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Chapter 3
The Building Campaign of 1819, Part 1
Documentary History of the Construction of the Buildings at the University
of Virginia, 1817-1828 |  |
University Bill
Planning for the spring and summer was well and good (and necessary) but for now the best
thing that could be done to enhance the building at the college was to set it upon a proper
financial footing by gaining permanent state support. This would come in due time
following the adoption of the site of the Central College as the University of Virginia, which
took place in the Virginia House of Delegates on 21 January 1819, and four days later in the
Senate. Jefferson actually had drawn up the university bill in late 1818, carefully inserting a
clause giving the visitors authority over the "erection preservation and repair of the
buildings, the care of the grounds and appurtenances, and of the interests of the University
generally: they shall have power to appoint a Bursar, employ a Proctor and all other
necessary agents."[158] (Carpenter James Oldham appealed to this clause when he later sued
the university over his contract.) The votes, 143 to 28 in the House of Delegates and 21 to 1
in the Senate, constituted a "vast majority," Board of Visitor member David Watson
recorded in his memoranda book; the $15,000 per annum "endowment by the publick" was
paltry but not refused.[159] Upon hearing of the bill's passage, Jefferson immediately sent a
congratulatory letter to Joseph Carrington Cabell in Richmond and informed the senator of
the need for a meeting of the visitors,
the season for engagements is rapidly passing off. but we shall fall miserably
short in the execution of the large plan displayed to the world, with the short
funds proposed for it's execution. (on a careful review of our existing means,
we shall be able this present year to add but two pavilions and their dormitories
to the two already in a course of execution, so as to provide but for 4.
professorships; and hereafter we can add but one a year; without any chance of
getting a chemical apparatus, an astronomical apparatus with it's observatory, a
building for a library with it's library Etc in fact it is vain to give us the name of
an University without the means of making it so.) could not the legislature be
induced to give to the University the derelict portions offered to the pauper
schools & not accepted by them.[160]
The last request would become one of Jefferson's often repeated refrains, trapping Cabell
between his willing allegiance to Jefferson and the university on the one hand and the
realities of the Virginia Senate.[161]
158. A Bill for the Establishment of an University, 1818, in TJ's writing, ViU:TJ. The act
passed by the General Assembly on 25 January 1819 differed slightly from Jefferson's draft.
See also Cabell, Early History of the University of Virginia, (appendix K) 447-50, and
Knight, A Documentary History of Education in the South Before 1860, 180-83.
159. David Watson, Miscellaneous Memoranda, 22-24 January 1819, ViU: Watson Family
Papers. David Watson (1775-1830), who commanded a cavalry company during the War of
1812, served six terms in the Virginia House of Delegates. Watson and his wife Sally Minor
are buried at Brackett's, their Louisa County estate situated on Hudson's Creek at Route 638
(Chisholm and Lillie, Old Home Places of Louisa County, 182, 197, 221).
160. TJ to Cabell, 28 January 1819, in ViU:TJ; see also Cabell, Early History of the
University of Virginia, 154. Cabell, who had kept Jefferson abreast of the legislature's
actions on the bill prior to the votes, relayed him the news of its passage in both houses. See
Cabell to TJ, 21 and 25 January, in ViU:TJ; see also ibid., 152-53. Governor Wilson Cary
Nicholas wrote Jefferson on 28 January to inform him of the bill's passage, saying, "The
object was always dear to me, it is doubly so, as it is now so compleatly identified with your
fame" (DLC:TJ).
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Chapter 3
The Building Campaign of 1819, Part 1
Documentary History of the Construction of the Buildings at the University
of Virginia, 1817-1828 | |