, but that form of government
had not so commended itself that many
other universities had adopted it, and the institutions
which had done so soon abandoned it. Problems
then existing in the educational world, in the
opinion of the advocates of the presidency, demanded
such a change in Mr. Jefferson's peculiar
government as would give it an executive who was
unhampered in the discharge of his administrative
duties, who was free to familiarize himself with the
higher education as imparted in the best institutions
of the world, to suggest wise administrative changes,
to visit the various sections of the country and
arouse the interest of the alumni, and to do a multitude
of things which would be impossible to a chairman

upon whom were laid also the burdens of a professorship.

Nobody alleged a failure of the University in its
discipline or in the inspiration, method, and scope of
its work. Pedagogically it had always been sufficient,
and it had been efficient in government for
half a century. If the Visitors contemplated the
presidency with occasional misgiving the uneasiness
was on the score of the jealously guarded standard
requisite for the degrees, and the entente cordiale
which had existed between faculty and students for
fifty years. So strong was this feeling of uncertainty
that the committee appointed by the Visitors
"to consider the question of creating an executive
department of the University" reported in April,
1897, in favor of a chairman of the faculty whose
duties should not extend beyond the subjects of
discipline and instruction. All other administrative
affairs were assigned to a president.

The greatest obstacle in the way was the conservatism
of some of the members of the board and
of a large number of the alumni with whom the
weight of Mr. Jefferson's views was very great.[3]
The Visitors decreed a change of government, and
under authority granted by the legislature an "executive
head" was appointed June 14, 1904, in the
person of Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, who was inaugurated
April 13, 1905.

After all, the chairmanship was less fundamental
to the University as an educational institution than
to the political philosophy of the founder. As it
came from his hands, the University, in its vital concerns
as a teaching and constructive force is, under

the presidency, as invulnerable to degenerating influences
as it would have continued under the chairmanship.
Its history has shown that its two great
problems were discipline and standards of instruction.
The increasing dignity of young manhood has
largely removed the first. The maintenance of the
standards has been accomplished thus far by the sacrifice
of opportunities for the material prosperity
which other institutions have achieved through constantly
lengthening rolls of students. There have
been scores of royal roads to learning constructed
from the preparatory schools to the baccalaureate
prizes of many colleges, and the slow jogging of the
old days which gave time for observation and promoted
good health and digestion has given place
elsewhere to rapid transit, both elevated and underground,
which will, in turn, yield to the pneumatictube
methods of educational specialists. Whether
the University will substitute specialization for
scholarship depends on chairmanship or presidency
less than on the continued devotion of its Visitors
and alumni to the ideals which have made it probably
the most respected institution in America.

The presidency has inaugurated a new era in the
life of the University. The State, which has contributed
to its chief institution of learning, since
1865, much less than individuals have done, manifests
a liberal spirit by generous aid, and benefactors
have added to its endowment in two years an aggregate
almost as large as the total of the gifts bestowed
from the close of the civil war until 1904. The attendance
of students is the largest in the history of
the institution, and the matriculates are better prepared,
and are better classed in the work they are
doing.

Internally, the line of separation between the two
chief divisions—the university and the college—is
more sharply drawn, or, if not so, it appears more
distinctly. Other gains are a positive initiative, an
increase in teaching force, and expansion in various
directions; and further advancement is planned for
early realization.

Altogether, the University of Virginia was never
more fortunate in its faculty and officers, and never
faced a period of more promise in upbuilding ways
than the era upon which it has just entered. More
strikingly than ever before it is "the lengthened
shadow of one man."