University of Virginia Library

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

the advantages which it would confer on all classes of their population. On the other hand, into such comparative neglect did collegiate tuition in his native State during the next few decades, gradually sink that Jefferson thought himself justified in saying that the Old Dominion was in immediate danger of becoming the " Barbary of the Union." " The mass of education in Virginia before the Revolution," he exclaimed, with an undisguised bitterness, " placed her foremost of her sister colonies. What is her condition now? Where is it? We have to import like beggars from other States, or import their beggars to bestow on us their miserable crumbs." It was estimated that, down to 1825, the number of pupils in attendance at the three important colleges, William and Mary, Washington, and Hampden-Sidney, did not annually rise above one hundred and fifty. On the other hand, nearly one half of all the matriculates of Princeton, from year to year, at this time, were said to be young men from Virginia; and it was calculated that a quarter of a million of dollars was, during every twelve months, paid into the treasuries of Northern institutions by students coming up from that State. Perhaps this was not so great an evil in itself as Jefferson was inclined to think, for, by drawing young men from the South into the North even temporarily, it had a tendency to nourish a stronger national feeling, and to lessen the narrow and mischievous spirit of provincialism. The reciprocation lay in the large band of tutors from Northern States, who, during this period, were employed in wealthy Virginian families; they were, with few exceptions, graduates of Northern colleges; and many of them bore old and honorable names. It was nit their scholarship, but their inherited leaning towards Federalism, in most instances, that probably prompted Jefferson to describe them as " beggars," an epithet that did them, in the mass, as we shall see, grave injustice.

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

General Assembly on February 2, 1810. It provided that all escheats, compositions, fines, penalties, and forfeitures, should be especially reserved for the encouragement of learning. Its author was James Barbour, who was then the Speaker of the House, and afterwards a distinguished figure in national politics.[7] The fund thus created was designed primarily for the instruction of the poor, but as the parents of indigent children were slow to take advantage of it, it was, in time, expended chiefly for the benefit of the higher seats of learning. During the session of 1815-16, the remainder of the principal of the debt due Virginia by the National Government was transferred to the credit of this fund, which, by December, 1817, had grown to nearly one million dollars. So soon as it was created, the principal and interest were put under the control of a Board known as the President and Directors of the Literary Fund, a body which was composed of the Governor of the State, the Lieutenant Governor, the Treasurer, Attorney-General, and President of the Court of Appeals, -the foremost officials and most responsible men in the Commonwealth. In January, 1816, Cabell had shown Charles Fenton Mercer, the Chairman of the Committee on Finance in the House of Delegates, a copy of the letter written by Jefferson to Peter Carr, in 1814, which gave in detail his views as to the system of public education to be set underway in Virginia.[8] This letter was also published in the Enquirer. It, no doubt, inspired the epochal resolution, adopted February 24, 1816, which required the President and Directors of the Literary Fund to report to the Legislature an elaborate scheme of public instruction. On December 6, 1816, this scheme was submitted, and was found to consist of a graded system of schools; namely, elementary schools, academies, and a university.

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

highest grade. Above all, it must have been gratifying to Jefferson to find that the Board urged that the site of the university should be chosen in a central part of the State; and that they adopted the plan for professorships and courses of tuition which he had always advised, and which he believed in as firmly now as he had done in the beginning.

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

the projected academies and of the university at their own expense.

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

College at Charlottesville as the site of the projected university, took it for granted that, if this institution was established there, the State capital would soon be removed thither rather than beyond the Blue Ridge, as they so earnestly desired. The opposition to his bill in the House, -of which he had been informed by Cabell, caused a wave of unwonted despondency to pass over his mind, for on February 11, he wrote, "I believe that I have erred in meddling with it (the educational provision) at all, and that it has done more harm than good. A strong interest felt on the subject through my whole life, ought to excuse me with those who differ from me in opinion, and should protect me from unfriendly feelings. Nobody more strongly than myself advocates the right of every generation to legislate for itself, and the advantages which each succeeding generation has over the preceding one from the constant progress of science and arts."

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

the instruction of the poor were forced to consent to the establishment of a university, while those who favored a university were compelled to give up for the present all hope of securing a large number of district colleges to serve as feeders for the proposed higher seat of learning. It was a compromise won by the advocates of advanced education in spite of those " local interests, factious views, and lamentable ignorance," upon which Cabell reflected, with acute exasperation, in a letter to Jefferson written at the time.[9]

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

commissioner for approval; this list was then handed over to the sheriff; who, when all the lists had been received, divided among the teachers proportionately to the number of their respective indigent scholars, the sum which had been appropriated for the county out of the Literary Fund.

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

powers. Before beginning the narrative of how Central College was converted into the university which the General Assembly, in 1818, ordered to be established, it will be necessary to turn back and follow up the noble record that he had already made as the father of the promising institution of learning which he had founded in the shadow of his own home at Monticello. It will be seen that he had not been satisfied to wait for the consummation of his plans through legislative assistance, but, in his leisure, taking hold of that section of them which he was able to inaugurate himself, he had done so with a clearness, persistence, and firmness of purpose, a concentration of energy and a constancy of supervision, in spite of his advanced years, which constitutes the most astonishing chapter even in his own illustrious life.