 |
Chapter 2
The Building Campaign of 1818
Documentary History of the Construction of the Buildings at the University
of Virginia, 1817-1828 |  |
Rockfish Gap Commission
Jefferson, who did go to Poplar Forest as planned, arrived back at Monticello on Saturday
18 July to find the buildings for the college coming on "with some spirit." He immediately
begin preparing for his journey the next week to Rockfish Gap in eastern Augusta County,
where the commissioners appointed to report to the legislature were to determine, in his
words, whether the Central College "ought not to be adopted for the University."[121]
Jefferson met from 1 to 4 August 1818 with nearly two dozen distinguished Virginians
(three commissioners failed to show) at the tavern at Rockfish Gap in the Blue Ridge
Mountains.[122] "It was convenient to me to send a mattrass & trussels for myself," he
informed a Mr. Barnet, and he requested "ever so small a lodging room to myself."[123]
Thanks to Jefferson's "shrewd preparation" during the spring and summer, the meeting at
Rockfish Gap became a triumphal turning point;[124] the commissioners divided along
sectional lines, choosing for the university the eventual site of the Central College
in Charlottesville as a "convenient & proper" place to establish the University of Virginia over
either a Staunton or Lexington location.[125] Jefferson, jubilant that the vote was 16 to 5 in
favor of his college, wrote his daughter, Martha, on the last day of the meeting: "I have
never seen business done with so much order, harmony, nor in abler nor pleasanter society.
We have been well served too. Excellent rooms, every one his bed, a table altho' not elegant,
yet plentiful and satisfactory. I proceed today with Judge Stuart to Staunton."[126]
122. For the Rockfish Gap Commission, see the Minutes of the Board of Commissioners for
the University of Virginia, 1-4 August 1818, in Vi., and the Report of the Commissioners for
the University of Virginia, 4 August 1818, in ViU:TJ; see also Cabell, Early History of the
University of Virginia, (appendix I) 432-47; Honeywell, The Educational Work of Thomas
Jefferson, (appendix J), 248-60; and Knight, A Documentary History of Education in the
South Before 1860, 3:162-78. The attending members unanimously elected Jefferson to
preside over the commission.
126. TJ to Martha Jefferson Randolph, 4 August 1818, in Betts and Bear, Family Letters of
Thomas Jefferson, 423-24. Archibald Stuart (1757-1832), who was born in Waynesboro,
studied law under Jefferson following his Revolutionary War service as an aide-de-camp to
Major General Nathanael Greene. At this time Stuart was judge of the General Court of
Virginia for the Augusta district. He built a mansion on Church Street in Staunton that was
later occupied by his son, Judge Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart, an early graduate in law
from the university and President Filmore's Secretary of the Interior in the early 1850s.
|
Chapter 2
The Building Campaign of 1818
Documentary History of the Construction of the Buildings at the University
of Virginia, 1817-1828 | |