University of Virginia Library

Success and Failure

The almost complete cessation of building through the winter and the ensuing spring,
punctured only by a few deliveries (mostly small) of plank and a half dozen wagon trips
from the out-of-town merchants,[520] did not affect the efforts of Senator Cabell and his
friends in the General Assembly to set the university's precarious financial situation on a
sound basis. During the first week of February both branches of the Virginia legislature
overwhelmingly passed another loan bill authorizing the university to borrow another
$60,000 with the understanding and expectation that an application would be made at the
next legislative session for a "remission of the loans, or rather for an assumption of the debts
of the University by the state."[521] Emboldened by that victory, Cabell (suffering again
from one of his periodic bouts of illness) brought forward another bill which would grant
the university a suspension of the payment of interest on its debts for five years.[522] An
amendment in the House of Delegates to restrict the Board of Visitors from "erecting the
Centre Building" failed in late February, killing the whole resolution (and foreshadowing
what would happen to a more ambitious plan exactly one year later). The bill's failure
caused the politically asture Cabell to observe that "Every day convinces me more & more,
that the buildings ought to be finished, and that the opposition is general, & not to the
Rotunda, or any other particular part."[523]

The neglect by the Virginia legislature to appropriate money to complete the university's
buildings drew a bitter response from Jefferson, which he confided to his old friend Thomas
Cooper. He informed Cooper that even though all the buildings for accommodation would
be "ready for habitation" by the ensuing summer, the building for the "Library, exhibition
rooms Etc." still awaited funds for it's erection. Moreover, he continued,

There was little to be done for now, however, although in mid-March William J. Coffee did
agree with the proctor to furnish the composition ornaments for the entablatures of the
drawing rooms of all the pavilions and the lead ornaments for the fronts of the porticos of
Pavilions I and II.[525] When the Board of Visitors' spring meeting came around at the end
of March 1822 only three members showed (Jefferson, Cabell, and Cocke), and Jefferson
candidly admitted to James Madison that his and the other visitors' absence "was not
material as there was not a single thing requisite to act on. we have to finish the 4. rows and
appendages this summer which will be done and then to rest on our oars." Furthermore, said
Jefferson, the university had become embroiled now in the question of the removal of the
seat of the state government. "Staunton & Richmond are both friendly to us as an
University," he judged, "but the latter fears that our Rotunda will induce the legislature to
quit them, & Staunton fears it will stop them here." That in part explained fellow visitor
Chapman Johnson's reluctance to build the library; in fact in the late session of the General
Assembly Johnson himself brought forward "an express Proviso that no money should be
applied to that building." Another of the "zealous friends to the University, in a Philijyric
against the Rotunda declared he would never vote another Dollar to the University but on
condition that it should not be applied to that building." Nevertheless, Jefferson suggested
they stay their course with diligence. "our opinion, and a very sound one has been from the
beginning never to open the institution until the buildings shall be compleat . . . our course is
a plain one, to pursue what is best, and the public will come right and approve us in the
end." And, he concluded, "the establishment is now at that stage at which it will force itself
on. we must manage our dissenting brother softly; he is of too much weight to be given
up."[526]