University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER I

POPULATION, SLAVERY, EDUCATION AND
LITERATURE

Population. The census returns show a steady development
in the population of the State. In 1755 the population
was 295,672, of whom 120,156 were negroes, and in 1776, it
was 567,614, of whom 270,262 were negroes. In twenty years
the population nearly doubled. In this period there was an
immense importation of slaves and a steady flow of population
into the Shenandoah Valley, Western Virginia, and Kentucky,
which was then a part of Virginia. In 1790 the number of
people in this range of territory was 747,610; and in 1800 the
number was 880,200, an increase, despite the severance of
Kentucky. In the decades following the census showed: 1810,
974,622 of whom 392,518 were slaves and 20,154 free colored
persons; 1820, 1,065,379, of whom 425,153 were slaves and
36,889 free colored persons; 1830, 1,211,405, of whom 469,757
were slaves, and 47,348 free colored; 1840, 1,239,797, of whom
449,087 were slaves and 49,852 were free colored; 1850,
1,421,661, of whom 472,528 were slaves and 54,333 were free
colored; 1860, 1,596,318, of whom 548,907 were slaves and
58,042 were free colored.

This evidences a healthy increase, but not so great relatively
as many of the Northern States. This was due chiefly
to two causes: (1) Emigration to the South and West;
(2) Lack of immigration. These two factors were in their turn
determined by (1) the opening up of fresh and richer farm
lands in the South and West, attracting a people devoted to
agriculture; (2) the mode of cultivation, which, in the early
part of the period, impoverished the land in Eastern Virginia,

naturally thin and easily exhausted; (3) the sectional
laws which laid heavy burdens upon the Southern farmers,
causing thousands to leave for the West; (4) the existence
of a negro population, which produced a racial stratification
and drove off immigration. Slavery, though morally wrong,
was an organized system, and made the best of Southern
conditions, and never failed, when there was reasonably good
management, to bring profit to the farmer.

Despite all discouragement, the wealth of the Southern
States that went into secession was nearly proportionately as
great as that of the North in 1860. In that year the total
wealth of the eleven States that went into secession, excluding
the value of negroes, was $2,615,750,830, and the wealth of the
eighteen States that fought them was $6,621,699,797. The population
of the first group of States was about 8,600,000,
inclusive of negroes, and the population of the second group
was 18,854,046.

In this estimate none of the Western States created after
1860 is included, nor the States of Maryland, West Virginia,
Kentucky and Missouri, that helped both sides in the war that
followed.

Undoubtedly, the great factor in the numerical growth of
the North was European emigration, of which it had almost
the monopoly. In the factories the poor people coming from
Europe were exploited under conditions of hardship never
experienced by the negroes of the South, even in the days
before the American Revolution. That slavery had little to
do with any deficiencies of the South was proved by two
things. First, it was proved by the example of Edmund
Ruffin, who raised the value of his estate from $25,000 to
$200,000 by good farming and good management. (See his
Diary in the Library of Congress, 1855-1865.) In the same
way Germany, by organization, became materially and
otherwise, the strongest power in the world, though with
limited freedom in the subject. Second, in 1912, the census
shows that the same eleven Southern States had

$8,073,986,366, and the same eighteen Northern States had
$51,143,451,461. It follows that relatively the South was far
less rich in 1912 than in 1860. Ample time had elapsed for
recovery from war, and the figures do not show that the abolition
of slavery was a financial blessing to the South.

There were several high tides in this emigration from
Virginia that should be noticed. The first was the emigration
southward about 1756 to North Carolina,[1] by the side of which
all other factors in the settlement of that great State counted
very little. Another high tide occurred in the rush to Kentucky
and Ohio between 1783 and 1810.[2] Then followed the
emigration to Alabama about 1840, and the emigration to
California in 1849. I know of no figures showing the exact
extent of these shiftings of population in any case, but they
must have been very large.

Slavery. Virginia's attitude to slavery was more honorable
than that of any other State. Beverley Munford's
great work, "Virginia's Attitude to Slavery and Secession,"
affords a triumphant demonstration. In spite of the fact that
her wealth rested largely upon negro slavery; that three-fourths
of her people were pecuniarily interested, directly or
indirectly, in slaves,[3] and that slavery was the best means of
exploiting the lands, whenever there was any intelligent management;
Virginia had, from early days, manifested a repugnance
to the moral principle involved, which endured till the
abuse of the abolitionists arrested the feelings and converted
many persons, even in West Virginia, to the opposite opinion.

For a long time after their first introduction very few
slaves were imported. As late as the year 1715, there were
only 23,000 in a population of 95,000. In the sixty-one years,
however, immediately preceding the Revolution, they came in
ever increasing figures, till, in 1776, they numbered nearly half
as many as the white population.

As an evidence that the material status of slavery had
nothing to do with the moral status, Virginia, which had been
a very poor colony previous to 1715, became rich and wealthy
under this influx from Africa, because affording an abundance
of labor to the planters. There can be little doubt that comforts
of all kinds were more richly extended in Virginia than
in any of the colonies. Her imports and exports exceeded in
value that of all New England, and there was a leisure class
that, through the general cultivation of their minds, easily
took the lead in all American affairs.

Nevertheless, so great was the objection to the immorality
of slavery and the evil of introducing an alien race into the
colony, which never could be assimilated, that the Legislature
sought in every way possible to limit the trade in slaves.
They passed twenty-three acts having this object in view, but
most of these acts were disallowed by the authorities in
England. How to prevent them from protecting themselves
against the increase of the overwhelming evil was debated
by the King in council, and on the 10th of December, 1770,
he issued an instruction under his own hand commanding the
Governors in America upon pain of highest displeasure to
assent to no laws by which the importation of slaves should
be in any respect prohibited or obstructed. In protest, the
Virginia Assembly adopted a petition to the King in 1772
denouncing the importation of slaves as "a trade of great
inhumanity," as "retarding the settlement of the colonies
with more useful settlers," and "as dangerous to the very
existence of your Majesty's dominions."

When Thomas Jefferson came to write the Declaration of
Independence, it was the King's vetoes of the laws passed by

Virginia to suppress the slave trade that evoked the fiercest
arraignment in that historic document. Mr. Jefferson has left
on record that this portion of the Declaration was stricken
out in Congress before its formal presentation to the world,
by deference to the wishes of certain Southern and Northern
States. The biographers of Abraham Lincoln, Messrs. Nicolay
and Hay, declare in this connection: "Newport was yet a
great slave mart, and the commerce of New England drew
more advantages from the traffic than did the agriculture of
the South."

But the position of Virginia with respect to slavery at this
time was not left to Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia delegation
in Congress. As early as 1774 mass meetings in many
of the counties adopted resolutions denouncing slavery and
the slave trade. W. E. Dubois, the negro historian, declares,
"Virginia gave the slave trade a special prominence, and was
in reality the leading spirit to force her views on the Continental
Congress."

The Declaration of Rights, drawn by a Virginian, George
Mason, adopted on June 12, 1776, and the Declaration of
Independence, drawn by Thomas Jefferson, another Virginian,
adopted July 4, 1776, both declare that "among the
inalienable rights of man are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness," and slavery could not square with this great
canon. Henceforth, its existence in Virginia could only be
justified by the difficulties and dangers attending its abolition.

But the efforts of Virginia did not cease with the Declaration
of Independence. Virginia and other colonies had striven
to discourage the traffic in slaves by laying duties, but foremost
among the laws enacted by Virginia after the Declaration
of Independence was the celebrated Statute of 1778,
drawn by Thomas Jefferson, laying for the first time a penalty
upon any one importing slaves into the Commonwealth
by sea or land. Of this act Mr. Ballagh, in his "History of
Slavery in Virginia," says: "Virginia thus had the honor
of being the first political community in the civilized modern

world to prohibit the pernicious traffic." She antedated the
like action by Great Britain by thirty years.

Next in sequence of the great events linked with this subject
was the work of Virginia's statesmen in the preparation and
adoption of the ordinance for the government of the Northwest
territory. When, by the valor of her sons, Virginia had
won the land from the English and Indians, she on January
2, 1781, silenced the murmurings of her sister States, and
consummated the efforts for Union by formally relinquishing
this great domain for the common weal. The United States
did not accept the cession on the terms proposed, but stated
certain modified conditions, which the General Assembly
acquiesced in at its October session, 1783-84.

The day that Virginia's cession was accepted by the Continental
Congress, Mr. Jefferson reported an ordinance for its
government—the ordinance of 1784. It contained a clause
prohibiting slavery, not only in the five States created out of
the Northwest territory, but in the country south of them,
which was subsequently formed into the States of Kentucky,
Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi. In its then form it did
not meet with the entire favor of Congress and failed to obtain
the votes of Mr. Jefferson's colleagues, Samuel Hardy and
Charles Fenton Mercer, and was rejected by the other Southern
States. After hanging in Congress for three years, the
ordinance was revised in another form embodying the best
part of the work of Jefferson. William Grayson, of Virginia,
the President of Congress, was the soul of the action taken,
and at his instance, Dame copied from Jefferson the prohibition
of involuntary servitude, as far as it applied to the Northwest
territory. The insertion of this clause was desired but
not even remotely contemplated by Dame, since of the Northern
States only Massachusetts was present.[4]

The South now went unanimously for the ordinance, and
the motives of the Southern States, with the exception of Virginia,
cannot be considered wholly disinterested. The Ohio

Company formed in Boston for the purchasing and colonizing
of a large tract of land in the Northwest stood knocking at the
doors of Congress, and the Southern States agreed to the
clause respecting slavery to prevent tobacco and indigo—the
products of negro labor—from being made on the Northwest
side of the Ohio.[5] The effect on the disposition of the North
towards the Mississippi was another influence operating upon
the South. In September, 1788, the old Congress passed resolutions
unanimously that "the free navigation of the Mississippi
was a clear and essential right of the United States."
Succeeding this, Grayson, who had been returned to the Virginia
Legislature in 1788, was one of a committee consisting of
Edward Carrington, James Monroe and Edmund Randolph,
besides himself, that successfully brought forward the bill by
which slavery was excluded from the empire north of the Ohio
River. As in passing this ordinance the State prevented her
own soldiers of the Revolution from carrying their slaves into
the territory reserved for their benefit between the Scioto and
Miami rivers, it is not an unreasonable assumption that
moral considerations weighed more with the State than the
economic and political considerations.

The supreme opportunity for suppressing the importation
of slaves, and thus hastening the day of emancipation, came
with the adoption of the Federal Constitution. The action of
the convention permitted the slave trade for twenty years and
was a bargain between New England and the far South. New
Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut consented to the
prolongation of the slave trade to please South Carolina and
Georgia, and in return, South Carolina and Georgia consented
to the clause empowering Congress to pass navigation acts
and otherwise regulate trade by a simple majority of votes.
This compromise was carried against the steady objection of
the Virginia delegates.

In the State convention which followed in 1788 the existence

of these clauses in the Federal Constitution was one of the
strongest objections taken against the ratification.

Despite Virginia's failure to secure the immediate suppression
of the foreign slave trade, her sons took the lead in
their efforts to restrict its growth, and at the earliest possible
moment, to drive the slave ships from the seas. In the first
Congress under the Constitution, April, 1789, Josiah Parker,
of Isle of Wight County, Virginia; sought to amend the tariff
bill under discussion by a clause levying an import tax of ten
dollars upon every slave brought into the country, and he was
a leading member of a committee which on March 23, 1790,
brought in a report recommending an act to forbid citizens
of the United States from engaging in the traffic with foreign
countries—a recommendation which was made into law by
Congress March 22, 1794.

The African slave trade had flourished so long under the
patronage and support of the leading States of Christendom
that, when the twenty years which the Constitution permitted
it, expired, it was found difficult to put an end to the traffic
by simple statutory enactment, but in the efforts to suppress
the evil, Virginians holding official places were most earnest
and energetic in their warfare against the trade. This was the
case with all the Virginia Presidents, Washington, Jefferson,
Madison, Monroe and Tyler. The luminous work of Jefferson
has already been mentioned, and his name is affixed in
approval to the act of Congress which finally forbade the slave
trade in 1808.

Madison, in his messages, brought the subject to the attention
of Congress and urged the passage of such amendments
as would suppress all violations of the law.

Under James Monroe the slave trade was declared piracy
in 1820, and in Congress, on motion of Hugh Nelson, of
Virginia, the House of Representatives fixed the death penalty
as the punishment of violating the law. During this administration,
under the leadership of Charles Fenton Mercer, of
Virginia, the acts of April 20, 1818, and March 3, 1819, authorized

Five Presidents

the President to send cruisers to the coast of Africa
to stop the slave trade. Subsequently, the same great statesman
in February, 1823, secured the adoption of a joint resolution
of Congress authorizing the President to enter upon or
prosecute from time to time with the maritime powers of
Europe and America negotiations for the ultimate denunciation
of the slave trade as piracy under the international law.
Mercer supplemented this, as chairman of a committee of the
House, in reporting a resolution that the President be authorized
to accept in his negotiations a mutual right of search of
vessels suspected of being engaged in the slave trade. This,
though defeated in the Senate, furnished a guide for the
actions of President Monroe, who on May 21, 1824, submitted
a draft of a treaty with Great Britain, by which both powers
agreed to recognize slave trading as piracy and yield the
mutual right of search. Unfortunately, the ratification of this
treaty was defeated in the Senate, and it was not until 1862
that the right of search between Great Britain and the United
States was established.

John Tyler, the last of the Virginia Presidents, had, when
a member of the Senate Committee of the District of Columbia
in 1832, prepared a code for the District which, while
repealing many of the antiquated laws imposing hardships on
the negroes, contained clauses prohibiting the importation or
sale of slaves in the District. As President, in the preparation
of the Ashburton Treaty, he secured the insertion of a
clause providing for the maintenance and cooperation of
squadrons of the United States and Great Britain off the
coast of Africa for the suppression of this trade.[6] And in his
message to Congress June 1, 1841, he declared that "the
highest consideration of public honor as well as the strongest
promptings of humanity required a resort to the most rigorous
efforts to suppress the trade."

The foregoing recital will serve to illustrate the uncompromising
attitude of hostility on the part of leading Virginians

to the slave trade. If their course on the question of
abolition was not as decisive, the excuse is found in the inherent
difficulties of the matter.

This subject was environed with so many entanglements
that even such men as Jefferson and Madison deemed emancipation
impracticable, without deportation. In this belief arose
the effort to deport free negroes to Africa, and the establishment
of the African Colonization Society and its State
branches. All the great statesmen of America believed in the
humanity of the movement, but this, like everything else, came
to be bitterly assailed by the abolitionists, who construed it
into a subtle design of slaveholders to quiet the conscience of
the country.

Deportation was urged by Lincoln himself in his messages,
and his final action of proclaiming emancipation in the slaveholding
States in secession was only taken as a war measure.
After declaring the policy of emancipation as "futile as the
Pope's bull against the comet" he made this reservation:
"Understand, I raise no objection against it on legal or Constitutional
grounds, for as chief of the army and navy in time
of war, I suppose I may take any measure which may best
subdue the enemy. Nor do I urge objections of a moral nature,
in view of possible consequences of insurrection and massacre
in the Southern States. I view this measure as a practical
war measure, according to the advantages or disadvantages
it may offer for the suppression of the Rebellion."[7]

Here then was a distinct recognition on the part of Lincoln
that insurrection and massacre were a possible consequence
of an emancipation proclamation and if these dreadful ills
of "insurrection" and "massacre" did not befall the South,
as a result of his turning a complete somersault, and ten days
later resorting to "the futile" measure, it can never be credited
to the humanity of Lincoln, who realized the peril. All
the credit assuredly goes to the humanity with which the terribly

reviled slaveholders treated their slaves.[8] But if
Lincoln had to admit the dangers of massacre, as a consequence
of emancipation, it ought not to be difficult to understand
why Virginians should have hesitated before the war
in bringing this peril upon the country by too precipitate
measures of abolition.

Between 1777 and 1800, all the New England States had
abolished slavery, but, as they had few negroes and slavery
did not pay in that stony country, the New Englanders deserve
but little credit for their action. The slave trade flourished
with them as actively as ever, and New England ships brought
thousands of Africans to this country. Nor did all the negroes
in New England receive the benefits of the emancipation, as
either in defiance of the laws or in anticipation, upwards of
one-half were shipped and sold in the South.[9]

But if some New Englanders made the cause of emancipation
very difficult by increasing enormously the number of
slaves in the South, others made the idea almost desperate to
the South by engaging in a crusade of abuse and incendiarism
that has no parallel in history. Unlike the antislavery men of
former days, the new school attacked not only the institution of
slavery but the morality of slaveholders, and their sympathizers.
Their rise in the North was contemporary with discussion
in the Virginia Legislature in 1832 regarding the
abolition of slavery. We have seen in another place that action
regarding abolition was only defeated in this Legislature by
73 to 58, and the very free discussion which there ensued
showed that the Virginian mind was up to that time open to
argument, if not to conviction.

But while never fully extinguished, this disposition was
largely suppressed by the abolitionists, who justified and instigated
murder and slave insurrection, and drove thousands in
Virginia and the South into silence or into the ranks of the
apologists for slavery.

"What have we done to her," said the Rev. Nehemiah
Adams, of Boston, "but admonish, threaten and indict her
before God, excommunicate her, stir up insurrection among
her slaves, endanger her homes, make her Christians and ministers
odious in other lands?"

It was the stock reply of the sectionalists of the North, who
boasted loudest of their nationalism, that it was the invention
of the cotton gin which encouraged the production of cotton
and increased the value of the slaves, that induced so many in
the South to stand for the perpetuation of slavery. But the
answer to this consists in the fact that relative to other property,
the value of slaves was no greater than just before the
Revolutionary period, when hostility to slavery in Virginia
was a prominent feature.[10]

The other stock argument that the South seceded in order
to "extend slavery" is shown by like facts to be without
reasonable value. The question about the Territories had
gotten to be in 1860 a mere abstract one. Kansas was lost
to the South and no one believed that slavery was possible
in any of the remaining domain of the United States not
admitted to Statehood—the odds by reason of immigration
and unfitness of the soil and climate being so greatly
against it.

South Carolina seceded because her abstract rights were
denied by the dominant party and its president. She fought
for independence and control of her own actions, but she did
not fight to "extend" slavery. So far from doing so, by
secession she formally relinquished all claim to the national
territory, and the constitution of the Confederacy provided
against the importation of slaves from abroad. Virginia made
the occasion of her secession the proclaimed resolve of
Lincoln to use the army to coerce the South. But as we have
seen, the deeper meaning lay in the incompatibility of the

union between the North and South, which had been made
manifest from the very beginning. The laws suited to one
section injured the other.

A final word as to the treatment accorded by the planters
to the slaves. Their owners were governed largely by public
opinion, and at no time in the history of Virginia does this
treatment appear to have been cruel or severe. In fact the
treatment became progressively more lenient. In the eighteenth
century, when negroes were principally savages freshly
imported, they had few comforts. So bare were their huts
of furniture that the inventories of estates are silent as
to the quarters, while enumerating every item in the manor
house. A bare plank was their couch and they seldom had
anything for their meals but cracked corn and vegetables,
though in these regards they were not much worse off than
the white servants imported in the seventeenth century. But
after the Revolution, the condition of the slaves immensely
improved. Their houses had comfortable beds, sometimes
very good furniture, and their fare was varied and wholesome.
Instead of meat twice a week, which was all that the
most favored white servants had in the seventeenth century,
the negroes of the South before the war had meat every day,
and plenty of it.

The best evidence of the mildness of their service was
afforded by their conduct during the war. Despite the violence
of the Northern press, that did not in some cases stop short
of recommending the entire extermination of the white people
of the South,[11] despite the direct instigation to massacre
afforded by Lincoln's proclamation of freedom in time of war;
and despite the numerous John Browns, who, when war was
once declared, made themselves busy in the open, the slaves of
Virginia and the South refused to rise; and, though without
the aid of the negroes in the Federal army, the war would
have proved a failure, as Lincoln himself declared, even this
aid was largely a forced one. Lincoln had about 200,000

negroes from the South as soldiers, but most of them were
slaves taken from the plantations and forced into the Federal
army.[12]

Education. In a letter[13] to Joseph C. Cabell in 1820 Jefferson
wrote that "the mass of education in Virginia before the
Revolution placed her with the foremost of her sister coloonies."
This education was afforded by (1) Private Schools;
(2) Charity Schools; (3) Tutors; (4) the College of William
and Mary; (5) the Academies and Colleges of England. There
was no public system for general education, but the
County Courts and the church wardens of the different parishes
were authorized and directed by the Legislature to
bind out all the poor children, and children of parents who
neglected them, with the requirement that they be taught by
their masters reading, writing and arithmetic. During the
American Revolution, Mr. Jefferson in 1779 reported from
the Revisors a bill for a general system of education, which
has served since as the basis for the whole United States.

Under this bill the curriculum of the College of William
and Mary was to be developed into that of a University, capping
the general plan of primary schools and secondary
schools or academies. The Legislature was slow to act, and
Mr. Jefferson, being elected Governor the same year, did not
wait but used his influence, as a member of the College Board,
to reorganize its curriculum as far as possible according to
the meaning of his bill. In connection with James Madison,
President of the College, he induced the visitors to abolish
the Grammar School, in which Latin and Greek were taught,
and the two Divinity Schools, and in their places to introduce
a school of Modern Languages, one of municipal law, and one
of medicine. By this arrangement the College became a University,
the first to be organized in the United States; and
it became also the first to have a chair of Modern Languages,
under Charles Bellini, and the first to have a chair of law,

under George Wythe, while a chair of medicine, under
Dr. James McClurg, was only second in time to that at the
College of Philadelphia. The cardinal features of the new
system at William and Mary College were (1) freedom of
selection by the student of his subjects of study, and (2) the
Honor System, which discountenanced all espionage by the
professors and trusted in the character of the student, in and
out of the class room.

Mr. Jefferson's report was not taken up by the Legislature
till 1796, when the bill in relation to the common schools was
enacted into law, but it proved ineffective by reason of an
amendment which left to each County Court to say whether
it should go into operation; and none of them consented, as
the justices would have been the chief taxpayers. This was
true of the justices in western Virginia as well as in those
where negroes formed a large element in the population.

The next step in the educational history was the establishment
of the Literary Fund by act of February 2, 1810. The
act ordered that "all escheats, confiscations, fines, penalties
and forfeitures and all rights accruing to the State as derelicts,"
shall be set aside for the encouragement of learning.
In 1826 the Literary Fund amounted to $1,210,550, the greater
part of which consisted of advances made by the State in
repelling the British invasion in 1813, and reimbursed to the
State by the Federal Government. By gradual accretions it
had reached the figure of $1,795,016.76 in 1860. It was then
used for the defence of the State, and some of it was invested
in Confederate bonds and lost. But in 1871 it amounted to
$1,596,069, and in 1922 it amounted to $4,621,867.97.

Some of the interest on this fund was given from time to
time to the University of Virginia, the Virginia Military Institute,
and the other colleges, and in 1822-24 the sum of
$180,000 was taken from its principal to aid the University in
erecting its buildings. This sum, though ostensibly a loan,
came to be regarded as a gift and was never returned to the
Literary Fund.[14]

But the main use of the Literary Fund was to educate the
children of the poor, and despite criticism it did a valuable
work in this respect. In 1855 it imparted aid to 65,370 poor
white children, of whom 31,486 were in actual daily attendance.
The Governors of Virginia constantly called attention
to the inadequacy of the system, but the nearest the state
before 1860 got to the ideal of Jefferson was under the act of
1845-46.

Under this act a general free school system was adopted,
but it was made to apply to the counties and not to the State
as a whole. Each county had to decide by a two-thirds vote
whether it would have free schools or not, and in case the
necessary vote was secured, the schools were to be supported
by funds apportioned from the Literary Fund and local taxation.
Nine counties only accepted the provisions of the act.

But while elementary education in Virginia was thus left
in an unsatisfactory condition, the higher education and the
secondary education accomplished much better results. Going
back to Jefferson's bill of 1779, we remember that he contemplated
making a State University of the College of William
and Mary, but with its Episcopal President and inherited
prejudices, he found it impossible to make the desired headway.
The other denominations were hostile, and finally he
decided to use another means and another location. In 1798
Jefferson, in writing to Doctor Priestly, had expressed the
hope that a new University planned on "a broad, liberal and
modern scale" would be erected "in the Upper Country and,
therefore, more centrally for the State." Following this a
movement occurred in the House of Delegates at the session
of 1805-06, which had for its object the erection of the
"University of Virginia" to be established "in some county
that was below the Southwest mountains, in a central situation,
recommended by the salubrity of the climate and cheapness
of the provisions." The ostensible leader of this movement
was James Semple, afterwards Professor of Law in
William and Mary College. Whether or not Mr. Semple had

any immediate connection with Mr. Jefferson is not known,
but he was a son-in-law of Judge John Tyler, who in the Legislature
in 1779 had given his ardent support to Mr. Jefferson's
reforms. Beyond leave accorded by the House to a committee
of which Mr. Semple was chairman, to bring in a bill
for the erection of the University, nothing further was done
at this time.[15]

After the establishment of the Literary Fund in 1810 and
the transference to this Fund at the session of 1815-16 of the
debt due Virginia by the United States, Charles Fenton
Mercer, chairman of the Finance Committee, to whom Joseph
C. Cabell had shown a letter Mr. Jefferson had written to
Peter Carr, which gave in detail his views as to the System of
Public Education to be set under way, framed a bill which
took in the most important features of Jefferson's plan. It
passed the House by a large majority and failed in the Senate
by a tie vote.

Mercer's bill was more elaborate than Mr. Jefferson had
planned, and on the request of Joseph C. Cabell, he put his
scheme for education in shape, and had it introduced by
Samuel Taylor of Chesterfield, but on February 11, 1818, it
failed of passage. The bill was then considered and amended,
so as to authorize the instruction of the poor and the establishment
of the University at a site to be selected by a commission,
and in this mutilated form passed the General
Assembly. Forty-five thousand dollars from the interest on
the Literary Fund was to be annually appropriated for the
instruction of indigent children, and $15,000 for the support
of the projected University.

Under the same prevailing influence of Mr. Jefferson,
Central College at Charlottesville, of which Jefferson was the
patron, was recommended by the commission as the site of
the University, and an act of the Assembly January 25, 1819;
confirmed the decision, and laid down with minuteness the
necessary prescriptions for the number of the Visitors, their

appointment, their powers and duties, the courses to be taught
and the number, salaries and accommodations of the
Professors.[16]

The higher education thus formulated in an institution
which in its plan, scope, organization and work has given
fame to the State, was further promoted by the establishment
in 1839 of the Virginia Military Institute, second only to West
Point as a military educational center. These agencies were
augmented by several new institutions founded by the various
religious denominations—Randolph-Macon College, founded
by the Methodists in 1830; Richmond College, founded by the
Baptists in 1832; Emory and Henry College, founded by the
Methodists in 1838, and Roanoke College, founded by the
Lutherans in 1853. These were in addition to the older institutions
already mentioned, namely, William and Mary College,
Hampden-Sidney College and Washington College.

A unique school in its way was the Institution for the
Deaf, Dumb and Blind, established at Staunton by the
Legislature in 1838. It had a predecessor in a private school
taught by John Braidwood, son of John Braidwood who
founded a school in London for the instruction of the deaf
and dumb. The son came to "Cobbs" in Goochland County,
to teach afflicted children in the family of Thomas Bolling,
and as a result established there the first school in America
for the deaf and dumb. The school had six or seven scholars
but was abandoned in a few years on account of Braidwood's
bad habits, from which Mr. Bolling found it impossible to
retrieve him. Braidwood died in 1819 or 1820, the victim of
intemperance.

The census of 1850 shows that Virginia had more young
men in college, in proportion to its population, (slaves excluded)
than any other State. In actual numbers she outranked
Massachusetts, Virginia having 1,343 at College and
Massachusetts 1,043.

The secondary schools in Virginia before 1861 were private,

not public. The Academy was the type of school that
spread through Virginia and served as a means of education
of the majority of the children of the state. These schools,
while they taught the classics, higher mathematics, and the
sciences (physics, chemistry and botany) also played the part
of primary schools, which was a necessary preparation for
this secondary instruction. The State had no other connection
with these academies than the matter of chartering them or
passing acts enabling them to conduct lotteries for the purpose
of raising funds to erect buildings or to add to their
endowment. Between 1800 and 1860, 175 academies were incorporated
in Virginia, of which sixty-nine were for the education
of girls. Many of these occupied buildings entirely of
brick. It is safe to say that many other academies of less
significance in the State did not apply for incorporation.[17]

It would thus appear that Virginia was especially strong
in the secondary and higher education, but weak in her elementary
schools. In a white population in 1860 of 1,047,411,
74,055 persons twenty years of age and upwards could not
read and write, but even this was a much lower average of
illiteracy than prevailed in most of Europe at this time.

Literature. Books are the natural products of large cities,
where easy access can be had to large public libraries and
ready sale effected to offset the cost of publication. Virginia
was a State of counties and none of her cities exceeded 40,000.
And yet during this period covered by this book (1763-1860)
her light in this particular was not hid under a bushel.

In polemic and political literature Virginia easily held
first place among the states. This took the form of communications
to the newspapers, editorials, pamphlets, State documents
and private letters of public men. If all was published
together it would make an enormous library of books. The
Virginia Gazette, the Richmond Enquirer, the Richmond
Whig, the Norfolk Public Ledger, and the other newspapers
of Virginia abound in such literature. Every member of

Congress, and many of the Legislature, thought it a duty to
address their constituents on the public questions interesting
the people at the time. Among official documents there were
the state papers of governors and Virginia presidents and
the different heads of departments in state and federal government,
the reports of committees and resolutions of the
Legislature and of Congress, wherever Virginians had a hand.

The Revolution was ushered in by a literature of this kind
that easily takes precedence. As examples might be cited the
pamphlets written by John Camm, Richard Bland, and
Landon Carter on the Two Penny Act (1759-1764); "An Enquiry
into the Rights of the British Colonies" (1766) by Richard
Bland; the "Monitor's Letters" (1767) by Dr. Arthur
Lee; the "Summary View," (1774) by Thomas Jefferson; The
Resolves of the Virginia Assembly against the Stamp Act
(1765); the Resolves against the Revenue Act (1768, 1769);
the Declaration of Rights (1776) by George Mason; the Declaration
of Independence (1776) by Thomas Jefferson; the
acts of the Virginia Legislature, many of which, especially
those drawn by Jefferson (for instance the celebrated Act
for Religious Freedom) exhibit forcible ideas presented in a
lucid and vigorous expression.

As to the political literature of the post-Revolutionary
period, it would take too much space to go into any detail, but,
as examples only, mention may be made of Madison's twenty-nine
articles of the Federalist and his Report on the Resolutions
of 1798, Jefferson's inaugural message (1801), Monroe's
message (1823) on the "Policy" bearing his name, and
Tyler's last annual message (1844), to which should be added
his address on the "Dead of the Cabinet."[18]

In the private letters of Washington, Madison and Jefferson,
published during this period, political matters are discussed

in a style worthy of those great men. Books discussing
constitutional questions appeared from John Taylor of Caroline:
"An Enquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government
of the United States" (1814), "Construction Construed
and the Constitution Vindicated" (1820); "Tyranny
Unmasked" (1822), and "New Views of the Constitution of
the United States," (1823). Abel P. Upshur acquired fame as
the author of a "Review of Judge Joseph Story's Commentaries
on the Constitution" (1840). It was applauded throughout
the South as a complete answer to the Nationalists, and
was long a text book in Southern colleges and schools.

In history the State was represented by John D. Burk
(1804), R. R. Howison (1847) and Charles Campbell (1849),
worthy successors of Robert Beverley, whose History of the
Colony (1705), is described by Dr. J. Franklin Jameson as
the first production of its kind having a real American spirit.
In this category may be placed Jefferson's "Notes on
Virginia" (1782), which passed through many editions; General
Harry Lee's "War in the Southern Department of the
United States" (1812), and Bishop Meade's "Old Churches,
Ministers and Families of Virginia" (1856).

There were many biographies, chief among which may be
mentioned William Wirt's "Life of Patrick Henry," which, in
spite of its inaccuracies, still appeals to readers; Marshall's
"Life of Washington" (five vols., 1804-1807), Richard Henry
Lee, Jr's. "Life of Richard Henry Lee" (1825), and "Life of
(Dr.) Arthur Lee" (1829); George Tucker's "Life of Jefferson,"
Hugh A. Garland's "Life of John Randolph" (1850)
and William C. Rives' "Life and Times of James Madison"
(1859). These are necessary books for any Virginia library.
In the "Life of Washington," by Parson Weems, Virginia can
claim a biography that went through more editions and was
read by more people than any dozen other biographies written
in the United States. It remained for many years one of the
books of the people, and, if popular favor is a proof of literary

excellence, Parson Weems' statue is entitled to a very high
niche in the temple of patriotism.

In books on agriculture John Taylor blazed the way with
his "Arator" (1810), to be succeeded by Edmund Ruffin with
his work on "Calcareous Manures" (1835), which had an
enormous popularity, and was praised by men in all parts of
the Union. In physical science the name that overshadowed
all others was that of Matthew Fontaine Maury, whose "Physical
Geography" was long used in the schools.

In theology, one of the most distinguished of the early
writers was Dr. Archibald Alexander, a native of Rockbridge
County, and for some time Professor of Theology in Princeton
College. His "Evidences of Christianity" (1825), and
"Canon of Scripture" occupy a very high rank. Other
prominent writers in theology were Dr. John H. Rice and Dr.
R. L. Dabney, of the Presbyterian Church, and Dr. J. B. Jeter
of the Baptist.

In law, St. George Tucker compiled an "Annotated Edition
of Blackstone's Commentaries" (1804), which was the
first American law book to be used as a text book in colleges;
and excellent manuals and digests appeared from
John T. Lomax, Conway Robinson, Judge N. B. Tucker,
James P. Holcombe, Henry St. George Tucker, and many
others. The opinions of Virginia judges, as they appear in
the works of the law reporters, have also a place in this general
catalogue of law literature. Many of the judges excel in
their clear and vigorous use of the English language, and two
especially may be mentioned, namely, John Marshall and
Spencer Roane.

Virginia fiction may be said to have begun with William
A. Caruthers, who wrote "Cavaliers of Virginia" and
"Knights of the Horseshoe," the one dealing with Bacon's
Rebellion and the other with Spotswood's march to the mountains.
A little later appeared "George Balcomb" and "The
Partisan Leader," by Judge N. B. Tucker. The last was
published in 1837, but the writer laid the scene of his plot in

the future, when President Van Buren was in his third term.
This singular book was something like a prophecy, for it represented
the country at war because of the usurpation of the
North. A Novel by St. George Tucker, Jr., entitled "Hans
ford, A Tale of Bacon's Rebellion," was quite popular. But
perhaps the most successful writer who continued his work
after the war for Southern Independence was John Esten
Cooke, who wrote "Leather Stockings and Silk," "The Youth
of Jefferson," "The Virginia Comedians" and "The Last of
the Foresters."

In poetry Virginia during this period produced no great
poet of native birth, but two made Virginia their home. They
were widely separated in time. One was Goronwy Owen, who
was master of the grammar school at William and Mary College
from 1758 to 1760 and minister of St. Andrew's Parish,
Brunswick County, from 1760 to his death in 1770. His poems,
some of which were written in Virginia, have procured for
him the fame of "premier poet" of Wales, but as they are
written in the Welsh language they are hardly known in Virginia
today. The other of these master spirits was Edgar
Allan Poe, who, though born in Boston, while his mother, an
actress, was temporarily there, was brought up in Richmond
and studied at the University of Virginia. Both of these poets
were wild, ungovernable men, given to drink, and very little to
be admired as far as their behavior went, but their poetry
is not tainted with their bodily failings and soars to heights
attained by few. Poe's fame has grown with time and his
poems and prose works are perhaps the most popular of all
writings in the United States and among the most popular in
the world.

But while not entitled to be ranked with these master
spirits, Virginia did have in this period some men native born
who were real poets, such as William Munford, James Barron
Hope, John R. Thompson, St. George Tucker, Jr., and Robert
Tyler. Munford, the first of these, wrote a number of poems,
but his chief claim to remembrance rests on his translation of

the Iliad, published in 1848, long after his death. Competent
critics have pronounced it superior in verse to Pope's famous
translation. James Barron Hope published "A Collection of
Poems" in 1859. Thompson was editor of the Southern Literary
Messenger, and contributed to it both excellent prose and
beautiful verse. Tucker wrote a strong address in verse which
was read at William and Mary College in 1859, and his war
song, "The Southern Cross," written after the election of
Lincoln, was very popular in the South generally. Robert
Tyler, who was an intimate friend and associate of Francis
Scott Key, the author of "The Star Spangled Banner," and
John Howard Payne, the author of "Home Sweet Home,"
wrote "Ahasuerus" (1842), and "Death, or Medorus'
Dream" (1843), which were highly praised by such critics as
George D. Prentice, Hugh S. Legaré, Joseph B. Chandler and
Charles Hoffman.

Besides these, many Virginians wrote excellent pieces,
which, while not entitling their authors to be called poets, went
to swell the mass of the State's poetic literature. As
specimens we may cite Philip Pendleton Cooke's "Florence
Vane," James McClurg's "Belles of Williamsburg," and
Judge St. George Tucker's "Days of My Youth." The last
produced such an impression on President John Adams that
it is said he declared that he would rather have written it than
any lyric of Milton or Shakespeare.

Various Literary Magazines were published at different
times in Virginia, most of them for a short period. Probably
the earliest of these was a magazine by Hugh L. Girardin, entitled
"Graphicae Amoenitates," with half a dozen other
descriptive words (1805). It was a quarto, and its first number,
which was also its last, contained a colored picture of the
Jamestown tower and five other colored plates, all engraved
by Frederick Bossler. Others of these short lived affairs
may be cited, but we must use our remaining space to notice
two of a more permanent character. Beginning in January,
1818, The Virginia Literary and Evangelical Magazine for

Matthew F. Maury

ten years afforded reading matter, religious and secular, to
the Virginian public. The editor was John Holt Rice, who was
born in 1777 and died in 1831 in Prince Edward County, where
for eight years he had been head of the "Union Theological
Seminary." The mere list of titles of articles published in this
magazine on the status of Virginia, politically, educationally
and in a literary way, is interesting by itself, but it is made
doubly so when it is remembered that the North American
Review was established in 1815 and Blackwood's Magazine in
1817.

The Southern Literary Messenger, founded by Thomas W.
White, in 1834, and edited successively by James E. Heath,
Edgar Allan Poe, Matthew Fontaine Maury, Benjamin B.
Minor, John R. Thompson, George Bagby and Frank H.
Alfriend, had a life of thirty years and there was no magazine
superior to it in the United States. It contained many pieces
of prose and verse from the best writers of the North and
the South. Poe was not only editor but a frequent contributor.

Mention should be made of "the Virginia Historical Register,"
a small publication beginning in 1848 and intended as
the organ of the Virginia Historical Society, nor must we fail
to refer to the different farm journals, medical journals and
religious periodicals,[19] which sometimes contained articles of
excellent literary character.

This is, of course, only a brief statement of Virginian accomplishment.
The late Dr. Alfred J. Morrison, who made an
extensive study of Bibliography, and whose recent untimely
death was a great loss to Virginia, states that in the great revival
of effort along all lines that marked the decade from
1850 to 1860, it was not going too far to assert that sufficient
biographies made up of Southern names alone could be had to
fill six volumes equal in size to the six volumes of Appleton's
Encyclopedia of American Biography, containing Canadian

and South American names, as well as names properly applicable
to the United States (comprising 1,500 names). General
Wilson, the editor, and John Fiske, the assistant editor of
Appleton, let in a good many names on very slim evidence of
ability, and they left out a great many names that might have
been included.

These editors, sitting down to their task about 1880 or
1882, both of them fair minded men and of exceptional intelligence,
could not possibly know much about the significant
names in Southern achievement. And if they had come South
and made special enquiry, they could not have found out.
Something had happened.[20]

As a result of the war, which had brought about a confusion
such as the world has seldom known, that region had
been "stunned." The Southern people, absorbed in the struggle
for self preservation against negro rule, which their conquerors
ruthlessly forced upon them, and bent upon the material
rehabilitation of their country, had no time to consider
the past, and conformed themselves to the conditions, which
were offered to them by the more friendly portion of the
Northern people. In a sense they became Northernized, and
today, as victims of a propaganda without regard to truth, the
new generation of Southerners, satisfied with the management
of their local affairs and little inclined to dispute with the
North the management of national affairs, can have but little
understanding of the high aspirations of the old South which
was unwilling to accept a subordinate position in a Union
built upon the idea of equality.