University of Virginia Library

Cabell Changes View of Finances

A week before the visitors' meeting Senator Joseph Cabell sent his Monticello adviser a
letter indicating that he finally had learned Jefferson's lesson regarding how to proceed with
the university construction in light of its funding and oversight by the Virginia General
Assembly. "If I had a vote on the question of finishing the buildings," Cabell began, "I
should vote for it, as a measure correct in itself, and prudent with reference to the present
state of the public mind. If there be not money enough to finish them I would go on as near
to the object as possible." Cabell's shift in thinking about the university's cautious
relationship with the legislature was not mirrored by the two other visitors in the state
senate, Chapman Johnson and James Breckenridge, who at the spring 1821 meeting of the
Board of Visitors had declared that they would not proceed with the building of the library
without the firm assurance of its completion when once begun.[508] "But I am at this time
inclined to think I would ask nothing of the present Assembly," Cabell continued, "I would
go on & compleat the buildings, and at another session make the great effort to emancipate
the funds. Last Spring I rather inclined to the opinion expressed by many friends in
Richmond, that we should commence no building, which we could not finish. But I now
think otherwise. I see no essential good to result from stopping short of our object . . . Such
are my views."[509] Cabell reiterated and elaborated these views in another letter of the same
date written to his close friend at Bremo, John Hartwell Cocke, which not only shows
Cabell's own evolution on the subject but succinctly represents the views that Jefferson held
all along about his scheme to build the university.

On the day preceding his reception of Cabell's revelatory letter, Jefferson wrote to his
former secretary William Short to answer his inquiry about the university and to invite his
old neighbor to return to the area for a visit. "You enquire also about our University,"
Jefferson began.

Jefferson's new estimate of the time and money yet needed to finish the buildings of
accommodation closely paralleled that given by the proctor in an official report to the rector
and Board of Visitors on 26 November, just days prior to the visitors' annual fall meeting.
"You will find the balance required to complete the present buildings, exceeds the former
estimates," Brockenbrough reported as he handed in the results of his half-year attempt to
settle his accounts. "If this was a novel case in building, I should feel much chagrined at it;
but as we have numerous precedents before us in all great public works, and indeed in all
large private buildings . . . I am the better satisfied, as it cannot be expected, that I should be
freer from error in estimates than others."[512] Brockenbrough's new estimate for
constructing all the buildings exclusive of the library was $261,205.49, well beyond the
estimate of exactly one year previous, it may be recalled, of $162,364. (The new estimate of
money needed to finish the buildings was $53,494.79, up from $38,898.25.) Thus by the
time Jefferson penned the above description of the university for William Short, both he and
the proctor already had decided (against their best efforts to the contrary) to postpone
building the Rotunda for another season. As a disgusted John Hartwell Cocke later told
Senator Cabell:

The visitors therefore, at their meeting at the end of November, could not take the much
anticipated step of beginning the construction of the library but in fact spent most of their
time crafting a statement for the president and directors of the Literary Fund that offered a
defense of the progress and costs incurred thus far. "It is confidently believed," the visitors
reported, "that . . . no considerable System of building, within the U.S. has been done on
cheaper terms, nor more correctly, faithfully, or solidly executed, according to the nature of
the materials used."[514]