FIRST PERIOD
STRUGGLE FOR A UNIVERSITY History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919; The Lengthened Shadow of One Man, Volume I | ||
2. FIRST PERIOD
STRUGGLE FOR A UNIVERSITY
I. Jefferson's Faith in Education
We have now described those fundamental tastes and convictions of Jefferson which have left a permanent impression on the University of Virginia: his almost fanatical devotion to political freedom; his hatred of all forms of sectarian obtrusiveness; and his enthusiasm for every branch of science which he believed would liberalize and fructify the human mind. How were these great objects, upon which, in his judgment, the liberty, felicity, and comfort of mankind depended, to be solidly and lastingly preserved? By education, was his emphatic reply. "Knowledge is power," he wrote George Tickner in 1817, " knowledge is safety, knowledge is happiness." Education to him meant the diffusion of light tough all the ranks of society, from the highest to the lowest; indeed,. it was the chief, if not the only, means by which the goodness of the individual could be nourished, and his happiness secured. It was not simply education, but "well directed education" that was to improve his morals, enlarge his mind, clarify his decisions, instruct his industry, and augment his material prosperity. "Education," Jefferson remarks in the Rockfish Gap Report, " engrafts a new man on the native stock, and turns what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth." "And it cannot but be," he continued, " that each generation,
It was one of the most seductive of all Rousseau's theories that the right to a pleasant place in the sun was the natural right of every man; and that the only reason for the existence of social organization, and the only object of education, was to assure that right to every person beyond the possibility of alienation or deprivation. Jefferson's own convictions were in general harmony with this view; but in one detail he went a long stride further than the great sentimentalist of Geneva; he thought that the aim of education should be, not simply to make a contented and prosperous citizen, but also a useful and unselfish one,-one who would perform all the public duties of citizenship with as much cheerfulness and alacrity as he would perform all the tender and benevolent offices of his own domestic hearth and social circle. It was the function of democracy to secure for all men precisely equal opportunities for .advancement; no man was to be favored at the expense of any other man, while all the prizes for which men strove should be thrown open to free competition; but it was necessary that they should, in this ardent and unceasing contest, have the use of all their powers at the highest tension of their capacity. How was this to be brought about? Again, he replied, by education.
What were the benefits, which, in Jefferson's opinion, would be conferred, by primary education? The acquisition of the knowledge that every citizen needs for the transaction of his private business, such as the skill to make his own calculations in figures, and to express and
The aims of the higher education rested upon a somewhat broader platform. What were they? To mould the characters of the statesmen, legislators, and judges on whom the prosperity of the public and the happiness of the individual, in the future, were to depend so largely; to expoundthe proper spirit and framework of government and to interpret the laws that regulate the intercourse of nations; to harmonize and nourish the growth of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce; to develop the reasoning faculties of the young, to enlarge their minds, cultivate their morals, and instil into them the principles of virtue and order; to instruct them in those mathematical "and physical sciences which foster the arts and contribute to the health, support, and comfort of human life; and finally, to mould them to habits of reflection and honorable conduct., so as to raise them up to be exemplars of the highest virtue to their neighbors, and of the most rational happiness within themselves.
As Jefferson expected primary education to reach afar larger body of citizens than advanced education, his
He was the first statesman of our country to foresee clearly the extraordinary improvement which education would produce in the purely material condition of the nation, the sea-like multitude, as distinguished from the condition of the simple individual. In drafting the report
But Jefferson was not satisfied with simply dwelling on the benefits to spring from the adoption of his principles of popular education; on the contrary, from his entrance into public life, as a delegate to the General Assembly, he was incessantly busy with plans to put these principles into continuous operation. Before we describe his long struggle to create a public school system, capped by a university, some account should be given of his attempt to increase the usefulness of the one centre of higher culture in existence in Virginia at that time, and of his share in projecting another of foreign origin, which promised, during a short interval, to secure a stable foothold. A third, as we shall discover, failed to enlist his sympathy and support, because, from the start, he considered its plan to be impracticable. Naturally, as a youthful statesman but recently graduated from the College of William and Mary, already looked upon as a venerable seat of culture, his activities were first directed towards the improvement of its curriculum rather than towards the establishment of a new institution elsewhere.
The College,-which had been created by royal warrant in the seventeenth century,-had won a high reputation in colonial history by the broadness of its scholastic
At this College from the beginning, as at all the chief seats of learning in America during the same period, the first consideration was given to the subject of Divinity, but in a form that was exclusively Anglican. The teachers, as a rule, had been educated at Oxford, and through them, the traditional influences of that great university had made a deep impression on the character
In 1779, as Governor of the State, Jefferson occupied a seat on the Board, and he took advantage of this fact to make definite changes in the curriculum, with the design of converting the institution into a true university. This was the first step towards establishing somewhere in America a centre of learning that was patterned on the standards of the great universities of Europe. The earliest measure called for was one that would remove all trace of theological flavour: the School of Divinity was cut out root and branch, and the ancient languages were dropped. These languages had been retained among the courses recommended by the revision of 1776, but, in 1779, it was found by Jefferson, now a Visitor, that the
The courses of instruction which he proposed for the metamorphosed College of William and Mary were as follows: ( 1 ) law and politics; ( 2 ) anatomy and medicine; (3) physics and mathematics; (4) moral philosophy, law of nature and nations, and the history of fine arts; (5) modern languages; (6) the Indian School. He was sanguine that, with the flight of time, the endowment of the College would grow in volume as well as the income from the ever-increasing number of students in attendance, -a combination that would justify a great expansion in the work of the class-rooms. He was particularly solicitous that the literatures of the north of Europe should be taught under its roof, as they were, he said, so intimately connected with " our own language, laws, customs and history." This was one of the reasons, though not the principal one, which afterwards led him to require the admission of Anglo-Saxon among the studies of the University of Virginia. He thought that the Indian School, as then conducted, was of small utility; and he suggested as a substitute that a missionary should be appointed, who should, in the wigwams of the West, investigate the aboriginal system of laws, religious traditions, and languages, -the record of all which should be retained as a permanent possession of the library at Williamsburg. The School of Law proposed by him, was the first collegiate school of the kind to be
At the time that Jefferson was meditating and planning for higher education at the College of William and Mary, he had no examples in his native State to guide him. Hampden-Sidney College was then hardly superior to a grammar school, and it was altogether under the control of a sect, which he, at least, thought to be more intolerant than the Episcopalians. Washington College, too, though of great respectability, could lay no claim to exalted scholarship at that early stage of its history; and it also was under the mastery of the same vigorous denomination. Unless he could raise and broaden the standards of the College of William and Mary, by transforming it into a genuine university, Virginia, he knew, must continue to see a large stream of her most promising young men flowing annually into the scholastic reservoirs of the North. He was not far enough away from his own graduation to have lost all affection for his alma mater; and he also perceived that it possessed two conspicuous advantages for its own advancement (1) its comparatively ancient origin; and (2) its situation in the capital city. Both of these unrivaled circumstances, he thought, would have a very strong tendency to augment its prosperity when expanded into a university; but, unfortunately for the general success of his scheme, the Dissenters' prejudices had been further inflamed by the Revolution, and this relentless sentiment was not satisfied short of positively discouraging the extension of the College's patronage among the families of their own denominations. Without the friendly countenance of every
But while Jefferson's hope for the establishment of a university was not realized in the reformed College of William and Mary, his effort in its behalf strongly tended to quicken his sense of the need of a higher seat of learning in Virginia, and, undoubtedly, enabled him to study with more discrimination every aspect of that subject when he came to visit and inspect the foremost scholastic institutions of Europe. That he retained a favorable opinion of the instruction in the College of William and Mary, as broadened and liberalized by himself, is clearly proven by the contents of his letter to Mr. Banister in 1785. What are the constituents of a useful American education? he asked. "Classical knowledge," he replied; modern languages -chiefly French, Spanish and Italian, -mathematics, natural philosophy, natural history, ethics, and civil history. In natural philosophy, I mean to include chemistry and agriculture, and in natural history, to include botany as well as other branches of those departments. It is true that the habit of speaking the modern languages cannot be so well acquired in America. But every other article can be as well acquired at William and Mary College as at any
When it is recalled that Mr. Wythe was the preceptor in jurisprudence of both Jefferson and Marshall, -the first, among the greatest legislative reformers, the second, the greatest interpreter of the law, that have appeared in American history, -this expression of opinion seems to be devoid of the pardonable exaggeration of local partiality. The words too were penned when his ability to compare the relative merits of domestic and foreign colleges had been rendered more penetrating by careful observation of all that was to be studied in European countries. This preference, however, did not survive his return to America; or if it did do so, it did not reveal itself in a second effort to convert his alma mater into a modern university. On the contrary, we shall see that, after the incorporation of the University of Virginia, he sought to deprive that venerable college of her endowment in order to provide financial support for the system of academies which formed a section of his comprehensive scheme for public instruction.
The correspondence of Professor William B. Rogers at a later period, contains many references to the unhealthiness of Williamsburg.
II. Three Foreign Schemes
Before the end of the eighteenth century, there were three foreign schemes to usher higher education into Virginia; but only two of them aroused Jefferson's interest; and only one obtained his practical assistance. The earliest, the project of Quesnay de Beaurepaire, which was of a very ambitious and grandiose character, received a
Quesnay, justly elated with the progress already made, sailed for France to secure the patronage of influential persons in Paris, and the countenance of the Royal Government. He pushed his scheme in the most illustrious circles of the French capital with energy and address; visited the studios of artists, the closets of scientists, the salons of leaders of fashion, and the reception-rooms of public officials; and everywhere, his plans were received with expressions of sympathy and promises of financial support. Men standing at the summit in all the great departments of contemporary life, -literature, science, politics and society,-graciously permitted their names to be entered in the already voluminous list of associates. Lafayette, Beaumarchais, Montalembert, Houdon, Condorcet, Lavoisier, Malesherbes, Vernet, La Rochefoucauld, -statesmen, playwrights, warriors, sculptors, chemists, painters, wits, the most brilliant names in France, -were enrolled among the number.
But there was one person in that splendid city who held back from the scheme with a discouraging lack of enthusiasm, and that man was the very one, perhaps, whose favorable influence, and whose active co-operation, were the most important for its practical success. On January 6, 1788, Jefferson wrote to Quesnay in the following language: "I feared it (the plan) was too extensive for the poverty of the country. You remove the objection by observing it is to extend to several States. Whether professors itinerant from one State to another may succeed I am unable to say, having never known an experiment of it. The fear that those professors might
What were the details of the plan on which Jefferson commented so coldly and so distantly in these remarkable words? The Richmond Academy of Sciences was intended to be, in spirit at least, a trans-Atlantic rival of the great French Academy. The central organization was to be placed in the capital of Virginia, while there were to be co-ordinate branches in the cities of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York. The list of studies was to embrace foreign languages, mathematics, physics, design, architecture, painting, sculpture, astronomy, geography, chemistry, botany, anatomy, and natural history. There was to be a large faculty on the ground; and in addition to the instruction to he given by them, the pupils were to have the benefit of the learning of one hundred and seventy-five non-resident associates, eminent in both America and Europe for their acquirements in the provinces of their respective pursuits. Experts in every branch of natural science especially were to be dispatched to Richmond from Paris, not only to teach these pupils, but also to advise the corporations and stock companies that were about to invest in the hitherto unexploited resources of the country. In the extensive researches which this would call for, the young men would assist, and thus not only garner up valuable knowledge, but, by turning in their wages, increase the sum already lying in
There was at least one feature of this scheme that justified Jefferson in declining to enter without reserve into the efforts to carry it out; it was probably rendered impracticable, as he said, by the scale on which it was projected. But why was it that he failed to offer a single suggestion towards lopping off the worst of its faults in order to reduce it to a shape that might make it workable? It was very unlike him to look at such a scheme with coldness, if there was any room whatever for hope of success. Did he jump beyond its apparently bald infeasibility and disapprove of it because it locked horns with the plan of a university which he was undoubtedly pondering over at this time, and which he had already perhaps decided to build, if possible, in the shadow of Monticello? Was the choice of Richmond, an hundred miles away, as the site of the new Academy, the true reason for an indifference, which he had never before shown, and was never again to show, about any university scheme brought to his attention? The plan of transporting the College of Geneva to Virginia, which arose a few years later, was seemingly as impracticable in its character as Quesnay's plan, and yet it secured Jefferson's earnest and energetic support. There is no reason to doubt that he expected this college to be re-established in visiting distance of his own home at least. If he was really influenced by personal reasons in both cases, it was due to his perfectly correct impression that, if a university was
The scheme of a transplanted French Academy fell through, not because it was impracticable, as it possibly was, but because the hour was unfavorable for its success. It did not pass beyond the selection of a course of studies, and the nomination of Dr. Jean Rouvelle as the instructor in natural history and chemistry; but there is no reason to presume that it would not have been at least organized had not the French Revolution, like a cyclone, been coming up, with all the distracting influences that went before its actual outburst. Socially and financially, France was in no state to give such a scheme the continuous support which it required, and naturally the scheme itself, as well as its author, finally sank into oblivion. But although it had never been put to the test of actual working, it yet left a perceptible impression on Jefferson's views in spite of his refusal to encourage it. Of all the plans for higher education canvassed in Virginia before the incorporation of the State University, this had the most affinity with the noble plan which he set in operation in 1825. The scientific bias that so conspicuously distinguished it was the one with which he was most enthusiastically in sympathy; and it was also the one that he was most anxious to give to his own seat of learning. And in addition, he adopted for that institution the system of separate schools which Quesnay had expected to introduce at Richmond.
We have seen that Jefferson refused to countenance Quesnay's projected academy because he was afraid lest the foreign professors, disappointed in their venture, should turn on him in censure, and yet, in 1794, eight
All these objections had very properly been considered by Jefferson to be of great weight when he was discountenancing the Richmond Academy, but he was now so much in earnest that, when the Legislature failed to respond to his wishes, he turned for aid to General Washington, who, having been presented by that body with stock in the Potomac and James River Companies, had announced his intention of giving it all away for the promotion of higher education. Jefferson pressed upon him the point, that, as the Treasury of Virginia would pay the dividends on this stock, this State should have the preference in the selection of the site for the National University which Washington had so long carried in his thoughts. This site might be chosen in the vicinity of the new Capital, if the influence of such a centre should be decided to be essential to its dignity and success. Washington at once disclosed that he was not in sympathy with Jefferson's suggestion. He was convinced, like the General Assembly, that the restriction of the lectures to the French languages would destroy the usefulness of the Genevan faculty in Virginia; and moreover, as that faculty disapproved of the popular freedom now enjoyed by the French, it was not probable that they would find themselves in harmony with their environment in the New World. But he was so far impressed by Jefferson's appeal that he gave the shares in the James River Company belonging to him to the college at Lexington, with the understanding that such of its students as should desire to obtain a more advanced education should seek it in that National University in the Capital which he intended endowing with his shares in the Potomac Company.
When Jefferson reported to D'Ivernois his failure to enlist support for his plan, either public or private, an echo of regret vibrated in the tone of his letter: " I should have seen with peculiar satisfaction," he wrote, " the establishment of such a mass of science in my country, and should probably have been tempted to approach myself to it by procuring a residence in its neighborhood at those seasons of the year when the operations of agriculture are less active and interesting." So far as can be discerned, the scheme of the Geneva College left no impression on his plans for his own university beyond perhaps satisfying him that foreign professors would not object to a permanent appointment in Virginia; and it was, no doubt, this conviction which, many years afterwards, led him, through Mr. Gilmer, to invite certain English scholars and scientists to occupy chairs in the seat of learning which he had founded at Charlottesville. But he was careful then to introduce no instructors from the continent, -unless Dr. Blaettermann, who was residing in England, can be taken to be such, -perhaps, because he recalled the objections which had been urged, in 1794, by the General Assembly and by Washington in opposition to the College of Geneva.
An influence that bore more directly on Jefferson's desire for a system of higher education in Virginia, had its spring with Du Pont de Nemours, whom he had known familiarly while the American minister in Paris. Du Pont reached the United States in 1800, and during his sojourn there, was an acceptable visitor at Monticello on numerous occasions. This accomplished Frenchman, who had already given much meditation to the subject in France, drew up a treatise on popular education, which, at this time, was deeply engaging the thoughts of some of the most distinguished men in America. Instruction
It was one of the most obvious peculiarities of all Jefferson's schemes for the advancement of education that he confined their practical, though not their theoretical, scope to the inhabitants of his native State. The National University of Washington and Du Pont made no appeal to him, perhaps because he feared lest such a seat of learning should nourish those principles of consolidation, which, as we have seen, he detested so vehemently.
III. Bill of 1779
The first of all Jefferson's practical measures for public education was the Bill of 1779, which carried no expressed purpose in its text that was to reach beyond the borders of Virginia, yet, as it was based upon principles that went down to the foundation of society, its scope, in its broadest significance, was really as universal as the scope of the Declaration of Independence itself. In taking up the subject of his share in the drafting of this bill, we have come to the most interesting chapter in his career as an educational reformer previous to the establishment of the University of Virginia. By this measure, he sought to create in his native State, even before the fires of the Revolution had burnt out, a system of public instruction so far ahead of his times that the community continued too unripe to receive it until the War of Secession had removed everyone of those impediments, which he, with all his zeal and persistency, had found it impossible to surmount. But the credit due him should not be diminished but enhanced by the deferred consummation of his complete design, for it proved that his foresight was one hundred years in advance of the vision of the great body of his own countrymen. It was, however, no new and untried theory that he endeavored to put in
The latter was the opinion which Jefferson himself entertained. He wrote Washington, in 1786, that the liberties of the community were only safe when they were in the grasp of an " instructed people"; and that it was the business of the State to give this instruction; and that this could not be done successfully except in harmony with a general plan. What he thought that general plan should be was very lucidly expressed in the bill of 1779. At the time that he drew up this bill, the schools of Virginia differed but little in quality from those in existence there during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: there were the home schools for the children of affluent planters taught by private tutors; the old field schools for the children of the upper and middle classes alike; and the College of William and Mary for the higher training of all who aspired to it. Jefferson, in later years, justly claimed for himself the credit of having been the first citizen of the State to propose, in a formal way, the substitution of a concatenated system of public education for the unarticulated methods of private education which he discovered in use in his youth. Early in
Of the one hundred and twenty-six bills in which their conclusions were precisely incorporated, the one for the diffusion of knowledge was hammered into shape by Jefferson alone. It was drawn up, in reality, in the form of three bills, which provided (1) for the erection of primary schools, -in which the children of all classes were to be taught the rudiments of education, -and of colleges, in which all higher grades were to be open to older pupils; (2) for the establishment of a university in the broadest sense of the word; and (3) for the collection of a great library, to be used by students and readers of all ages. Jefferson, in drafting this bill, did not narrow his gaze to the intellectual and moral advantages of education only, but, looking forward, he was convinced that he had raised a new bulwark for the defense of political freedom, by providing for the division of each
An examination of the preamble of this famous bill reveals that it was written under the influence of all those emotions which were most inflamed by the Revolutionary struggle that was still in progress. All persons in power, it states in substance, are invariably inclined to use that power for the ends of tyranny. How is this disposition to be combated? By educating the people so thoroughly that they will be able to detect at once the encroachments of sinister and scheming office-holders, and to block them before any permanent damage is done. Education too will make the average office-holder himself more solicitous to guard the rights and liberties of citizens as well as more competent to administer their affairs.
The practical clauses of, the bill provided for the election in every county of three persons to be known as aldermen, who were to meet first at the court-house to divide the county into hundreds, each of which was to embrace a sufficient number of pupils to make up a school. The site of the school-house having been chosen by the voters of the hundred, the aldermen were to erect a suitable building thereon, in which were to gather the children for instruction in reading, writing, and common arithmetic, and also in Roman, Greek, English and American history. They were to be at no expense for this tuition during the first three years of their attendance. Each set of ten schools was to be under the supervision of officers, with authority to appoint the teachers, to visit the several school-houses, and to inspect and question the pupils; and each school was to be subject to a competent overseer. Next the State was to be divided into groups of counties with a view to the establishment of colleges for secondary education. The overseers of the elementary
The expense of gathering up food for the students, employing a steward, and hiring servants, was to be divided among the pupils. Those among them who were attending the classes gratuitously were also to be relieved, through the public treasury, of the cost of subsistence, while the balance of the expenses was to be met by the parents of the pupils who were able to pay. Every elementary school in each group of counties was to have the right to enter its most promising scholar each year, without charge, in the college of that district, if his father or guardian was too indigent to provide for his necessary outlay. Annually, too, one third of the boys thus advanced were to be dropped from the roll; and of those who should succeed in remaining two years because of their industry and talents, one was to be retained, with the privilege of staying two years longer in the college. The students who should thus signalize themselves were to be chosen as seniors; and every year one senior was to be selected from the whole number of those in attendance at each college, to be sent on to William and Mary University,-for the bill, as we see, converted that
There were four remarkable features in this scheme of public instruction. The first was that the pupils in the elementary schools, which embraced the children of the entire white population, were to be grounded in history, both ancient and modern. The reason given for this provision was characteristic of Jefferson: by apprising them of the experience of other times and other nations, they would be the better qualified to fortify themselves against the intrigues of lurking tyranny. A second feature was that it would enable the poorest boys of talent to enjoy every advantage of education that was in the reach of the sons of the wealthy. And, thirdly, by giving an opportunity to youths of promise to advance from the lowest to the highest grade, -that is to say, from the elementary school to the university, -it would knit all parts of the system firmly together. Finally, by imposing local taxes for the support of the elementary schools, it would establish a principle that would entirely relieve the State treasury of their charge, and also ensure a more careful attention to the proper use of the money to be raised, by obtaining it exclusively from the parents of the pupils immediately benefited.
By the terms of the second bill, the College of William and Mary was to he transformed into a veritable university. The courses of instruction laid off for it, in its altered form, were to be distributed under the following
It was Jefferson's opinion that the whole educational scheme of 1779 failed to become law largely on account of this second bill. He had hoped that, by arranging for the elementary schools and colleges in a separate measure, and by making the divinity course at the new university purely historical, he would disarm the hostility of the Presbyterians and Baptists, and bring them to a hearty concurrence with his plans; but they soon began to suspect that there was some secret purpose to favor the Episcopalians by placing the old Episcopal College at the apex of the public school system; and they coldly turned their patronage away from the whole design. [5] But it is possible that the reluctance of the property-holders to shoulder the additional taxes, which, as will be seen, cropped up in 1796, when the like plan was broached, had much to do with the defeat of these educational bills. Had Jefferson not been kept out of the State by his mission to France, and afterwards, by his occupancy of a seat in Washington's Cabinet, his energy and persistency, brought to bear directly on the spot, would, perhaps, have led to the early adoption of his scheme of popular education,-
Jefferson wrote to Dr. Priestley, "As I had preferred that William and Mary, under an improved form, should be the University, and it was, at that time, pretty highly Episcopal, the Dissenters, after a while began to apprehend some secret design of preference for that sect."
IV. Jefferson's Schemes of Popular Education
It was not until the close of his Presidential term in 1809, that Jefferson was so completely released from all official responsibilities that he could fix his mind continuously on the subject which had enlisted his earnest sympathy and support so early in his political career. Hardly had he taken up his residence under the roof of Monticello, when he once more turns to that subject, and during the remainder of his long life, it held a place in the very centre of all his daily thoughts. In no form did these ponderings find a weightier expression than in his famous letter to Peter Carr in 1814. In that letter, he again laid down the various lines which a system of public instruction, in his judgment, should follow. Again he broadly declared, by way of introduction, that every citizen was entitled to an education commensurate with his condition and calling in life. How was this to be determined? By the social station to which he belonged. The whole community was capable of division into two classes: (1) the laboring class; and (2) the learned class. Members of the first would require elementary tuition to qualify them for the proper performance of their tasks; members of the second would need it as an indispensable forerunner to further study. So soon as the primary school had been left behind, the laboring class were expected to begin the pursuit of agriculture, or serve apprenticeships in different handicrafts, while, on the other hand, the learned class were expected to enter the colleges, which were to be divided into General Schools and Professional Schools, representing, respectively, the second
The entire learned class was to receive their secondary training in the General Schools, in which the highest branches of knowledge were to be taught. The round of studies there was to embrace the languages, mathematics, and philosophy. Provision was to be made in the department of languages for lessons in history, both ancient and modern; and belles-lettres, rhetoric, and oratory were also to be included in this department as well as such special tuition as was suited to the needs of the deaf and dumb. The course in mathematics was to embrace pure mathematics, physics, chemistry, natural history, and anatomy and the theory of medicine, while the course in philosophy should take in ideology, ethics, the law of nature and nations, government, and political economy. The Professional Schools,-to which all deciding to follow a profession were to have access, after passing through the General Schools,-were to cover as wide a field as the latter, but on a higher level; they were to consist of three distinct divisions: (1) department of fine arts, which was to embrace civil architecture, painting, sculpture, and the theory of music; (2) department of military and naval architecture, projectiles, agriculture, horticulture, technical philosophy, practice of medicine, materia medica, pharmacy, and surgery; (3) department of theology and ecclesiastical history, and municipal and foreign law.
These several departments were designed to offer the graduate of the General Schools the opportunity to acquire the necessary knowledge of any one of the following professional subjects: law, medicine, theology, agriculture, army and navy architecture, painting, and landscape gardening. In the school of technical philosophy,
This letter to Peter Carr, -of which we have given only a meagre synopsis, -contains the most complete description which Jefferson ever drew up of his plans for public education. It reveals that his point of view had not changed in spite of the interval of forty years since 1776, during which his observations and impressions of scholastic institutions of every sort had been broadened and ripened by foreign travel. He himself, in a letter written to Governor Nicholas in 1816, referred to it as a digest of all the information which he had been able to gather on the subject upon which it bore; and it will always possess an uncommon interest as foreshadowing the courses of instruction which he introduced into the lecture-rooms of the University of Virginia. In the teeth of popular hostility, he persisted in pronouncing the local school, supported by local taxation, to be the only proper one for elementary tuition; and time and reflection, he said, had but confirmed his opinion as to the correctness of the general principle of subdividing the counties into wards for this purpose.
Jefferson perceived very clearly that the sentiment of
This bill differed only in petty details from the bill of 1779, or from the scheme of general education set forth in the letter to Peter Carr, in 1814. First, a school was to be established in each ward, in which the children of that ward alone were to receive instruction during three years at the common charge. The school-house and the dwelling-house for the teacher were to be built by the parents at their own expense. A log cabin was to be considered sufficient in each instance, since the constant shifting of the population was certain to render necessary the frequent removal of both houses to some situation more convenient for the majority of the pupils in attendance. A teacher capable of grounding these pupils in reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, was to be employed at a salary of one hundred and fifty dollars a year, with an allowance of bread and meat for subsistence. In selecting the instructors, the board of visitors, who were to have charge of the schools, were always to give the preference to members of the laboring class, such as mechanics, overseers, and tillers of the soil; and among these, the first choice should fall on persons who were infirm in health, crippled in limb, or advanced in years.
Secondly, the State was to be divided into nine districts, in each of which a college was to be erected, to be subject to a board of visitors composed of one member from each county belonging to that district, and all under the control of the President and Directors of the Literary Fund. There was to be built for each college a house of brick or stone, to contain two rooms in which the recitations
Thirdly, a university was to be established in a healthy and central part of the State; and here all the divisions of the useful arts were to be taught in their highest branches. Visitors were to be annually nominated by the President and Directors of the Literary Fund, now to be known as the Board of Public Instruction; the site of the new institution was to be chosen by the first set of these visitors; but the plan of the buildings vas to be furnished, or at least, approved by the Central Board. The dormitories were to be so constructed as to admit of additions to their dimensions as the number of students should increase. The-professors were not to exceed ten in number; and the fixed salary of each should be one thousand dollars, to be swelled by the tuition fees of his pupils. The courses of instruction were to embrace history, geography, natural philosophy, agriculture, chemistry, theory of medicine, anatomy, botany, zoology, mineralogy, geology, pure and mixed mathematics, military and naval science, ideology, ethics, the law of nature and nations, municipal and foreign law, the science of civil government, political economy, languages, rhetoric, belles-lettres, and the fine arts. The visitors were to have the
When Jefferson drafted this bill for public education he was eager for the conversion of Central College into the University of Virginia; and he went so far as to insert the name of the former seat of learning in the alternate column opposite the words that required the choice of a site for the projected university to be made in a central and healthy part of the State. He did this with the hope that the General Assembly would, if the bill were accepted, authorize the adoption of this secondary clause by amendment.
The bill is significant from another point of view: now that Jefferson was actively employed in building Central College, and was looking forward to its transformation into a great State university, which would need a large annual appropriation for its support, he appeared to be less generous and less enlightened in his attitude towards primary education. Log cabins for schoolhouses and crippled mechanics for teachers seem to he a rather scant provision for elementary tuition; and in making such a suggestion, he plainly had cheapness in view to an extent that promised little for the real improvement of the class that needed instruction most. He would hardly have ventured on this suggestion, had he not apprehended that an appropriation by the State at large for elementary education would diminish the chance of obtaining an appropriation for university education. In 1820, when the highest branch of his general plan had been adopted, and the University of Virginia was in the course of erection, his fear of a shortened State bounty for that institution returned, and again he deprecated a large outlay for the
There was an additional reason now, -and a highly characteristic one, too, -why Jefferson advocated the ward school: it would keep elementary education out of the hands of fanatical preachers, " who, in the county elections," he said, " would be universally chosen, and the predominant sect of the county would possess itself of all its schools."
But while he appeared to be inclined to favor the higher institutions at the expense of the dignity and prosperity of the elementary schools at this particular moment of his career, he never swerved in his loyalty to his general plan; and he went so far as to write to Cabell, in 1823, that, were it necessary to give up either the primary schools or the university, he would rather abandon the university, " because it was safer to have a whole people respectably enlightened than a few in a high state of science, and the many in ignorance." " The last," he added, " is the most dangerous in which a people can be." He saw at this time, with regretful clearness, that the resources of the Literary Fund were not sufficient to support that entire system of public education which he had so long urged, and he preferred that the second grade,
Cabell threw cold water on the proposition, because, in his judgment, the pear of public opinion was not ripe for it; and in addition, the colleges then in existence could not be effectively insinuated into the projected system. This, however, was not thought by Jefferson to be essential
V. Educational Measures Adopted
How far was this boon, which the venerable statesman had striven so persistently and so disinterestedly throughout his long career to bestow, conferred by legislative action previous to the establishment of the University of Virginia? To what degree did his comprehensive scheme fall short of legislative consummation, and why did it fail to that extent? A variety of influences were working to scotch his activities in this field, if not to make them wholly abortive and fruitless. In a letter to Cabell, dated February 4, 1826, he said, " I have been long sensible, that while I was endeavoring to render our country the greatest of all services, that of regenerating the public education, and placing our rising generation on the level of our sister states, which they have proudly held heretofore, I was discharging the odious function of a physician pouring medicine down the throat of a patient insensible of needing it."
In reality, the patient declined to take any of the medicine, except in a dose so small and so diluted as to produce no perceptible improvement in his condition. Although Jefferson informs us that the bill of 1779 was received at first " with enthusiasm," it soon had no spark of life in its bowels, and lay as it were still-born in the minutes of the General Assembly for seventeen years. In 1796, a bill was introduced which was based in substance on the principle of that of 1779, so far as the latter bill related to elementary schools; and it was only to such schools that the new measure applied. Each county having been divided into districts, aldermen were to be chosen by its voters to decide upon the expediency of summoning the householders of each district together to pass upon the question of erecting primary schools for that district.
If its citizens were found to be favorable to the establishment of such schools, -which every child within its bounds was at liberty to attend three years without charge, -then a local tax was to be levied to meet the cost of the school-house, its site, and the services of a teacher.
Unfortunately, an amendment granted the right to the county court to determine the year in which the aldermen were to be appointed, and until this was done, no valid election could be held by the householders. This clause, which was really inserted to sound the death-knell of the bill, was a subtle political device at bottom. The members of the General Assembly knew that the measure was a popular one with the lowest class of voters, and an unpopular one with the highest class, and they, therefore, shifted the responsibility from themselves to the magistrates, without appearing to be at all opposed to the wishes of their constituents. It is certain that the magistrates as a body felt no sympathy with any general plan of popular education; and in addition, were not disposed, as the representatives of the wealth of the community, to shoulder the expense of providing free instruction for the children of their less fortunate neighbors. They refused to acknowledge the force of Jefferson's argument that they would profit by public education because it would people every countryside " with honest, useful, and enlightened citizens "; nor did they discover any pertinency to themselves in his suggestion that, as there were only three generations between shirt-sleeves and shirt-sleeves, their grandchildren, having fallen to the level of the poor, would have to depend upon the taxes paid by the rich for their restoration, through education, to the affluence and social position of their grandfathers.
The opportunity opened up by this Act was used only by those few counties which were sagacious enough to perceive
Even if he exaggerated the need of more numerous facilities for secondary instruction, -which, in reality, were fairly abundant, -he was right in lamenting the languishing condition of higher education and in condemning the very small provision for primary education which existed in Virginia at this time. After his return to Monticello, in 1809, -his incumbency of the Presidency having come to an end, -he began at once to exert his influence to bring about an improvement; and a revival of interest in the subject in the public mind was soon to be noted. Governor Monroe, in 1801 and 1802, and Governor Cabell, in 1806 and 1808, had, .in their annual messages, referred to the shrinkage of general education in the State, but no popular response had followed. In October, 1809, Jefferson was the guest of Governor Tyler, a man ardently in sympathy with him in all his plans for the public welfare, and it is possible that the conference of the two, on this occasion, was the root of the noble message submitted by Tyler, in December of the same year, to the General Assembly, in which urged, with earnest and far-sighted patriotism, the needs of Virginia in the way of popular instruction. Tyler had been among the most zealous supporters of the bill of 1779, and had, at all times, upheld the plans which Jefferson had framed for the curtailment of the general illiteracy. That part of his message which related to education was referred, in December, to a committee, who, in the following January, reported the bill that authorized the establishment of the Literary Fund.
This beneficent measure, which alone enabled Jefferson to carry out a part, -fortunately the greater part, of his splendid scheme of popular education, passed the
How had the Board arrived at a decision in harmony at least with the framework of Jefferson's plan? The President of that body was Governor Nicholas, a friend and fellow-countyman. He had applied to Jefferson for advice so soon as the report was ordered, and Jefferson had suggested that he should read his letter to Peter Carr as embodying his ripest thought about the subject under investigation. While counsel was obtained by the Board from many distinguished men, both in America and in Europe, -whose letters were formally delivered with the report, -its recommendations bore, in their main features certainly, the perceptible stamp of Jefferson's long projected system of public education. There was the partition of the county into wards or townships for the establishment of elementary schools; there was the division of the State into districts for the establishment of academies, in which the Latin, Greek and French languages, mathematics, geography and astronomy were to be taught; and there was provision for the erection of a university, which would furnish advanced instruction in the whole round of the arts and sciences. The same opportunity was thrown open to indigent boys of promise to pass on, at the public charge, from the lowest to the
In one important particular, however, the tenor of the report must have caused him disappointment: it recommended that the income of the Literary Fund should be first applied to the establishment of an elementary school in each township; that an academy in each district should be next founded; and that an appropriation should be made for the university only in case the surplus remaining should be sufficient in volume. Twenty thousand youths, the report asserted, were looking to the Literary Fund for primary education, and they could rightly demand that they should be the first to be considered in its annual distribution. This was altogether in harmony with Jefferson's opinion, too, should the money for public instruction be limited to the Literary Fund; and it was his calculation that the income from this Fund would not furnish means enough for a general system of education, which led him to advocate a local levy for the support of the elementary schools. But the upshot of the bill of 1796 had shown very plainly what would be the fate of any provision for local taxation; and in urging, as the President and Directors of the Literary Fund did, the education of all the poor at the expense of all the people, they were bringing forward the only practical scheme for the improvement of that part of the population which had a far higher moral and civic claim upon the benevolence of the Commonwealth than that more fortunate part which would be able to seek the shades of
Their recommendation, however, -wise and patriotic as it was, -was too radical for the spirit of that shortsighted age. Charles Fenton Mercer, Chairman of the Finance Committee, framed a bill which took in the most important features of the Board's report. It passed the House of Delegates, February 18, 1817, but was defeated in the Senate two days later, on the ground that the expenditure of so large a sum of money should be first submitted for approval to the popular vote. It had reached the Senate at an unfortunate moment, for that body, as Cabell, a member of it, has recorded, was now impatient to break up and return to their homes. Before they adjourned, they ordered a general distribution of the report of the Board of the Literary Fund.
Although the Mercer bill had been suggested, partly by the letter to Peter Carr, and partly by the report of the President and Directors of the Literary Fund, which reflected Jefferson's views in general, it nevertheless contained, like this report also, one stipulation of which he disapproved. While it divided the counties into wards, it required the Board to pay to the trustees of each elementary school two hundred dollars to cover the necessary outlay for the teacher's salary, and also ten dollars with which to purchase books for the pupils. The bill called for the acquisition of fifty acres near the centre of the State as a site for the university; and it appropriated one hundred thousand dollars for the buildings and ten thousand for the library. Although provision was thus made for the establishment of a university, and also of a large number of academies, priority in the distribution of the money was still to be given to the support of the elementary schools.
When the Mercer bill, after passing the House, miscarried in the Senate, Cabell requested Jefferson to put his scheme for public education in a shape that would allow of its being submitted to the General Assembly as a substitute. He cheerfully complied. His first purpose, he wrote, in October, 1817, " was to contrive a plan which would conform to the real resources of the State." " Unless something less extravagant," he said of the Mercer bill, " can be devised, the whole undertaking must fail. The primary schools alone in that plan would exhaust the whole fund; the colleges as much more; and a university would never come into existence."
We have already cited the details of the bill which Jefferson now drafted. It followed closely the lines of all his previous expressions on the subject. It was introduced into the House of Delegates by Samuel Taylor, of Chesterfield; but on February 11, (1818), it failed of passage, and a substitute, in the form of an amendment, offered by Mr. Hill, of King and Queen county, was adopted. This amendment restricted the expenditure of the income of the Literary Fund to the education of the poor. This had always been the disposition of the members of the popular branch of the Legislature, who were opposed to ward taxation for that purpose because they believed it to be altogether repugnant to the wishes and convictions alike of their most influential constituents. The money that was to be appropriated under the Hill amendment was to be distributed among the counties as a bounty for the maintenance of charity schools. There was some political animosity to Jefferson in the support which this amendment received; and this seems to have been most acute in the breasts of the delegates from the western counties, who, finding that he had inserted in his bill, in a parallel column, the name of the Central
The amended bill soon reached the Senate. It was first brought up before a committee composed of Chapman Johnson, John W. Green, and Joseph C. Cabell. Cabell submitted two propositions: one, which had been suggested by Jefferson, divided the State into academic districts without any consideration of the existing colleges; the other, which sprang from Cabell alone, took in these colleges as a part of the general system. He also renewed the demand for a university in accord with the tenor of the original bill. His colleagues pressed upon him that he was aiming for too much, and that, at this stage of the campaign for the entire scheme, it would be wiser to insist only upon the restoration of a university to the plan. The bill passed the Senate in this form by a vote of fourteen to three; and on February 21 finally became law. Those members who favored only
Forty-five thousand dollars was to be annually appropriated for the support of the elementary schools and only fifteen thousand for that of the projected university. School commissioners, to be appointed by the courts of the counties, towns and cities, were to determine how many children were to be taught, and also how much money was to be paid out for that purpose by the different treasurers, whose number was to be in proportion to the needy white population. This was to be derived from the annual appropriation of forty-five thousand dollars; but all funds and properties in the hands of the overseers of the poor, not otherwise assigned, were to form an additional resource. The commissioners were to return to the President and Directors of the Literary Fund an annual report showing how many pupils there were then in the schools, and estimating the sum that would be required, the following year, to educate all the penniless children in the State. Advantage was taken by many counties and towns of the benefits offered by this Act. It soon became the custom for teachers to enroll the children of the poor in their schools, and at the end of the session, send in a list of them to the nearest
Not until the War of Secession had altered the economic and social condition of Virginia was the system of public education in the lower grades, advocated by Jefferson, put in practice. Not even then, however, were the elementary schools made entirely dependent upon even county taxation, but in confirmation of his foresight, it has been noticed that the most efficient public schools are to be found wherever local taxation has been relied on chiefly for their support.[10] Not until 1906 was any test made of that part of his scheme which created a large number of district secondary schools; in the course of that year, fifty thousand dollars, increased to one hundred thousand later, was appropriated for maintaining a system of such schools distributed among the Congressional districts, with special provision for the training of teachers.
Jefferson was not to live to see the realization of his great scheme for public education as a whole; but when in February, 1818, the General Assembly voted in favor of the establishment of a State university, he had succeeded in securing that part of it in which he was most deeply interested, and the one which he was best equipped to carry out by his own previous studies and observations. It was certainly the part that supplemented most fully the practical experiment in college building which, for sometime previous to 1818, had seized upon his whole attention, and absorbed all his physical and intellectual
Among the letters included in the Barbour correspondence at Barboursville, Va., is one from Governor Barbour, then in Washington, directing his son at home to go through his papers for the original draft of the resolution looking to the establishment of this Fund. This draft, he said, was in his own handwriting.
J. C. Cabell writes from Richmond January 24, 1816: " Since writing the enclosed letter, I have canvassed with Mr. Mercer of the House of Delegates, to whom I had lent your letter to Mr. Carr. He seemed much pleased with your view of the subject, and as he proposed to make a report to the House, concurs with me on the propriety of availing the country of the light you have offered in this great interest of the country."
FIRST PERIOD
STRUGGLE FOR A UNIVERSITY History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919; The Lengthened Shadow of One Man, Volume I | ||