 | CHAPTER V History of Virginia |  |
CHAPTER V
THE REVOLUTION—REFORMS IN THE LAW
As Virginia led in the movements preceding the Revolution
and contributed far more to the success of the American cause
than any other state, so she led the way in the political and
social reforms which characterized that interesting period.
The colossal work of the convention of the people, which met
at Williamsburg, May 5, 1776, was without parallel. The principles
of the Revolution found a marvelous expression in the
words traced by the pen of George Mason in the Declaration of
Rights, adopted June 12, 1776, and the Constitution, adopted
June 29, 1776. The only serious amendment made to the
Declaration of Rights was that urged by the youthful James
Madison, of Orange, substituting "religious liberty" for "toleration."
The constitution, whose first draft proceeded also
from Mason's pen, had quite a number of amendments in the
Convention itself, but the essential body of the paper remained
as it stood in the original draft by its author.
These celebrated papers were copied by every other colony,
and where departure was made from their terms, it was generally
for the worse. They were universally taken as a pattern,
and their influence was distinctly traced in the provisions of
the Federal Constitution.
As regards the Virginia Declaration of Rights, it not only
contained all that was valuable in Magna Charta in 1215, the
Petition of Rights in 1628 written by Sir Edward Coke, and
the Bill of Rights in 1689, written by the great Lord Somers,
but it constituted also the most complete statement of the
principles of government. Thus its first and second sections
expressed the idea of the Democracy which lay at the bottom
of the whole Revolution, the first declaring "the equal rights
inalienable claim to the "enjoyment of life, liberty, property
and happiness;" and the second, declaring that "all power is
vested in, and consequently derived from the people; that
magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times
amenable to them." While these sections really stated nothing
that had not been tacitly recognized ever since the dethronement
of James II by people of English descent everywhere,
the old form, depicting the King as "the fountain of authority"
had been kept up in all legal and political literature in
England and America. Now for the first time, fact and form
were brought together in official papers. Rights began with
nature, and not as concessions of the monarch, and the people,
not the King, became the open and acknowledged source of
authority.
The truths stated in the subsequent parts of the Declaration
of Rights were only corollaries of these two first sections.
That government ought to be instituted for the common benefit,
protection and security of the people, nation, and community;
that no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive
privileges; that the legislative, executive and judiciary powers
of the state should be kept separate and distinct; that
office-holders should not hold positions indefinitely; that elections,
the suffrage, the press, and religion should be free;
that general warrants should be prohibited; that in all criminal
prosecutions a man hath a right to demand the cause and
nature of his accusation and to be confronted with his accusers
and witnesses, and call for a speedy trial by an impartial jury
of the vicinage; that an excessive bail ought not to be required,
nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments
be inflicted, and that in controversies respecting property
the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other—these
are mere declarations that flow from the recognition of the
ruling power of Democracy.
As to the Constitution, it was wholly unlike those of South
Carolina and New Hampshire, which, though earlier in date,
to endure until the difficulties with Great Britain were settled.
It discarded the rule of the Mother Country entirely,
and was the first written constitution for a free and independent
state in any part of the world.
In some essential particulars, it followed the unwritten constitution
of colonial days. Thus the governor, with the advice
of the Privy Council, appointed all justices of the peace for the
counties and filled all vacancies occurring in their numbers,
such appointments being made upon the recommendation of
the respective county courts. After the same example, the
House of Delegates like the House of Burgesses was composed
of two citizens from every county, and the qualifications for
the exercise of the suffrage remained the same as of old. While
the colonial council, acting as a senate, had had theoretically
the right to originate laws, it seldom did so, and so the constitution
now put in express language what had been all along
practically the rule. It was required that all laws should
originate in the House of Delegates, to be approved or rejected
by the new senate or to be amended with the consent of the
House, and the Constitution manifested its jealousy of money
bills by providing that, in no instance, should such a bill be altered
by the Senate, but wholly approved or rejected.
The changes in the government were more numerous than
the parts retained. The Council, which in colonial days had
acted in three functions—legislative, executive and judicial
—was now confined to one, the executive, and it was provided
that it should consist of eight members to be chosen by joint
ballot of both houses of the Assembly. Two members were
to be removed by the ballot of both Houses at the end of every
three years, and be ineligible for the next three years.
In place of the Council sitting in its legislative capacity, a
body called the Senate was provided for. It was to consist
of twenty-four members, of whom thirteen should constitute
a quorum to proceed to business. A peculiar feature of its
composition, which was afterwards practically embodied in
classes so arranged that six of the members would go out
every year and six new members be elected. Then, instead
of a governor appointed by the King during his pleasure, a
chief magistrate was to be chosen annually by joint ballot of
both houses, and continue in office no longer than three years
successively; but similar to the old practice, he was required
to exercise the executive power with the advice of his Council
of State.
As to the judiciary, instead of the colonial system of county
courts and a General Court, by which was meant the Council
sitting as a Supreme Court, a system of county courts made
up of the justices as of old, an Admiralty Court, a General
Court, a Chancery Court, and a Supreme Court, was authorized.
Two objections presented themselves at the threshold of the
adoption of the constitution, one having relation to the authority
of the convention, and the other to the authority of
a written constitution. The first objection, which proceeded
especially from Mr. Jefferson, was probably dictated by the
thought that the constitution was not democratic enough, and
that by denying the authority of the convention, further reforms
might be made in its character. He had objections to the
suffrage, which he deemed too restricted, to the equality of the
counties in sending representatives, to the make up of the Senate,
which he deemed too much like that of the House of Delegates,
to the commingling of the powers of the government—
legislative, executive and judicial—in contravention of its own
requirement that these departments should be separate and
distinct.[65]
Now while the proposed corrections were doubtless sound
and were eventually recognized, Mr. Jefferson's objection to
the authority of the Convention were by no means conclusive.
In his Notes on Virginia Mr. Jefferson bases his criticism in
this respect on the assumed fact that the idea of independence
the members of the Convention which prepared the constitution
had been elected. He states that the electors at that time
were not thinking of independence or of a permanent republic,
and did not mean to vest in these representatives powers of
establishing them, or any authority at all other than that of ordinary
legislation; but, as we have seen, this is far from a
statement of the fact. The instructions in the counties nearly
everywhere were for cutting loose from Great Britain and
setting up an independent republic. Mr. Jefferson's objections,
therefore, to the validity of the constitution went for
naught, and though not faultless, the constitution remained
the fundamental law of the state for 54 years. When we consider
the novelty of the experiment and the time in which it
was formed, the constitution embodied a measure of liberty
that spoke eloquently of the self-control, calmness and wisdom
of its framers. There was doubtless only one American,
Thomas Jefferson, 100 years ahead of his contemporaries, and
the constitution with his advanced views incorporated at this
time, even if such a thing was possible, would not have suited
the age or conditions.
The other question, the authority of the state constitution
as the fundamental law, was not apparently thoroughly understood
by the legislators who accomplished the work. The
Convention itself, meeting as the House of Delegates in the
General Assembly with the Senate, in the fall of the same year,
passed several acts in contradiction of their own labors, and
a similar course was pursued sometimes by succeeding legislatures.
Men had not entirely divested themselves of their old
ideas, and, as in England Parliament was omnipotent, there
was a disposition with some people to ascribe a similar character
to the legislature.
From his argument against the Convention as constituted,
it is clearly inferable that Jefferson regarded the constitution
prepared by an authorized convention as unalterable except by
a similar authority. In a draft of a constitution prepared in
not have power to infringe this constitution."
The part played by the courts of the state in asserting
this supremacy is not to be construed, as is often done, into
a claim of paramount authority of the courts over the legislative
body, but as a vindication of their right to independence
as guaranteed by that instrument. Under the constitution the
Legislative, Executive and Judiciary were to be separate and
distinct, and no one of the three had the right to interfere
with the other two in the distinct field of their service. Each
had the right to judge of the constitutionality of its own action,
and in giving their opinion, the intention of the judges
was only to assert that the constitution was supreme and that
the judiciary would not lend its enforcing power where, in their
opinion, a violation of the constitution resulted. These were
the views set forth by the judges of Virginia in Commonwealth
v. Caton (1782), in the Case of the Judges (1788), and in
Kamper v. Hawkins (1792). These decisions settled the right
of the courts to construe for themselves the constitutionality
of a law, and the general acceptance of the principle in the
Union at large dates from Chief Justice Marshall's decision
in Marbury v. Madison (1802), in rendering which it is reasonable
to suppose that he was influenced by the previous action
of the Virginia courts, which must have come under his
observation, it being doubtful if he ever heard of the cases
cited from other states.
To adapt the laws of the Commonwealth to the spirit of the
new constitution occupied the attention of the Legislature from
its first session in October, 1776, and it was fortunate that
just at this time a seat in that body was occupied by a man
to whom democracy was a religion, and who in the general
range of his abilities was the greatest man of his age in America.
He was a thorough product of advanced thought in Virginia,
and, as a student of a Virginia college at a time when
Francis Fauquier, a devotee of the sciences, was governor, and
Dr. William Small, an associate of Erasmus Darwin and James
he absorbed the free spirit of enquiry that floated about
him in Williamsburg, and ultimately became its noblest
expression.
Both Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson were born
leaders of men, and each was pre-eminent in his field. It had
been the part of Henry to stir the people up with his oratory
and arouse resistance to arbitrary power. His wonderful
eloquence and lovable personality had made him the master
spirit of America during all the preliminary stages of the
Revolution, and though he did not lose his popularity and importance
in after days, it is possibly true that he ceased to be
the dramatic figure of his earlier life. The new conditions
required a line of talents of a different order from that in
which Patrick Henry excelled. These talents Jefferson possessed.
Henry was the exponent of an enormous epoch in the
history of the world, but Jefferson's influence was an all-pervading
and persistent stream of reform pouring through the
centuries. With his wonderful ability of impressing others he
created the Americanism of not only his time but of all future
times, and though nearly a century has passed since his death,
his influence is incomparably still the greatest vital force in
American affairs.
He took his seat in the Virginia House of Delegates October
7, 1776. Four days later he began his great important work.
On the 11th of October he was designated on various committees
and as soon as the committees were organized he obtained
leave to bring in a bill to establish courts of justice throughout
the Commonwealth. This bill on being referred to the committee
was divided into five distinct bills. Three of these,
creating a Court of Appeals, a Chancery Court and a Court
of Assize, or "General Court," were introduced by Jefferson
November 25, 1776, and the other two, creating the Court of
Admiralty and County Courts on December 4, 1776. The
Admiralty bill was promptly passed, but the other bills were
not passed until a session or two later.
The next day, October 12th, he obtained leave to bring in a
bill to enable tenants in tail to convey their lands in fee simple,
and on October 14th, he obtained leave to bring in a bill for
the removal of the seat of government from Williamsburg to
Richmond, and another for the naturalization of foreigners.
All these bills were passed into law either at this session or
subsequently, despite the objections of Edmund Pendleton
and Robert Carter Nicholas, who represented the conservative
party. The passage of the bill in regard to entails destroyed
at one blow the pretensions to any class system in Virginia
through the continuance of property and influence in any one
family.
The bill for the revision of the laws was passed on the 24th
of October, 1776, and on the 5th of November, he was appointed
the head of a committee, appointed for the purpose, consisting
of himself, Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe, George
Mason and Thomas Ludwell Lee. The two last not being lawyers
withdrew from the task and the three remaining gentlemen
proceeded to their work with zeal.
Early in the year 1777 the committee met and distributed
their task. With great propriety they determined to retain
the Common Law as the basis of their reform and to bring into
their revision only such alterations as would supply the place
of all prior British and Virginia statutes. Strange to say, Mr.
Pendleton, having once embarked in reform, was in favor of
going further than even Mr. Jefferson. He argued strongly
in favor of codifying the whole common law. Probably this
would have been the best thing to do, but Mr. Jefferson and Mr.
Wythe thought that to sweep away at once the whole existing
system of law, with a thousand judicial decisions made upon
it, was a work of too great labor and delicacy to be entered on
at this time. The revisers divided the work among them, and
by the 18th of June, 1779, they presented to the Legislature the
result of their labors in a volume of 90 pages, containing 126
bills. Some of the bills were adopted in a short time, but the
greater part of the work was not taken up until 1785, when,
were passed with little alteration.
The majority of Mr. Jefferson's supporters came from the
Piedmont and western part of the state, and numbered among
them, besides Madison, such men as George Mason, Zachariah
Johnston and Alexander White. Probably the most important
of his supporters from the east was John Tyler, of
Charles City County, who was Speaker of the House of Delegates
from 1781 to 1786.
Among the original appointed standing committees of the
House was one on religion, in which Mr. Jefferson had likewise
a seat. The different religious sects were represented in
it, but the established church, the Episcopalian, had a decided
majority, not only in the committee but in the House. Jefferson
headed a determined minority, struggling for the principles
of religious freedom expressed in the Declaration of
Rights. The first settlers of this country were emigrants from
England and of the English church, and the first break in uniformity
was that of some non-conformists in the counties of
Nansemond, Norfolk and Princess Anne about 1642. Severe
laws were enacted against them, and somewhat later in the
century the same treatment was awarded the poor Quakers flying
from persecution in New England and the Mother Country.
With the passage of the Toleration Act in England and
its adoption in Virginia, these severe laws passed away, and
after 1705 the preachers representing the different sects were
permitted on license obtained to preach in the colony; so there
was really little for the different sects in Virginia other than
the Established Church to complain of, except being taxed in
support of that church. The Quakers in a memorial addressed
to the Legislature in 1737 frankly confessed themselves as
pleased with the treatment which they experienced, and the
Presbyterians appeared to have no grievance except such as
stated, paying taxes to another church. The Baptists, however,
would not conform to the requirement of obtaining a
license, and consequently many of their preachers were arrested
prisons of the times. Not long before the Revolution the
Methodists, as a branch of the Episcopal church, had made
Virginia the center of their activities, and it was the belief
of Mr. Jefferson that two-thirds or at any rate a majority, of
the people, were dissenters from the dominant faith.
This compulsion of these dissenters to pay taxes towards
the maintenance of teachers of what they deemed religious
error was grievously felt during the regal government and
without hope of relief. The first republican legislature, which
met in 1776, was crowded with petitions to abolish the spiritual
tryanny, the Baptists being the most active and persistent in
urging complaints. The petitions were referred to the Committee
of the whole House on the state of the country, and a
desperate contest resulted. The progressives, headed by Mr.
Jefferson, wanted to do away with the church establishment
entirely and place all the sects upon an equal footing, but the
majority of the Legislature had apparently a different idea of
the meaning of the religious liberty clause in the Declaration
of Rights. They were rather inclined to think that after freeing
the other sects from having to take out licenses and pay taxes,
thus easing tender consciences, the Establishment should be
kept up, and it did not enter into their views to approve the
total overthrow of the Church.[66]
The repealing bill, therefore,
while sweeping away all parliamentary acts punishing religious
opinions or forbearing to repair to church or exercising
any mode of worship, and all colonial laws imposing taxes on
dissenters, only suspended the act of 1748 for paying salaries
to the Episcopal ministers, and in the bill as passed was inserted
an express reservation of the question whether a general
assessment should not be established by law on everyone
to the support of the pastor of his choice.[67]
A number of brief suspensions of the Act of 1748 occurred
made their report. Among the bills reported was Jefferson's
bill for religious freedom, which cut away in the most thorough
going manner all connection between state and church. The
project of a common state support for all churches appears to
have been offered as a kind of saving proposition, and at the
same time George Mason brought forward a compromise
scheme to preserve the property of the colonial church to the
Anglicans without establishment. The only result of a long
debate was the final repeal of the old act of 1748 providing
salaries for ministers.[68]
Nothing further was done regarding religious matters
until after the peace of 1783. Then the church question was
revived and debated with much vehemence.
Many persons grew alarmed at the spirit of free thinking
or skepticism in the state, and at the spring session of the
assembly (1784) Mr. Henry presented the question of laying
a tax on property for the general support of religion and apportioning
the proceeds among the various churches. At the
fall session of the assembly, a resolution approving the assessment
passed the House of Delegates and a bill levying such a
tax was introduced and debated. Mr. Henry was opposed by
James Madison and George Nicholas, but his influence was so
overwhelming that the bill would doubtless have become a law
had he not been drawn out of the House into the Governorship
again. Thus Madison succeeded in postponing final action
until the meeting of the next Assembly in October, 1785, on
the avowed ground of submitting the question to the people.
In the interim, at the solicitation of his principal colleagues,
he prepared a draft of a remonstrance for popular circulation.
It was drawn up with consummate ability, and at the next
session the remonstrancers far outnumbered the petitioners.
The assessment bill was overwhelmed, and in its place Jefferson's
bill for religious freedom was taken up by Madison and
it passed the House of Delegates by a large majority (74 to 20).
of the words regarding religious freedom enunciated by Mason
in the Declaration of Rights. It was a second Declaration of
Independence, differing only from the first as a hymn of praise
or hallelujah differs from a war song.
This act placed Virginia again in the front, for all the other
states still imposed religious tests upon all the civil office holders,
this being especially the case in New England. Even in
Rhode Island, Roman Catholics were not permitted to hold
office. Virginia was not only the first state in America to take
its stand for equality and freedom of religion to all people of
all faiths—Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, etc., but the first
state in all the world to do so. Mason proclaimed the doctrine
and Jefferson explained it. The statute was translated into
French and Italian and widely read and commented upon in
Europe.
The victory thus happily won was ungenerously followed
up by the Dissenters in Virginia. The persecuted became the
persecutors. A law favored by Patrick Henry, and against
which there would appear now no reasonable objection, incorporated
the Protestant Episcopal church. This was repealed,
and although it had been repeatedly affirmed by legislative
resolve that the parsonages and glebe lands of the Protestant
Episcopal church should be guaranteed to it, in 1802 they were
confiscated by the state and sold at public auction.
Not long before this time Virginia established her claim
to another great priority. She was the first state in the world
to treat the slave trade as a crime by imposing a penalty for
engaging in it. This was done by an act drawn by the same
great statesman, and passed by the General Assembly of Virginia
in 1778. The revisers went further and in reporting a
digest of the existing laws on slavery they prepared an amendment
to be offered when the bill should be taken up, providing
for the emancipation of all slaves born after the passing of the
act. Circumstances prevented this amendment from being
offered, but an act was passed in 1782 permitting owners to
their freedom than were freed by the law in Massachusetts or
Pennsylvania.
Four other subjects may be mentioned as enlisting the constructive
statesmanship of Thomas Jefferson. The first of
these was the right of expatriation. Natural allegiance was
esteemed by the common law of England to be perpetuable and
inalienable, but the doctrine declared by Jefferson in his famous
statute (reported in 1779 but passed in 1786), was that
expatriation was a part of the natural liberty of mankind.
Any citizen of Virginia was given permission to acquire a new
allegiance, and to the immigrant a promise of citizenship was
held out on application. Again Virginia led the world.
The second subject involved the matter of descent of lands.
The statute in this connection drawn by Jefferson was enacted
into law in October, 1785, and it took effect from the first of
January, 1787. This statute wholly abrogated the common
law canons of descent and substituted therefor an entirely new
system applicable to every possible case that could happen.
The analogies by which it was governed were new, and yet so
clear was the framer's conception of his own scheme and so
lucid his language that no serious controversy as to its meaning
arose for forty years, and the question then raised having
been settled, none of consequence has since been suggested,
although one or two sections incorporated by others several
years afterward have been the subject of repeated litigation.
Under the old colonial law of inheritance, which is the English
law, the eldest son succeeded to his father's estate, but under
this excellent work of Mr. Jefferson the law of affection was
closely followed. Thus the general principle of succession was
first of all that the land of the decedent was to go equally to
his children, if any, or their descendants, and in absence of
children or descendants of the decedent, then to his father and
if there be no father, then to his mother, brothers and sisters,
and their descendants, or such of them as there be, and in the
absence of mother, brother, or sister, or descendants, then the
the paternal and the other to the maternal kindred in a given
course stated at large. In 1922 a more just conception of the
rights of women caused the first change after many years, and
it was enacted that the mother and her line should have parity
with the father and his line.
The third subject was that of crimes and their punishments.
Mr. Jefferson drew a bill in which the death penalty was
limited to the cases of murder and treason, a gigantic change
in ameliorating the bloody penal code of the day. Labor on the
public works was generally substituted in the place of capital
punishment. It was brought forward by Mr. Madison in 1785
and lost by a single vote, owing, it is believed, to the principle
of retaliation which it contained, and which had been inserted
by Messrs. Wythe and Pendleton against the wishes of Mr.
Jefferson. Possibly, too, the public mind was not ready for
the mitigation in the scale of punishments. In 1796, the subject
was resumed, and Mr. George Keith Taylor introduced a
bill containing in substance the work of the revisers and without
the objectionable feature of retaliation. It differed also
in the respect that it substituted solitary confinement and
labor in place of labor on the public works. Experiments elsewhere
had now prepared the public mind in Virginia for the
spirit of Jefferson's bill and the one proposed by Mr. Taylor
became a law.
The fourth subject was the important one of education.
The statute in regard to William and Mary College fell within
Pendleton's part of the revision, but as its charter brought
it also within Jefferson's and as it was deemed expedient to
determine a general plan of education for the state, Jefferson
was requested by his colleagues to undertake the work. He
accordingly prepared three educational bills, one providing
for elementary schools and academies, and entitled "For the
more general diffusion of knowledge;" the second intended to
create a university by changes in the work at William and
Mary College, and entitled "To amend the charter of the College
for its support;" and the last for establishing a public library.
By the first two bills the different gradations of instruction
were corollated and a program worked out which furnishes the
real ideal of the public school system of the United States. It
borrowed nothing from the plan of the colonial schools anywhere,
nor did it remotely resemble the colonial schools of
Massachusetts. Those schools formed no real system, had
no central authority, and as the children had to pay for tuition
they were not free schools in the sense contemplated by the
bills of Mr. Jefferson. Moreover, the object was totally different.
The purpose of Mr. Jefferson was to make the children
of the Commonwealth useful citizens, but the purpose of the
schools in Massachusetts, where only members of the church
could be teachers, was to maintain and uphold the autocracy of
the Congregational church.
The bill converting William and Mary College into a university,
substituted, as its title implied, more certain revenues
for its support, changed the number of visitors from 18 to 5,
and instead of the "president and six professors" of the
charter, it provided for eight professors, one of whom should
also be president. These educational bills after being reported
from the committee on revision lay on the table until
the year 1796, when the bill providing for elementary schools
was taken up and passed, but as the introduction of the system
was left to the county justices by a provision that was not in
the original bill, it did not commence in a single county.
Jefferson's bill for amending the charter of William and
Mary was never considered by the Legislature, but he was
chosen a member of the board of visitors in the college and
effected in 1779 during his stay at Williamsburg as governor,
changes correspondent to those embraced in his bill. In connection
with President Madison of the college he induced the
visitors on December 4, 1779, to abolish the grammar school
and the two divinity schools, and in their places introduce
schools of modern languages, of municipal law, and of
the first to be organized in the United States. The
honor and elective principles were introduced, and it became
also the first institution in the United States to have chairs
of modern languages and of law, while its chair of medicine
was only second in time to that of the chair in the college at
Philadelphia. The faculty in 1779 was composed of "James
Madison, D. D., president and professor of natural philosophy
and mathematics; George Wythe, LL. D., professor of law
and police; James McClurg, professor of anatomy and medicine;
and Robert Andrews, A. M., professor of moral philosophy,
the law of nature and nations, and of the fine arts; and
Charles Bellini, professor of modern languages."
This was a small faculty, but each of the members was a
host in himself. President Madison was a fine lecturer and
his talents were shown to their full advantage, when in 1784 he
was relieved of the duty of teaching mathematics and made
professor of moral philosophy, international law, etc., in addition
to natural philosophy, which he always retained. We are
told that he was the first to introduce into the college a regular
system of lectures on political economy; and in the department
of natural philosophy he excelled, his enthusiasm throwing a
peculiar charm over his lectures. There is reason to believe
that Adam Smith's great work, Inquiry into the Nature and
Sources of the Wealth of Nations, and Vattell's Law of Nations
were taught at William and Mary earlier than at any
other college in the United States. President Madison was indefatigable
in his lectures, and when in good health, is known
to have been engaged in his lecture-room from four to six
hours a day.
George Wythe, the professor of law had, like Madison,
been a student at the college, and for thirty-five years had held
the first place at the bar in the State. Mr. Jefferson called him
"the pride of the institution," and "one of the greatest men
of the age, always distinguished by the most spotless virtue."
He gave lectures regularly on municipal and constitutional
legislatures, by which he trained the forty young men under
his care in public speaking and parliamentary procedure.
He made use of the deserted capitol, at the east end of Williamsburg,
for this purpose, and he and the other professors
would sit as judges. Being elected, in 1789, sole chancellor of
Virginia, he resigned and moved, in 1791, to Richmond, and
was succeeded by St. George Tucker, a judge of the general
court, and whose "Commentaries on Blackstone" was the first
American text-book on the law.[69]
James McClurg, the professor of medicine, had also been
a student of the college, and had accomplished his medical
education at the University of Edinburgh and on the continent
of Europe. By his poem on "The Belles of Williamsburg," he
acquired a literary reputation in addition to his reputation as
a physician of eminence.
Robert Andrews, the professor of moral philosophy till
1784, and then the professor of mathematics, was a graduate
of the College of Philadelphia and very active and useful. His
mathematical ability was thought so considerable that he
served with President Madison on the commission to define
the boundary line of Virginia and Pennsylvania.[70]
Of the modern languages, French, Italian, Spanish and
German, were taught at William and Mary after 1779, and the
professor was Charles Bellini, an Italian, who in 1773 came to
Albemarle County, it is believed, with Philip Mazzei. His
abilities were favorably commented upon by Mr. Jefferson,
and the fact of his connection with the college so early as 1779
becomes more interesting when we learn that as late as 1814
George Ticknor could find in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
neither a good teacher of German, nor a German dictionary,
nor even a German book, either in town or college.
In 1788 Mr. Jefferson wrote as follows: "Williamsburg
is a remarkably healthy situation, reasonably cheap and affords
the present professors remain, where I would so soon place a
son."
In 1791 Judge John Coalter, who was then a student of law
under Judge Tucker, thus also expressed his opinion: "I
scarcely know a place more pleasing than Williamsburg, which
may justly receive the title (which Homer gives Greece), `the
land of lovely dames,' for here may be found beauty in perfection
and not only beauty, but sociability in the ladies."
William and Mary College represented in Colonial times
the government and the church, but the Revolution disestablished
religion in Virginia, and though Mr. Madison, the President,
was made in 1790 first bishop of the Episcopal church, the
college never again had an official connection with the Episcopal
Church, although the visitors, faculty and students were
principally Episcopalians.
As a fruit of the new life in Virginia a seminary was
formed in the County of Rockbridge, in October, 1782, by the
name of Liberty Hall Academy. Its first rector was William
Graham, and it was enacted that he and the trustees of the
academy should have perpetual succession and a common seal,
appoint all professors and masters, grant degrees, and give
bond and security for the faithful discharge of their offices.
This institution afterwards became Washington College, and
later Washington and Lee University.
Closely following Liberty Hall Academy another institution
of learning was incorporated in May, 1783, in the County
of Prince Edward by the name of the College of Hampden-Sidney.
Reverend John Blair Smith was its first president,
and its trustees were given the usual powers of conferring degrees
and appointing and removing its officers.
Similarly at the same session, William Fleming, William
Christian, Benjamin Logan, John May, Levi Todd and twenty
others in Kentucky were made a body corporate, by the name
of Trustees of Transylvania Seminary, and empowered to
exercise all the powers and privileges enjoyed by the visitors
and it was ordered that the first session of the trustees should
be held at John Crow's Station, in Lincoln County, on the
second Monday in November, 1784.
From this early action of the Virginia legislature sprang
one of Kentucky's most prominent institutions of learning,
which after an eventful history is still existing as Transylvania
College.
| CHAPTER V History of Virginia | |