SECOND PERIOD
GERMINATION -ACADEMY AND COLLEGE History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919; The Lengthened Shadow of One Man, Volume I | ||
3. SECOND PERIOD
GERMINATION -ACADEMY AND COLLEGE
I. Jefferson's Preference for University Site
We have seen that, until the outset of his mission to France, at least, Jefferson persisted in hoping that the College of William and Mary could be lifted up to the level of a real university, both in its standards of instruction and in the number of its professorships; and that down to this point in time, he used every means in his power to bring about the transformation. The change in its curriculum which he had suggested, was certainly a long step towards the desired conversion; but the upshot, as the years passed, was disappointing in spite of the fact that the college was in the enjoyment of the subtle advantage which springs only from age, and was also, in the beginning, situated at the very centre of the political and social framework of the Commonwealth. The enlargement of its field of studies failed to secure for it that popularity with the members of all social classes and all religious denominations, with which alone it could win the highest prosperity.
When did Jefferson abandon the expectation that it would become a university to the extent that alone would satisfy his exacting requirements? When did the thought that he might be able to found an entirely new university, in the neighborhood of Monticello, invade his mind? Now, as has been pointed out, he had, from early manhood, felt a keen aversion to sectarianism in all its
So deep was the impression made on him by this hostility, coupled with his own wide and discriminating observations abroad, that, after his return from France, he seems never to have seriously considered the College of William and Mary in his plans for the establishment of a great State institution. If that institution was not to be the old college, still further remodeled and enlarged, and with its seat unremoved from the ancient town of Williamsburg, where was it to be placed? What other locality was to become its site? Apparently, there was never in his mind but one reply to this question: in the vicinity of Charlottesville. If he was mortal enough to be influenced by personal reasons in his selection of that site, it was a form of selfishness that was fully redeemed by the nobility of his aims. If there was one citizen of the State, during those years when he was so persistently nursing this "bantling," as he termed it, who was fully equipped by broad philanthropy, liberal opinions, unfailing love of knowledge, and an eager interest in education, clarified by study and observation, to set up a true university for his countrymen, that man was Thomas Jefferson. The most signal stroke of good fortune for this offspring of his spirit, throughout the first century of its existence, was this: that its site was chosen so close to his home at Monticello that he was able to impress upon its structure, whether physical, moral, or scholastic, the full force of his principles and his tastes. While it may be acknowledged that it might, at a distance from him, have caught his lofty tenets of political freedom and religious tolerance, and his devotion to science in all its departments, there is no likelihood whatever
La Rochefoucauld, who was travelling in the United States during the years from 1795 to 1797 inclusive, and visited Monticello in the course of his tour, has recorded the fact that there was then a rumor in circulation that the General Assembly would soon establish a " new college in a more central part of the State." It was at this time that the bill of 1796, which, as already shown, only nominally assured a moderate degree of public instruction, was a subject of general conversation and debate. Before two years had passed, the groundlessness of this report had been proven; but Jefferson, in writing to Dr. Priestley, expressed the hope that a new university, planned on a " broad, liberal, and modern " scale, would be erected " in the upper country, and, therefore, more centrally for the State." He does not mince his words in giving his reasons for wishing to turn his back on the college in Williamsburg. " She is just well endowed enough," he remarked to the same correspondent, " to draw out the miserable existence to which a miserable constitution has doomed her." He then repeats the practical objection which was coming to have an ever-increasing influence with him in his view of its site. " It is, moreover, eccentric in its position, and exposed to all the bilious diseases, as all the lower country is, and, therefore, abandoned by the public care, as that part of the country is, to a considerable degree, by its inhabitants." [12]
A few years afterwards, Jefferson, now President of the United States, had an opportunity to express indirectly an equally emphatic opinion in opposition to all further efforts to develop the old college in preference to founding a new university elsewhere. Joseph C. Cabell, who was to be so honorably associated with him at a later period in the establishment of such an institution, had returned from Europe in May, 1806, after a tour of the principal European countries, and having married Miss Carter, a step-daughter of judge St. George Tucker, the first of that distinguished family to settle in Virginia, had decided to make Williamsburg, where his wife had resided, his permanent home. He was an alumnus of the College, and through this connection and those domestic bonds, soon became a warm partisan of a scheme having its origin with De la Costa, a foreign savant, to erect a museum of natural history in the former capital, and to attach it to the professorship there which embraced the various departments of that subject. The cost of building and collecting was to be defrayed by private subscription.
Isaac A. Coles, of Albemarle, Cabell's intimate friend, was, at this time, Jefferson's private secretary, and in that capacity stationed in Washington. Cabell was but a recent acquaintance of the President, and he, doubtless, for that reason hesitated to approach him by direct correspondence, although aware of Jefferson's interest in science. Possibly, too, he may have had some reason for questioning the President's fidelity to his alma mater, for reports of his views as to the need of a new seat of learning, to be founded in a more central situation, must have come to his ears. Cabell wrote to Coles instead. The letter itself was, perhaps, not shown to Jefferson, but the subject of it was, by Coles's admission in his reply,
Cabell, who had not yet been weaned from his alma mater by close confidential intercourse with Jefferson, was palpably nettled by the tone, and by the suggestions, of his friend's letter. " If the great new university of which you speak," he wrote in reply, " were in existence, or could be expected to appear within the space of a few years, then it would be prudent to defer the intended museum and to connect the two objects. But knowing as you do, the spirit of our Legislature, can you calculate anything of the kind from them? I doubt very much whether we do not evince more prudence in patching up what we have than in reposing in indolence under the expectation of what may never come . . . We ought to
One would hardly recognize in these partial and loyal words, the presence of the man who was to be, after Jefferson himself, the most influential instrument in the establishment of the university at Charlottesville, which was comparatively to throw the College of William and Mary into the academic shade. They show, however, that he would not be averse to the erection of that university in another part of the State, should the sentiment of the General Assembly declare in favor of it. So soon as he should directly pass under the spell of Jefferson's personality, and catch the full inspiration of his devotion to his great scheme, Cabell was to become as earnest a supporter of all his plans for his projected seat of learning as Coles himself.
A few years after the date of these letters passing between the two friends, Jefferson committed himself definitely, over his own signature, to Charlottesville as the site of the institution which he had so long carried in his mind. Hitherto, in his correspondence at least, he seems to have referred with politic vagueness to a site " in a healthier and more central part of the State." But, in 1814, he mentions specifically his own vicinage as the spot which might be chosen. " I have long had under contemplation, and been collecting materials for a plan of the University of Virginia," he wrote to Dr. Cooper, " which should comprehend all the sciences useful to us, and none others . . . . This would probably absorb the functions of William and Mary College, and transfer them to a healthier position; perhaps to the neighborhood
Cabell, writing to Cocke, Nov. 21, 1821, said, "The decline of William and Mary a few years previous to this was attributed partly to its irreligious character; and to meet this, the Bishop was put on its Board of Visitors, an Episcopalian clergyman elected professor." And Jefferson writing to Cabell, Feb. 20, 1821, said, "I sometime ago put in your hands a pamphlet proving indirectly that the College of William and Mary was intended to be a seminary of the Church of England. When I was a Visitor in 1779 . . . we did not change the statutes (relating to the church) nor do I know that they have been since changed. On the contrary, the pamphlet I put in your hand proves that, if they have related in the fundamental object, they mean to return to it."
Writing in 1788 Jefferson used the following words: "Williamsburg is a remarkably healthy situation." This sentence is quoted by Dr. Tyler in his History of Williamsburg.
II. History of the University Region
The whole region that formed the background of Charlottesville, from whatever point of the compass it might be viewed, differed altogether from the environment of the College of William and Mary.[14] Around Williamsburg, one saw an almost perfectly level country overgrown with a forest of varied species, broken in many places by farms under cultivation or by abandoned fields, and here and there deeply penetrated by winding creeks that ran up into the land from the broad waters of the York and James Rivers. The population that
Unlike this old city, standing upon the wide, wooded coastal plain, Charlottesville was placed in a deep valley spreading from the rampart of the Southwest Mountains, on one side, to the chain of the Blue Ridge, on the other. Towards the south, and not far off, rose the repulsive wall of the Ragged Mountains, while towards the north, the land rolled away as far as the eye could reach. The entire surface of the country, thus pent in on all sides but one, was broken up picturesquely by long, high-shouldered hills, isolated mounts, uneven plateaus, and deep, narrow rocky gorges. Everywhere, it was liberally watered by the romantic Rivanna and its brawling tributary streams, flowing down between ridges that disputed the way so successfully that the channels were forced to follow abrupt and winding courses. The broad scene taken in from some moderate height, that commanded the whole without blending the details, was not surpassed in Virginia for diversified beauty as the seasons, in procession, laid a green or russet or white finger on the face of the landscape below. There, on the western skirts of the valley rose the Blue Mountains, as changeful in color as the mountains of Greece; now as deeply azure as the Bay of Naples itself; now so faint and ethereal in hue as to be almost invisible; now as gray and massive as a cliff of the purest granite; now bare and bleak at the side and crowned with fields of shining snow at the top. In the interval, lay the floor of the valley itself, with a few
To the spectator, thus gazing around from one point of the compass to the other, the rim of the sky appeared to rest upon the massive shoulders of mountain caryatides, with the fast field of the sky itself open to full view as the troops of clouds glided across it, or the storms brewed in its depths, or the last rays of the dying sun flooded it with color. Sky and mountain and plain, -all offered themselves to the eye in stupendous shapes, and only the presence of a large sheet of water was wanting to make a scene upon which nature had bestowed every beautiful and impressive feature in her gift.
Behind this physical charm, that appealed to the eye, there lurked the suggestion of what man had done for the scene that appealed even more romantically to the historic sense. The University of Virginia was incorporated in 1819, and its classical group of buildings, that carry the mind back to the remote age of Greece and Rome, was not finished in 1825, when its doors were opened. Ninety years before the cornerstone of the first pavilion was laid, and less than one hundred before the Rotunda was completed, the region now embraced in Albemarle county was a primaeval wilderness, unoccupied and unclaimed by a single white settler whose name has survived. The first patents to any parts of its virgin soil were acquired in June, 1727. Only two were issued during that year, and they were confined to the area of
Down to 1734, the patentees had, with barely an exception, been prominent men residing in Eastern Virginia, who were influenced alone by the prospect of speculative profit in engrossing such large areas of unappropriated soil, and who made no actual settlement beyond the small degree required by law. This was complied with by
Not until this year, did the engrossment of the soil spread out as far as Buck Mountain Creek, which flows into the Rivanna in the northwestern part of the present county, and Ivy Creek which waters the middle portion. Patents were now obtained to the lands lying around Farmington and Ivy station. By 1737, the banks of Mechums River had been reached. The area of ground thus taken up, however, was not in the way of a solid extension of boundaries; as we have seen, the site of the University was not patented until after the present Birdwood estate had been appropriated; and in harmony with the same fact, it was not until 1737 that William Taylor obtained, by patent, title to the lands situated on Moore's Creek which are supposed to have contained the present site of the town of Charlottesville. By this time, nearly every division of the county had been patented in a very dispersed manner, -to he extended gradually to those intervening spaces which remained vacant because
How little perceptible change had been worked in the face of the county by 1737 is revealed in the situation of Peter Jefferson, who removed to his estate on the Rivanna in the course of that year: the entire region about him is described as having been, at the time, a slumbering, savage wilderness; nor did any substantial transformation in its character take place before 1743, the year of Thomas Jefferson's birth. If one had walked up from Shadwell, during that year, to the top of a neighboring height which commanded a view of the landscape as far as the peaks of the Blue Ridge, he would have had unrolled below him a region almost as untouched by the white man, and quite as unmoulded to the permanent uses of civilization, as it had been one hundred years before, when it was only trodden by the feet of warring or hunting Indians. How completely it was in the possession of wild animals at the time of the first settlement is apparent in the names which the pioneers bestowed on the natural features of the valley. Many varieties of the fourlegged denizens of the original forests are represented in these names. So numerous were deer that it is recorded of one of the earliest settlers on the eastern slope of the great Ridge that he had only to step across the threshold of his cabin in the morning to obtain with his rifle all the venison that would be needed for his food; and that there was no exaggeration in this statement is proven by the frequency with which Buck mountains and Buck creeks are entered on the face of the first maps; and equally indicative of the like condition is the number of Elk runs, Beaver and Bear creeks, Buffalo meadows
There is no surviving proof of the existence of Indian wigwams in Albemarle when the first settlement began, but during Jefferson's boyhood, small bands of warriors would sometimes pass through, and, in one instance at least, revisited a mound standing on the banks of the Rivanna, where their dead had been formerly buried. A deed recorded in 1751, refers, in the definition of boundary lines, to a spot where a pioneer had been scalped by a lurking brave. It was not until 1744, seventy-five years before the University was chartered, that the county had filled up with people enough to justify the General Assembly in organizing a court within its borders; it was not until 1762 that Charlottesville, -named for the queen of the monarch whom Jefferson was to arraign in the Declaration of Independence, -was incorporated; and down to 1820, it continued to be the only post-office in all that region. In 1745, the number of inhabitants within the boundaries of Albemarle was thought to be about 4,250; by 1790, that number, as
I was especially indebted, in the preparation of this chapter, to Rev. Edgar Woods' excellent History of Albemarle County, a work that possesses, in many details, the value of an original document.
So stated by Dr. G. B. Goode, in an address before the United States Geographical Society, delivered at Monticello, in 1896.
III. Early Social Life
The social and economic history of the first settlement of Albemarle county was an exact continuation of that transit of population and civilization in Virginia which had been noted from the foundation of Jamestown. Not only was this original movement westward to the mountains more halting, but it was less crude in spirit than the flood which, in our own times, has carried the American frontier across an entire continent. It was not a migration of petty farmers and rough adventurers of all sorts. Among the names of the early patentees of Albemarle, we find numerous representatives of the oldest and most influential families in the Colony: Garters, Randolphs, Lewises, Nicholases, Meriwethers, Walkers, Henrys, Carrs, Hopkinses, Terrells, Eppeses, and others of the like social eminence. While spacious areas of ground were, at first, taken up by these families with a nominal residence only, as we have seen, nevertheless it was not many years before their younger scions began to lay the corner-stones of their homes in this forest wilderness. At no stage of its growth was it a scattered community of wild hunters and trappers alone; on the contrary, from the second decade at least, it was a community whose principal citizens had brought up from Eastern Virginia all the subservience to law, refinement of manners, and high civic spirit, that had distinguished the plantation homes in the older shires during many generations. The Meriwethers and Lewises, and the long stream of gentle families who followed them, had possessed,
It would hardly be correct to accept Thomas Jefferson as an average representative of this second generation born in the valley of the Rivanna, for he stood high above the multitude of his fellow Americans even in the oldest communities; but in mere social culture and domestic refinement, apart from native talents and acquired knowledge, he was not one whit superior to the representatives of those families who had patented the virgin lands contemporaneously with his father.
If any one now living could have taken his stand on the portico of Monticello, in 1825, on the day that the University threw open its doors to students, and gazed down upon the broad map of the country below towards the west, south, north, and northeast, his eyes would have caught sight of many residences that were already celebrated in the social history of the State, not only for the culture and refinement of their atmosphere, but for the high distinction of many of the citizens who owned them. First, would be discerned, on the banks of the Rivanna,
Looking in turn towards the west, north and south, there rose, within the scope of the eye, the homes of the Monroes, the Maurys, the Gilmers, the Coleses, the Nicholases, the Barbours, the Madisons, the Lewises, the Woodses, the Minors, the Terrells, the Carrs, and numerous other families identified with that region, in most instances, from the earliest years of the community. Either then, or a short time after the University was founded, there resided in houses in sight from the same eminence, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and third President of the United States; James Madison, the Father of the Constitution
The social life of the county was, at all seasons, enlivened by constant personal intercourse between neighbors, and at times by a succession of gaieties. Isaac Coles, writing to Cabell from his home in Albemarle, in 1811, mentions that his hours were mainly "given up to visits, Christmas dinners and Christmas balls!" Judge Dabney Carr, describing a recent sojourn in the county in 1821, remarks, by way of apology for failing to reply to Cabell, " I was in such a constant round of company, dining to-day here, and to-morrow there, that I could not find a moment for a letter." "From a long and intimate knowledge of Albemarle county," Gilmer wrote to George Long, in 1824, "I assure you, I know no place in America where there is a more liberal, intelligent, hospitable, and agreeable society, nor where respectable strangers could receive a kinder welcome." Jefferson, who had passed so much of his life in the most polished coteries of the Old and the New World, held a similar view: "The society in Albemarle," he stated to a European correspondent in March, 1815, " is much better than is common in country situations. Perhaps, there is not a better country society in the United States. But do not imagine this a Parisian or an academical society. It consists of plain, honest, and rational neighbors, -some of them well informed, and men of reading, all superintending their farms, hospitable and friendly, and speaking nothing but English."
Charlottesville, situated on a gentle eminence that sloped to the Rivanna, was a small collection of houses built around the court-house square. It hardly possessed the consequence of a village from the point of view of
Albemarle county, before the Revolution, was divided between Fredericksville and St. Anne's parishes; and of the two, Fredericksville, which had been extended from Louisa county, was laid off first. St. Anne's was formed in 1762 by drawing its eastern boundary line along the Rivanna to a point opposite Charlottesville; and thence the line ran through the town westward to the Blue Ridge. The parish itself was situated south of this line. The history of these parishes is pertinent to our subject, for the clergymen who filled their pulpits were, in several instances, well known teachers before and after the Revolution, and the sales of the glebes, when the
IV. Origin of Albemarle Academy
The most famous school situated nearest to Charlottesville previous to the Revolution was the one conducted by the Rev. James Maury, who had been the rector of Fredericksville parish at the time that it took in also the county of Louisa. Dying in 1770, he was succeeded by his son, Matthew Maury, as the clergyman of Trinity parish, -the new parish created in the first division of Fredericksville, -and as the headmaster of his school. .It was here that Jefferson received his earliest tuition after leaving home. This school enjoyed a high reputation for thoroughness many years before Albemarle Academy was incorporated, and was, no doubt, patronized, before and after the Revolution, by many families in Albemarle county, although more or less inconvenient to them on account of its remoteness. Another clergyman, Rev. Samuel Black, had established a school near the foot of the Blue Ridge; and about 1760, James Forbes was teaching in the neighborhood of Ivy.
But the need of a school in the immediate vicinity of Charlottesville became so pressing by 1783, that the first practical step was taken to establish an academy there. There is no evidence that Jefferson suggested this project, but there is proof that he felt so deep an interest in it that he exacted of a friend in the county
The purpose of establishing the school seems to have slumbered for many years, but, in 1803, or on some day just previous to it, the plan was revived, and so keen was the interest now aroused, that, in the course of that year, a charter was obtained and the school incorporated
Did the new academy enter at once upon an existence more solid than that of an academy on parchment? Apparently, it did not. In 1802, an Act of the General Assembly laid down the manner in which the money accruing from the sale of the glebe lands in Fredericksville and St. Anne's parishes was to be secured for any permissible object: a majority of the freeholders and householders of the county had only to submit a petition to the overseers of the poor clearly defining their purpose. It is possible that this Act was passed at the instance of persons interested in the projected academy; but that the fund was not appropriated is demonstrated by the fact L, that, when, in 1814, the scheme was resuscitated by the surviving trustees under the old charter, one of the first steps taken was to apply to the General Assembly for the possession of this fund, -an indication that it had not yet been disposed of, for it would certainly have been used had the original design been carried out in 1803. About this time, there was a school at Milton on the Rivanna conducted by William Ogilvie, an excellent classical scholar of Scotch birth, who gave the earliest tuition to the sons of many conspicuous families of Albemarle and adjoining counties. In 1806, Professor Girardin determined to resign his chair in the College of William and Mary, and consulted Joseph C. Cabell, then in Williamsburg, as to the most promising site for founding a large school of his own. Cabell conferred with his brother, Judge William H. Cabell: "Shall we place Girardin in the academy at New Glasgow," he wrote, "or shall we
Connect him with Ogilvie and establish them at Charlottesville? I wish to do the latter." [16] Now, it is quite improbable that Cabell, whose birthplace and original home was at Warminster, on the James River, not very many miles away, would have suggested Charlottesville as a suitable place of settlement for two distinguished teachers like Ogilvie and Girardin had he known that they would have to meet and overcome the rivalry of an academy already in operation, and backed by an influential board of trustees and a large circle of wealthy patrons.
Not until 1814 does the Albemarle Academy exhibit the feeblest sign of practical life. When the project was revived, only five of the first trustees, namely John Harris, John Nicholas, John Kelly, Peter Carr, and John Carr, took hold of it, for all the others had either died, resigned, or emigrated to the West. The vacancies in the list, the natural result of the lapse of a decade, had not been filled as they arose; and this would certainly have been done had the Academy, in reality, been under way, since, in that case, it would have called for and received the close supervision of a large and interested Board. The original members had fallen off, it would seem, because there were no duties to perform. Indeed, the Academy so far had been merely a name.
What was the motive at the bottom of the resuscitation of the charter? Quite probably the principal one now, as during many years past, was that there was an immediate need for the school; the subordinate one, perhaps, was the desire to bolster up financially Triplett Estes, the proprietor of the Old Stone tavern, the jovial friend of all those citizens of the county who had eaten of the dishes from his kitchen and drunk of the spirits
As the scheme of the Academy had been under consideration during many years, and as the need for it was greater now than ever, the five surviving members of the old board probably saw in Estes's offer a very uncommon chance of securing the right kind of structure for the projected school in Charlottesville, where alone they perhaps thought it should be placed, and where alone an edifice large enough for its purpose was likely to be
So far as can he discovered, Jefferson had no part of any kind in the consultations that led up to the first meeting of the five trustees on March 25, 1814. He went back to Monticello in 1809, and from that time became a permanent resident of the county. There was an interval of five years before the surviving members of the old board reassembled. Why had he manifested no interest in the charter of 1803, and, so far as we know, why was he not previously approached by the trustees with the view of enlisting his influential co-operation? Apparently, during these years, he made no suggestion with respect to the Academy; he gave no advice; nor did he take any step whatever, either alone or along with others, to revive the scheme. While his concern for the advancement of education was never more lively than during the immediate period that followed his return to his home, it is quite possible that his long absences from the county, and the dignity of the great offices he had filled, had produced a certain aloofness in his intercourse with his neighbors. There is little proof of any intimate association on his part with the community around him. He was not a public speaker, and so far as can be judged,
Jefferson's participation in the memorable first meeting of the surviving trustees at the Stone tavern was wholly accidental and unexpected. It seems that, following his habit after one o'clock in the day, he had left Monticello for his afternoon ride, and had turned his horse's head in the direction of Charlottesville. As he passed through the village, he was seen from the Stone tavern by one of the trustees, who, aware of his interest in education, and justly thinking that his advice would he of substantial service, suggested that he should be asked to dismount, and take part in the discussion then going on in one of the rooms in the inn. He cheerfully complied with the invitation, got down from the saddle, and joined the circle within. He first counseled them to fill at once all the vacancies in the board; and this seems to have been promptly done. His own name was inserted at the head of the list, which ran as follows: Thomas Jefferson, Jonathan B. Carr, Robert B. Streshley, James Leitch, Edmund Anderson, Thomas Wells, Nicholas M. Lewis, Frank Carr, John Winn, Alexander Garrett, Dabney Minor, Samuel Carr, and Thomas Jameson. To this list should he added the names of the surviving members of the original board: John Harris, John Nicholas, John
What were the histories of the principal men who composed the reformed board? Without exception, they were drawn from the body of the substantial and responsible citizens of the county, those "plain, honest, rational, and well-informed neighbors" of Jefferson, to whom he referred in the letter, already quoted, written this very month of the same year. Frank Carr was, at one time or another, a physician, teacher, editor, and farmer, and in the latter character filled the useful office of secretary of the Albemarle Agricultural Society. He also sat on the bench of magistrates and served as sheriff. Edmund Anderson was a brother-in-law of Meriwether Lewis, the famous explorer of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers. Nicholas M. Lewis was a great-grandson of Nicholas Meriwether, one of the earliest landowners in Albemarle. His father had been a distinguished officer in the War of the Revolution, surveyor, sheriff, and magistrate, and the adviser of the family at Monticello during Jefferson's numerous absences from his roof. John Winn had laid by a competence in mercantile pursuits in Charlottesville, and had afterwards purchased the valuable estate of Belmont, which he occupied as his home. Alexander Garrett, who was to become the bursar of the University, was, at one time, the deputy sheriff and deputy clerk of the county. Peter Carr was a member of the bar, and had formerly been associated with Jefferson as his private secretary. John Kelly, like John Winn, was a successful merchant, was very alert in the affairs of his church, and enjoyed such a high reputation for integrity and good sense that he was frequently appointed to act as the administrator of estates. John
Merchants, lawyers, physicians, farmers, clerks of court, magistrates, sheriffs, members of the General Assembly, either then or yet to be, -such were the men who sat on the board of trustees of Albemarle Academy. With a few exceptions, they were sprung from fathers or grandfathers who had come into the county with the first immigration, and all were bound to its soil by financial interests, ties of home and family, and the associations of a life-time with kinsmen and friends. At their head stood Jefferson, ready to give them the full
V. Acts of the Albemarle Academy Trustees
Adjourning on March 25, the trustees re-assembled on April 5. The principal business transacted on that day was the election of Peter Carr as President of the Board, and of Frank Carr as Secretary, and the appointment of a committee, with Jefferson as its chairman, to draw up a code of general regulations for the government of the Academy so soon as its doors should be thrown open to students. A motion to choose at once the site for its building was put off, in order, doubtless, to await the report of the committee now selected to suggest the means of obtaining the funds needed for the completion and maintenance of the projected institution. Adjourning over from April 15, because barely a majority of the trustees were present, -Jefferson himself being one of the absentees -they re-assembled on May 3. Again Jefferson did not attend; but as fifteen trustees answered to their names at roll-call, matters of the first importance were straightway called up for consideration and debate. The committee chosen to devise a plan for procuring money recommended that a lottery should be used for that purpose. The terms adopted for this lottery demonstrate the seductive manner in which it was to be employed: four thousand filled-in tickets were to be printed; and as each was to be sold for five dollars, it was expected
The report of the committee on rules and regulations, which bore throughout the scholastic and administrative stamp of its chairman, Jefferson, stated that the Academy's aim would be to provide higher instruction for youths already thoroughly grounded in a course of reading, writing, and arithmetic. It was to consist of such studies, at first, as promised to be most useful; and as the income of the institution should grow in volume, the number of these studies was to be enlarged so as to embrace other and wider fields of knowledge. A committee of three was to be nominated yearly by the Board to keep every branch of the tuition under observation; to suggest what new departments should be added; to enforce discipline among the students; to regulate the expenses; and to overlook the entire domestic economy of the Academy. Thomas M. Randolph, Jefferson's son-in-law, was now a member of the Board, and he, Peter Carr, and Jefferson, the three most conspicuous and influential trustees, were selected as the committee to petition
On June 17, a committee, composed of John Winn, James Leitch, John Nicholas, Frank Carr, and Alexander Garrett, was named to decide upon the most suitable site for the institution. Should a new edifice be erected on the most commodious and economical plan, or should a house already in existence he chosen? The question before the committee really was: should the Stone tavern be purchased from Estes, or should they buy new ground in the neighborhood of Charlottesville where no building was already standing?
It is no cause for surprise to find that, when the trustees re-assembled on August 19, Jefferson was present for the first time since their second conference. The point corning up for determination was the one which interested him most. It is easy enough to comprehend that the mind which conceived the splendid group of University structures at a later date, shrank from the possibility of a rough tavern, of no architectural beauty whatever from cellar to garret, being accepted as the correct housing for the institution which he had already resolved to enlarge into a great seat of learning. Fortunately, he was not a common local politician, for had he been, he would have looked upon the good will of a popular innkeeper as important to the success of his political future, and, therefore, not to be jeoparded; nor were his social relations with that innkeeper such as to make him hesitate to derange his plans. Jefferson concentrated his gaze upon the paramount claims of his own great scheme; and he was too sagacious to yield one inch, even in the obscurity and uncertainty of its initiation. As he was on a footing of friendship with all the members of the building committee, it is reasonable to presume that he was consulted by them when they came to draft their report; unquestionably, its tenor was in harmony with his own wishes and convictions; and when it was handed in, he was in the room to support it with the weight of his influence with the board. The report took the ground that it was not advisable to purchase a building within the town, but that an unoccupied site, at least half a mile from its boundaries, should be bought. The Academy, however, in making this selection, was not to be compelled to pay a higher price than it would have been required to do had an improved and convenient situation in Charlottesville been preferred. As there were now no funds
The expectation of obtaining funds was based on three petitions to be sent to the General Assembly: the first, for the appropriation of the money from the sale of the glebes, now in the custody of Commissioner Winn; the second, for a dividend accruing from the interest of the Literary Fund; and the third, for a lottery.
The first two of these petitions had already been drawn by Jefferson, Randolph, and Carr. The petition for the lottery was signed by one hundred and forty-seven citizens of Albemarle county, who did not disguise the fact, even in the document itself, that one of the purposes they had in view was to make certain the collection of funds sufficient for the purchase of the Old Stone tavern, in order to assist its genial proprietor financially. There was no word of disapproval by Jefferson of that petition on this account, although it is altogether probable that he had no patience with this particular side of it. With another of its clauses, however, he was warmly in sympathy; in deed, this section seems to have received its tone from his own exasperated and outspoken opinion of the impoverished means of acquiring a higher education in his native Commonwealth. "We have too long slept in unpardonable apathy," it ran, "over the crying and lamentable fact that, in the rich, populous, and liberal State of Virginia, there stands not one literary academy calculated to command the education of her youth. . . . We see our youth flying to foreign countries (Yale, Princeton and other Northern colleges) to obtain that of which they are deprived at home: a liberal education. We behold them asking of foreigners (the North) what their fathers refuse them. It is calculated, in an alarming
These words have the characteristic ring and flavour of Jefferson in writing about Northern institutions of learning at that time, or in commenting upon the supposed monarchical designs of the Federalist leaders.
After the meeting of the Board on August 19, his interest in the plans for the Academy grew rapidly warmer and far more personal. On September 7, nineteen days subsequently, he penned the famous letter to Peter Carr, the president of the board of trustees, from which quotations have already been made, as offering the most precise and voluminous statement by himself of his views on education. That letter demonstrates in the clearest manner that his mind was now deeply engaged with the thought of converting the projected academy into the university which he had so long been contemplating. "What are the objects of our institution?" he asks. "Let us take a survey of the general field of science," he replies to his own question, "and mark out the field we mean to occupy at first, and the alternate extension of our views beyond that, should we be able to render it as comprehensive as we would wish . . . . We must select the materials from the different institutions of others which are good for us, and with them erect a structure whose arrangement shall correspond with our own conditions,
Jefferson asserts, in the same remarkable letter, that he had "lost no occasion to make himself acquainted with the best seminaries in other countries, and with the opinions of the most enlightened individuals on the subject of the sciences worthy to be taught in the new institution" So keen was the interest which he now felt in its expected evolution into a great seat of learning, that, for the first time, he began to regard with just apprehension the possible dissipation of the moneys, derived from the sale of the plebes, that had been deposited in the several State hanks. Were such banks safe places of custody?" Perhaps, the loss of these funds," he wrote Cabell, only three weeks after the date of the letter to Carr, "would be the most lasting of the evils proceeding from the insolvency of those banks." There is a suggestion of pathos in this solicitude about a sum so small and so inadequate for the development of the noble
This document is preserved, in the form of a copy, among the Cabell Papers, University Library.
"A plan for the institution," he wrote Cabell in January, 1816, "was the only thing the trustees asked or expected of me." Jefferson when he used these words was evidently referring to the beginning of his association with the Academy scheme. His later activities in connection with that scheme were unremitting.
VI. The Academy Converted into a College
Did the papers sent to David Watson, the delegate from Louisa, by Peter Carr, as president of the hoard of trustees, to he submitted to the General Assembly at the session of 1814-15, contain a petition for the conversion of the Academy into Central College? At this time, Charles Yancey and Thomas Wood represented the county of Albemarle in the Lower House, and Joseph
An unnecessary delay would have been avoided had Carr enclosed the papers to Cabell, for, during the whole session of 1814-15, Watson held them back without giving any explanation of his dilatoriness. Jefferson wrote to Cabell on January 5 (1815) that the petition had not been presented to the General Assembly, and he gave expression to his regret, for he thought that, had it been submitted and received favorably, a small appropriation, in addition to that asked for, might have been obtained, which would have enabled the trustees to erect in Charlottesville what he said would be "the best seminary in .the United States." In his impatience, Jefferson sent Cabell copies of all the papers, -with the exception apparently of the petition for the lottery, -which had been reposing in Watson's inert hands, for, with characteristic
It was stated in the petition that the resources relied upon by the trustees were the proceeds of the projected lottery; the fund, with the interest added, accruing from the sale of the glebes of Fredericksville and St. Anne's parishes; and the dividend from the profits of the Literary Fund of the State as pro-rated to Albemarle county. The additional aid which Jefferson, but for Watson's neglect, had hoped to procure from the General Assembly was a loan of seven or eight thousand dollars for a period of four or five years. He declared that, with this amount of money available, he would be in a position to engage three of the ablest characters in the world to fill the higher professorships, -"three such characters," he said, "as are not in a single university of Europe "; and for those of languages and mathematics, able instructors could also, at the same time, be employed. "With these characters," he exclaims, "I should not be afraid to say that the circle of sciences composing the second and final grade would be more perfectly taught here than in any institution of the United States." In these words, we have again that almost pathetic touch to which we have previously referred: the contrast between the magnitude and nobility of his designs for higher education in Virginia, and the smallness of the funds at his disposal. This was the inception of that protracted struggle for State appropriations for the most beloved and treasured scheme of his illustrious life, which was not to end until he sank on his deathbed at Monticello, and which, attended
Before the Academy was merged in the College, his correspondence with his most loyal and zealous coadjutor in this prolonged appeal for assistance, began. "I had no hint from any quarter," Cabell wrote on March 5, 1815, "that I was expected to bestow particular care on the business. There was nothing which should have defeated the petition unless objected to by some of the people of Albemarle, who might not wish to appropriate the proceeds of the sale of the glebes to the establishment of the Academy at Charlottesville; or a few members of the Assembly who might have other views for the disposition of the income of the Literary Fund; or from Eastern delegates from the lower counties, who may have fears for William and Mary . . . . I hope that there would be no other effect produced by the plan on William and Mary than that necessarily resulting from another college in the State." This petition, the second of the documents which Jefferson sent to Cabell in Richmond, contained a prayer for the substitution of a college for the Academy, and as this was a copy of the original petition which Carr enclosed to the Louisa delegate, Watson, the original petition itself must also have been of precisely the same tenor. It was re-submitted, with the other papers, to the General Assembly at the beginning of the session of 1815-16, but now under Cabell's general direction. On December 18, he wrote to Isaac Coles as follows: "Notwithstanding my unabated regard for the institution of William and Mary, I shall do everything in my power to give success to Mr. Jefferson's scheme of a college now pending before the Assembly. The more the better. He
The patron of the bill in the Lower House of Assembly was Thomas W. Maury, one of the delegates from Albemarle. When the debate upon it began, antagonism at once arose to that clause which asked for an appropriation out of the profits of the Literary Fund in proportion to the population of the county. This opposition was based on the presumption that the public uses to which this fund was to be applied had not yet been determined; and on Cabell's advice, this provision was struck out as not likely at that time to be adopted. All the other clauses were ultimately approved by the House. Before the measure, however, could reach the Senate, Yancey, the other representative of Albemarle in the lower body, seeking out Cabell, requested him to offer an amendment to it, when called up in the upper chamber, that would eliminate the clause empowering the trustees of Central College to carry out the main requirement of the law of 1796 by fixing the exact date for putting in operation the general plan for public education in Albemarle. Mr. Yancey was worried by the apprehension that his constituents would be displeased should they find themselves placed on a different footing in this respect from the freeholders and householders of the other counties, all of whom enjoyed the right to designate the time by popular vote. Cabell seems to have belittled the grounds for this fear; but he shortly afterwards discovered that the Governor of the State, a shrewd politician, held the same opinion as Yancey.
His hope of securing the final passage of the bill in the form in which the Lower House had left it, was soon dissipated; discussion in the Senate brought out at once an expression of hostility to that clause which clothed the
Jefferson's argument failed to convince the opposing senators, and the clause was stricken out by Cabell; and the like fate also befell at his hands that clause to which
Would the Senate, unlike the Lower House, be willing to vote in favor of any kind of appropriation for the benefit of the new College? Cabell thought that their consent could be only obtained to a plausible subterfuge. At that time, a Mr. Broadwood had acquired a great reputation in the country below Richmond by his success in teaching the deaf and dumb. " Why not invite him to Charlottesville," Cabell wrote Jefferson in January, "and establish him in the house which Estes has offered to sell? Would it suit your purpose to get an Act pissed for a lottery to purchase that house for an establishment for the deaf and dumb as a wing to Central College? "So convinced was Cabell that only in some indirect way resembling this could an appropriation be assured, that he wrote to Jefferson again on the same subject before time sufficient had passed for a reply to be returned to his first letter. "It is barely possible," he remarks on this second occasion, "that the General Assembly may give the Central College something for teaching the deaf and dumb. I am endeavoring to prepare the more liberal part for an attempt at an amendment of a professorship of the deaf and dumb. Thus far it is well received, but it may be baffled. I have thought that such a plan might engage the affection of the coldest member." Could there be a more pertinent commentary on the obstacles, that, on every side, confronted the advocates of popular education in Virginia than this scheme, which Cabell brought forward only in a spirit of despair? But Jefferson, while he was anxious to get assistance from the public treasury, was unwilling to lower the dignity of his great plan by obtaining that aid on conditions which were inconsistent with its true character. In his reply, he candidly
Before the bill was put upon its final passage, Mr. Poindexter, who represented the Louisa and Fluvanna district, submitted a resolution that the share of those counties in the sum accruing from the sale of the Fredericksville and St. Anne's globes, so far as these parishes overlapped the area of that district, should be reserved for their use, and as the proportion was small, Cabell thought it advisable to assent; and he was swayed in doing this further by his own conviction that the new college should rely upon State appropriations rather than upon such meagre resources as were set forth in the bill for its creation.
Albemarle Academy was converted into Central College by an Act of Assembly dated the fourteenth of February, 1816. Among the .influences which are said to have hastened the passage of the bill was the success that had crowned the canvass to obtain subscriptions for the Academy; and also the announcement that the great political economist of France, Say, having expressed his willingness to remove his home to Albemarle, would, in that event, quite certainly consent to be employed as a professor in the new seat of learning. Perhaps, the most curious fact associated with the incorporation of the College was the strong probability, at one time, that it would
VII. Jefferson's Foresight for the College
One of the conspicuous qualities of Jefferson's many-sided mind was a far-sightedness that was at once minute and imperialistic in its scope. His possession of this characteristic to an extraordinary degree has come to light in the course of our previous narrative, but perhaps it was
Jefferson had a State university really in view, and as such an institution could be only founded with the assistance of the Commonwealth, he wisely decided to give the new seat of learning the name that would approximate the closest to the broad meaning of the words, "University of Virginia"; in short, a name that, from the very start, would lift it above the common level of the academies and colleges already in existence, by clothing it with the dignity of an institution rightly bidding, in the opinion of all, for the patronage of the Virginians in the mass. By such a name alone, the supreme convenience of its situation, in those days of stage coach and private carriage, would be indicated to every citizen in the State who had a son to educate. But Jefferson looked upon this last fact as important only because it would be promotive of his main object. He anticipated that, when the struggle for the site of the university, which he was confident would be built in the future, began, the people would have become accustomed to thinking of the college at Charlottesville as the only really central seat of learning underway in Virginia, and for that reason, if for no other, possessing the prior claim to final conversion into a great State institution. In other words, he reckoned
There was a choleric debate going on, at this time, as to the wisdom of removing the capital from Richmond to some. place which would better subserve the convenience of the Virginian people by its more central situation. The advocates of Staunton were active to uproariousness in urging the superiority of her claim on this score; and some of them even put out a plain threat, that, unless the seat of administration was transferred to the west of the Blue Ridge, those parts of the Commonwealth would confederate to erect a new State. It is not improbable that, in the midst of this scramble for preference, Jefferson harbored the hope that Charlottesville would be selected as the new metropolis; and had he been a member of the General Assembly at this hour, and as young as he was in 1776, he might have secured the simultaneous establishment of both the capital and the university on the banks of the Rivanna, in his native county. He had shown how important he considered the association of the two to be at the time that he was endeavoring to broaden the course of study at the College of William and Mary, when Williamsburg was still the seat of government. Being fully aware, through his frequent correspondence with Cabell, of the ferment in the General Assembly over the question of removing the Capital, he clearly foresaw the opposition which both Staunton and Lexington would stir up to the erection of the university in the eastern shadow of the Ridge, -Staunton because it would interfere with the success of her campaign to acquire the new seat of administration; and Lexington because it would put an end to the realization of her ambition
But he was not satisfied with creating but one favorable condition, at the very start, to sustain the claim which he expected to bring forward just so soon as the General Assembly should decide to establish a university: his next step was to join with himself in the directorate of his new college men of such preeminence in the social and political affairs of the Commonwealth that their personal distinction would be a powerful agency in winning popular respect for it, thus influencing public sentiment in support of his ultimate designs.
One of the baffling questions that offers itself in this somewhat obscure initial stage of our history is: how did Jefferson succeed, apparently so amicably,[20] in getting rid of the very estimable board of trustees of Albemarle Academy? That board embraced, as we have seen, fifteen or sixteen citizens of the county who deservedly enjoyed a high degree of repute in their own community. Was no bad feeling aroused in them when the seat was withdrawn so abruptly from under them? No reason for their elimination that could have been submitted, however sound from a practical point of view, could have been entirely acceptable to their sensibilities. Were they too
The Board of Visitors of Central College comprised Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, David Watson, Joseph Carrington Cabell, and John Hartwell Cocke. Jefferson and Madison, besides their extraordinary services in other lofty public positions, had each occupied the Presidency during eight years in critical
Some of the trustees of the old Academy actually sent a petition to Governor Nicholas requesting the appointment of the men whom Jefferson had selected for the College Board. Va. Cal. State Papers, X, p. 437.
VIII. Joseph C. Cabell
Joseph Carrington Cabell, who was born in the tumultuous atmosphere of the Revolution, was the grandson of William Cabell, an English gentleman who emigrated to Virginia, patented a principality in the valley of the upper James, and founded a family of social and political importance in itself, and of remarkable ramifications by inter-marriage. Joseph's mother was sprung from the Carrington family, which occupied a corresponding position of distinction in the general history of the Colony and State. The course of his education followed the normal groove of those times, -first, he sat under a tutor in his father's house; next, attended two private schools in Albemarle county; and then, after one term passed at Hampden-Sidney College, recommended perhaps by its nearness to his maternal kinsfolk, he entered the College of William and Mary. Here he soon won the affectionate interest of the venerable president, Bishop Madison, by his accurate scholarship, uncommon talents, and genial temper. The same superior qualities made an equally strong appeal to his companions among the students; his friends felt for him a tenderness so deep and true that it continued to soften the tone of their letters to him many years after they had become absorbed in their callings; and that they were entirely worthy of him in character and abilities alike, is proven by the eminence which they reached in their native State, -Isaac Coles, private secretary of President Jefferson; Henry St. George Tucker, Presiding Judge of the Court of Appeals; Benjamin Watkins Leigh, Senator of the United States;
Cabell was fettered throughout life with a delicate constitution. Alarming pulmonary weakness began to assail him even before his final departure from Williamsburg. In 1801, he made his first voyage for the restoration of his strength; his tour, in this instance, did not carry him further than Norfolk; but after spending several months in the office of Daniel Call, in Richmond, during the autumn of that year, he made a second voyage, which reached as far as Charleston, where he passed the winter. His taste for travel, which had its earliest stimulus in this search for health, was not yet satisfied, for, during the following summer (1802), he visited the principal resorts in the mountains of Virginia, and in the autumn, set out on horseback on a long journey; Turkey Island, on James River, was his first goal; from that place, he rode to Fredericksburg, Mt. Vernon, Western Maryland, Harper's Ferry, and Winchester; and from Winchester returned to his home. He derived so little permanent benefit from this excursion in the open air that he decided to pass a winter in Southern France. "While I am compelled to spend time and money in pursuit of health," he wrote his father, Colonel Nicholas Cabell, in November (1802) "is it not better, at the same time, to travel for improvement, and where can I turn my attention with more propriety than to the two most cultivated countries on earth, England and France?"
During the detention of his ship in the port of Norfolk by unfavorable winds, he made his first and last application for a Federal office. James Monroe had been appointed by the President to settle the irritating differences which still hung on between the United States, on the one side, and France and Spain, on the other. Cabell sought the position of private secretary to the envoy, or the secretaryship of legation attached to the mission, should the former place have been already filled. "I hope," he wrote Monroe, "that you will favor the views of one who has impaired his constitution in the pursuit of science, and who now goes to Europe chiefly with the view to widen the sphere of his knowledge." But this high-minded aspiration for office was frustrated so soon as it expressed itself. Arriving at Bordeaux in February, 1803, very much debilitated by a rough voyage, he, nevertheless, at once resumed his journey to Paris, and after he reached that city, had opportunities to enjoy many of the public and private pleasures which it offered, -witnessed a brilliant review of troops by Napoleon; dined with Volney and Kosciusko; and went on long rambles through the streets with Robert Fulton, who had come over from London to continue his experiments with the submarine in the waters of the Seine. Fulton urged his companion to interest himself in internal improvements on his return to Virginia; and the advice was not lost, as the course of Cabell's future career will reveal.
During a visit to Italy, with the view of inspecting the celebrated universities of that country, Cabell, while stopping in Naples, was brought into delightful intercourse with Washington Irving. They strolled through the famous museums and palaces of the city together, climbed to the crater of Vesuvius, and were nearly suffocated with gas from its crevices by a sudden shift in the
By the advice of his physician, he dropped his books, and filled up his time with lectures and conversation only. His principal aim was always the acquisition of knowledge, -especially in the several departments of natural science, -and this led him to sit at the feet of Cuvier and other eminent professors, in the study of zoology, vegetable chemistry, chemistry proper, anatomy, and mineralogy. "France," he wrote, "presented to my view all the branches of natural history under the aspects of new and captivating splendor." He assisted an American friend, MacClure, in collecting a valuable quantity of minerals, in the course of which they explored together the hills of Auvergne, and sauntered as far as the Alps; and in order to extend and perfect his information about botany, he spent a winter at the University of Montpelier, famous at that time for the thoroughness of its instruction in this province of Nature. So keen was his interest in education that he visited Pestalozzi at Yverdon to observe the original methods of that celebrated teacher of the young. His intimacy with Washington Alston stimulated his native taste for the fine arts; he made detours in his travels to inspect the most renowned galleries; and during his stay at Rome, purchased many engravings of
When Cabell was on the point of setting out from Virginia for Europe, his brother William H. Cabell, had warned him "not to suffer anything to shake his attachment for his own country, or to render him dissatisfied with the American state of society, manners, and customs." "The moment you feel any disposition -of the kind," he concluded, "fly back to America." There was no need of this counsel, amiably designed as it was. Cabell's thoughts, in all his travels, researches, and studies abroad, were principally directed towards serving his native State by gathering up all sorts of knowledge that were likely to be useful to it when applied for its benefit later on. He returned to the United States in the spring of 1806, after an absence of three years, which had quadrupled his stores of information without weakening his loyalty to the land of his birth. He brought back with him a letter of introduction to Dr. Barton, of Philadelphia, who possessed a wide reputation for his attainments in the sciences of botany and natural history. Through a letter of introduction from Barton, Cabell for the first time, made the personal acquaintance of Jefferson, whose reception of him was marked by uncommon warmth and cordiality, for Cabell was a friend of his secretary, Isaac Coles; belonged to a family of high social station in Virginia; and was known to be interested in the sciences which appealed most directly to the President's taste. Jefferson tried to induce him to enter the Federal service, -offered him in turn the consulate at Tunis, the Under-Secretaryship of State, the Secretaryship of Orleans Territory, and finally, the Territorial Governorship; but Cabell had been too long abroad to be seduced into accepting
He soon found a charming wife in Williamsburg in the stepdaughter of the eminent jurist, St. George Tucker, the daughter of Mrs. Tucker by her marriage with George Carter, in early life. Mrs. Tucker herself was a daughter of Sir Peyton Skipwith. In the veins of the youthful and lovely Mrs. Cabell there ran, from these two sources, the most aristocratic blood to be found in a State that could rightly boast of the gentle descent of its leading families. She was also the wealthiest heiress in Eastern Virginia; her Corrotoman estate spread over an area of nearly seven thousand acres of land, peopled by several hundred slaves and many white tenants; and in some years, the products of its soil swelled in volume to four thousand bushels of wheat and three thousand barrels of corn.
Although the laws of the State, at that time, vested in the husband the property of the wife, Cabell kept the splendid estate thus acquired entirely detached from his own; administered its affairs in his name as trustee with the most scrupulous care; and at his death, it reverted to her trebly augmented in value through his sagacious management. With his own inheritance thus largely increased, he was in the position of a man of handsome fortune, who could follow his own inclinations in the pursuit of a calling, without being harassed by the necessity of earning his daily bread. Should he begin again the study of law? "Watkins Leigh was here yesterday," wrote W. H. Cabell to him in April, 1807, "and said that you ought not to think of law except as a politician, or except as it will advance your political aims. He thinks there is a moral obligation on every man in your situation to be
He adopted this counsel, went back to his native county, offered himself for office, was successful, and took his seat in the House of Delegates in December, 1808. He continued a member of that body during two very notable terms, and was one of the committee that reported in favor of the establishment of the Literary Fund, the most vital legislative stroke of those times. He represented the new county of Nelson in the Lower House; but, in 1810, was elected to the Senate as the member for the district composed of the counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, and Nelson. He retired from that body in 1829, and from 1831 to 1833, sat again in the House of Delegates, as that division of the General Assembly was the one in which he could uphold and push the interests of
In political as well as in personal intercourse, Cabell was in the closest harmony with Jefferson. We shall soon come to that epic chapter in the history of the University which records their great struggle, with tongue and pen, to obtain the necessary appropriations for its construction; but they were together interested in numerous other questions of hardly less importance in principle In their voluminous correspondence, they are discovered exchanging views on all sorts of subjects: on the right of one generation to bind another by legislative enactment; on whether a member of the House of Representatives could legally represent a district in which he did not reside; or whether it was expedient to divide a State into townships rather than into counties. "My object," wrote Cabell, in 1814, "is to be useful to my country in the station which I occupy (Senate), and in availing myself occasionally of your valuable aid, it would be highly improper to disturb the tranquility of your retirement," and he, therefore, assures the venerable statesman of the scrupulous privacy in which all his letters would be kept.
Cabell's sense of integrity as a public servant was so pure and delicate that it amounted at times to feminine sensitiveness. "Why will you suffer your peace of mind and your happiness," wrote his brother, William H. Cabell, in 1814, "to be at the mercy of any man who chooses to assail you, or to make even an insinuation against the propriety of your conduct? I believe I should be less concerned, were I convinced that ninety-nine one hundredths of the world thought me a villain than you would if you thought an obscure individual, one thousand miles away from you, believed you only incorrect." [21]
The faithful and lofty spirit that animated him throughout his political career is transparent in all he did, spoke, and wrote. "I think the greatest service a man can render," he remarked in one of his letters, "is to speak the truth and to show that is his only object," and these simple words epitomized his personal as well as his political motives. "You have pursued an erect
There were three great public interests of which Cabell was an ardent and indefatigable supporter: Internal Improvements, Education, and Agriculture. We have already mentioned Robert Fulton's advice to him to make the question of Internal Improvements a part of his political platform on his return to the United States. He lived long enough to earn the name of the DeWitt Clinton of Virginia by his unwearied exertions for the revival, construction, and extension of the James River and Kanawha Canal, which, before the building of many railroads in the Commonwealth, was looked upon as an enterprise as imperial in its scope as the Erie Canal itself; and justly so, for had it been situated in a community of large financial resources, and not been obstructed by a vast mountain crossing, it would have been extended to the Ohio and Mississippi, and by pouring the wheat and corn of the West into the lap of Norfolk, would have made that city a second New York, and changed the destinies of the State. Previous to 1821, only twenty miles of the canal, beginning at Richmond, -where it united with tidewater, -had been completed, and that only partly at public expense. With the assistance of Chapman Johnson, the distinguished lawyer, Cabell drew up a charter for the new James River and Kanawha Canal Company, and then undertook to obtain popular support for the resuscitated enterprise. From the shores of Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio, he travelled through county after county, addressing the people from the steps of the
Cabell's interest in general education in Virginia was not limited to one great seat of learning: he used his influence on every occasion, and by every means, to improve all the facilities for secondary and primary instruction also, and for both sexes too. At the hour that he was the Atlas of the fortunes of the University in the General Assembly, he was acting as one of the trustees of the Charlottesville Ladies' Academy. He apparently went so far as to have the methods of Pestalozzi adopted in the schools of Nelson county; and he also made a patient investigation of the Lancasterian system, which was based on the social principle. He also planned to erect so ambitious an institution as a college at Warminster in the immediate neighborhood of his home at Edgewood, and would probably have successfully carried out this scheme by means of a public lottery, had not his friends united in warning him of its supposed impracticability, which dispirited him for its further prosecution. "My great object," he wrote to one of the critics, who had described the projected college as a lighthouse in the
Cabell's unfailing support of all bills before the General Assembly to improve the condition of agriculture in Virginia had its stimulus in part in his keen interest in the diversified operations of his own plantation. In correspondence with Cocke, his most intimate friend, who was an enthusiastic farmer, he is repeatedly making or replying to inquiries that played about all sides of the farmer's life. Fruit trees, grass, wheat, tobacco, buildings, timber, rams, overseers, hedges, lime, machinery and ploughs, one after another, are the subjects upon which special information was either sought or given. In September, 1818, he writes to another friend, Isaac Coles, that he is too busy with surveying his lines to compose certain essays which he had promised to read before the Agricultural Society. " Confound politics," he exclaimed in a letter to Cocke, in 1821, "welcome my native fields." "I am jogging on here," he wrote to the same correspondent, in 1828, from Edgewood, "riding over my farms and superintending the servants." He was not in sympathy with the impatient sentiment that prevailed among many Virginians, about 1830, in favor of Abolition, because he was convinced that slavery was so intertwined with all the roots of the community's life that it could not be torn up without jeopardizing the health, even should it not destroy the existence, of every associated interest. But no master was ever more benevolent or more watchful in his relations with his slaves; in 1848, when he was far advanced in years, a typhoid epidemic broke out on his plantation; notwithstanding his physical infirmities, he passed four or five hours daily on horseback engaged in
Cabell died in 1856, and the last scene of his life was consistent with the noble tenor of it throughout. "Never," reported his nephew, N. F. Cabell, who was present at the closing hour, "have I seen more dignity, calmness, and resignation to the divine will." His death was appropriately announced by the Governor of the State, who spoke of him as emphatically and peculiarly "the Virginia Statesman," the man whose entire public services had been absorbed in building up and advancing the general welfare of his native commonwealth. Having possessed the close personal friendship of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, he had caught that spirit of wise moderation, in both word and act, which had given them such preeminence as political sages. And there was something too about his temper and demeanor that recalled to those who knew him a still loftier example of manhood and statesmanship. "No one could be much with Mr. Cabell," remarks a friend of his in his last years, "without seeing that he had taken George Washington for his model. In his principles and his conduct, in the dignity of his character, and even in the gentlemanly and becoming particularity of his dress, you could not fail to observe the resemblance." [22]
The firm course pursued by Cabell in the controversy over the removal of the College of William and Mary, to be described later on, proved that he could be serenely indifferent to criticism, and even to obloquy, if he was sustained by the approval of his own conscience.
IX. John Hartwell Cocke
John Hartwell Cocke is not to be credited with as conspicuous services in assisting in the foundation of the University
Cocke, like Cabell, was a broadminded advocate of public improvements of all kinds, and, in 1823, visited New York in order to inspect the new Erie waterway, and to obtain practical information for opening up the obstructed
Cocke's approval of popular education was so keen that he threw the full weight of his influence in favor of every attempt that was made to establish a State university; he was chosen by the Governor, at Jefferson's request, as a member of the Board of Visitors of Central College; and he was retained on the University Board in spite of his protesting his disqualification, from lack of experience, to meet the increased responsibility. "As to my personal views," he declared, with characteristic modesty and unselfishness, "God forbid that I should permit such grovelling motives to interfere with what I believe to be the public interest." His enlightened opinion touching education extended to primary and secondary instruction also. He established near his beautiful home at Bremo, in 1820, a seminary for boys under the age of fifteen, and drew up for its government a set of rules marked by excellent judgment. It was, however, his own high character that was the principal ground of the confidence which this school inspired in its patrons. "My calculations for my son's improvement," wrote Robert Saunders, of Williamsburg, to him, in 1819, "are made more on his situation with you than on the talents and fitness of the tutor. I am frank enough to say, without intending to compliment you, that I prefer your superintending eye to the benefit he might derive from the best classical scholar I might know in Virginia."
But far more multiform in its scope than the Bremo Academy was the gymnasium, on the most thorough German
The spirit of the most catholic philanthropy animated Cocke throughout life. He was deeply interested in the labors of the Bible, Tract, and Sunday School Societies, and frequently made the toilsome and irksome journey to New England simply to attend the great conventions of those bodies periodically held in the principal cities of those States. The familiar social intercourse with influential Northern men of the different religious denominations which these occasions rendered possible, created in him a less prejudiced attitude of mind towards the Northern States than was to he perceived among the Virginians at large. "While we nurse an angry spirit instead of a conciliatory one towards them," he wrote to Cabell as late as 1855, "the distance between us will continue to grow." But it was not merely this temper, which so wisely deprecated the further feeding of the spreading and consuming sectional fires, that distinguished Cocke from the personal friends about him. He was the boldest and most persistent advocate in his native State at that time of the adoption of universal prohibition. Amiable ridicule, sneering derision, and silent contempt for the doctrine, which, in the next century, was to be incorporated in the statute book of Virginia, did not shake his loyalty to his convictions on this subject, or divert him from publicly and emphatically expressing them. "Of all the events in our history," he said, "the Maine Law
Cocke was as firm and outspoken an opponent of duelling and slavery as he was of intemperance. Against the first, he directed his pen with all the literary and reasoning skill at his command; and the latter he was in the habit of bitterly stigmatizing as a "curse" to his native State. Only a man of invincible moral courage could have openly taken such a stand in those intolerant times. As early as 1821, he pressed upon the representative in Congress from his district the advisability of an amendment to the Constitution that would allow an appropriation to be made for the transfer of Southern negroes to Africa as the only means of practical emancipation then available. Ten years afterwards he wrote, "I have long and still do steadfastly believe that slavery is the great cause of all the great evils of our land, individual as well as national, and every man of common foresight and reflection is obliged to admit that we or our posterity are inevitably destined to be overwhelmed unless the cause is removed.
Cocke, in the spirit of all the Virginians who occupied the same rank in society, found a wholesome delight in the pursuit of the different branches of agriculture. As far back as 1809, he wrote to Cabell that his time was "divided between his family, his farms, his garden, and his books"; and that he did not have a moment "to be troubled about politics." "I would not change my situation," he exclaims, " with the most puissant prince of the House of Napoleon." He exhibited this characteristic spirit of independence even in his views of his own calling. Tobacco was still the principal crop of the region in which his home was situated, and it had already gone far towards depreciating the fertility of its lands. There was
Although the name of General Cocke has passed into obscurity because he steadily declined to be elected to high office, yet in power of foresight, he was the most remarkable of all his Virginian contemporaries of his own generation. He not only urged a more conciliatory attitude towards the North, and more frequent intercourse with its people, as a means of removing mutual antagonisms, but he confidently anticipated the success of numerous causes which were, in his day, looked upon with chilling indifference or outspoken aversion, but which have become an accepted part of the solid structure of our present social and political life. He warmly supported every plan to raise the standards of education in all departments, from the lowest to the highest; he advocated with never ceasing energy and devotion the wisdom of adopting universal prohibition; he condemned the barbarism of duelling, which had destroyed some of the most accomplished and chivalrous sons of Virginia, and had gilded
This was after Jefferson's death. The plan was to purchase Monticello which, at that time, could have been bought for six thousand dollar. A letter from Cocke in the Rives Correspondence gives all the details of this plan. A similar school was to be established in Norfolk.
Cocke had acquired, on his own estate at Bremo, a practical knowledge of building. This fact also, no doubt, was not forgotten by Jefferson.
X. Site of the College Selected
The space that has been used in describing the personalities of Jefferson, Cabell, and Cocke is fully warranted in the light of a fact that will become increasingly perceptible as our theme advances; namely, that the establishment of the University of Virginia was not dictated by an irresistible popular impulse, but was due primarily to the unwearied exertions of Jefferson and Cabell; and its actual construction to Jefferson, assisted throughout with ability and fidelity by the modest Cocke in the background. Unless we take in the public spirit that had previously animated these men, we cannot arrive at a perfectly accurate conception of all the influences in which the institution had its origin. We have now to relate the story of the practical work which was done in founding it, for, as we shall see, the incorporation of Central College was really the incorporation of the University; the history of the College is the history of the University in its chrysalis state, which must be studied if we are to understand correctly
Among those features inherited from the College which became highly characteristic of the University was its official organization, its system of administration, its plans for buildings, and its requirements for professors. The provisions of the Act of Incorporation of Central College show as plainly as the design for its construction how long the thought of a university had been simmering in Jefferson's consciousness, for when the real university was determined upon a few years afterwards, the only alterations made in those provisions were such as were called for by the widening of the scope of the original scheme. One of the first clauses in the charter of Central College reveals that it was this future university, and not the present college, that he had most vividly in mind: the Governor of Virginia was to be the patron of the new seat of learning; and there was to be a board of six visitors by his appointment. Jefferson himself informs us that this provision was inserted for the explicit purpose of "divesting the situation of the College of all local character and control, and placing it under the will of those who represented the Legislature." The visitors were to hold office for a term of three years; were to come together at least once in the course of each twelve months; were to possess the right to choose a treasurer and proctor; to select the professors, determine their salaries and fees, and prescribe their courses of instruction; to lay down rules for the discipline of the students, and adopt regulations for their lodging and board; to overlook in a general way the officers, agents, and servants in the performance
The treasurer was to continue in office during the pleasure of the Board, and was only to pay out moneys in obedience to their specific or general instructions. The title to all the college property was to be invested in the proctor as trustee; suits were to be brought in his name; and he alone was to receive donations and subscriptions He was to be the custodian of the buildings and all other estate in the College's possession; the provider and dispenser of the food and fuel that would be required by the students; the immediate overseer of the agents and servants; and the personal medium through whom all the orders, laws, and regulations of the Board were to be carried out.
By the Act of Incorporation, Central College became the beneficiary of all the rights and claims of Albemarle Academy. The only certain income which it could expect to enjoy at an early date consisted of the subscriptions, which had been pledged, chiefly, it would seem, by the citizens of the surrounding region; and the money accruing from the sale of the glebe lands in Fredericksville and St. Anne's parishes. No steps had been taken as yet to swell these funds by means of the lottery which had been authorized. It was due to the emptiness of its coffers that, although the College was chartered in February, 1816, more than twelve months passed before the Board of Visitors assembled. If the proceeds of the plebe sales had been received from the commissioner of the county in the meanwhile, the amount was looked upon by them, previous to that meeting, as too small to justify them in buying a site and laying the foundation stone.
Apparently, it was not until April 8, 1817, that the Visitors endeavored to hold a sitting, end even on that occasion, only three were present; namely, Jefferson, Cabell and Cocke. As a quorum was wanting, no business was transacted beyond fixing upon May 5 as the date for the convening of the whole Board; but the real purpose of the three Visitors was perhaps to inspect a site for the College which had been offered to Jefferson, and which he, probably, thought should be secured, at least optionally, at once. This was done; and when the full Board met on the day appointed, one of their first acts was to ratify this provisional purchase. Jefferson's preference had been for the ground situated on the first ridge lying to the east of the present site of the University, property that belonged to John Kelly, a member of the former board of trustees of Albemarle Academy. Kelly is said to have been a Federalist in political creed; and for this reason, it is reported, the purpose for which the land was to be bought, and Jefferson's connection with it, were kept secret when the tender for it was made. It is quite probable, however, that he had a more personal motive for disliking the master of Monticello. We learn from the recollections of Alexander Garrett, that, when the first suggestion came up of converting Albemarle Academy into Central College, the trustees, presumably Kelly among them, proposed that the new institution should be named Jefferson College, and that Jefferson emphatically objected to this, and recommended "Central College" instead. If Kelly, as one of the trustees, was ready to honor his distinguished neighbor so signally at this time, there must have been some reason besides his Federalism why he, one year later, was so brusque in declining the tender for his property; and that reason, as we have already surmised, was his possible resentment at the summary
Perhaps, he would not have taken his disappointment so philosophically had he not felt that the land belonging to John M. Perry, lying to the west of Charlottesville also, but at a somewhat greater distance, afforded a fairly satisfactory substitute. This site was formed by a narrow ridge that sloped gently from north to south. It fell sharply away from the eastern edge of the small plateau at its top, and from the western edge spread downward here and there in a declivity quite as marked. Although this site was on very high ground, the view of the Blue Ridge must have always been screened more or less by the former Carr's Hill and the present Preston Heights. The Southwest Mountains, -which were then, as now, directly in the scope of the vision, -shut out the horizon too closely at hand to make the scene in that quarter as impressive as the grand spectacle of the Blue Ridge would have done in the other, had a site been obtainable which would have offered an unobstructed outlook on that splendid chain. In a country distinguished for its magnificent landscapes, the spot chosen for the Central College commanded not one entirely; not even from the future northern portico of the Rotunda.
This was the first drawback. The second lay in the
There was perhaps a third drawback, -one, however, that had so little practical importance that it does not seem to have come up for consideration in the selection of a site for the proposed group of buildings. If anyone
The first parcel of land, which covered an area of fortyseven acres, was, at the time of the purchase, an impoverished, disused field. The second parcel, amounting to one hundred and fifty-three acres, and situated about five-eighths of a mile from the first, contained a large quantity of valuable timber and stone for building, -the reason in part for its acquisition, since it was not needed as the site of any of the projected structures. It was also expected to form the watershed for the reservoir which was to supply the cisterns within the precincts.
The first parcel had been patented, in 1735, by Abraham Lewis, as a segment of a tract embracing eight hundred acres. In the course of the previous year, David Lewis and Joel Terrell, his brother-in-law, had acquired title to three thousand acres, which took in the whole of Lewis Mountain, situated on the western flank of the present University site. At an early date, George Nicholas, son of the colonial treasurer, Robert Carter Nicholas, had purchased a tract of two thousand acres, which included, among other sections of these first patents, that portion on which the University buildings now stand. In 1790, James Monroe bought the part to which the present Monroe Hill belongs. Twenty-four years afterwards, John M. Perry purchased of John Nicholas, then filling the office of county clerk, -the actual site of the University, and after holding it only three years, disposed of it to the Visitors of Central College. Perry was always addressed with the title of Captain, and had
There seems to have been at first a cloud on the title to the site, for it was not until June 23, 1817, that a valid conveyance of it could be, made to Alexander Garrett as the trustee. On that day, Garrett, by the written order of Perry, paid to John Winn $1,066.81 of the money due for the area sold. That both tracts had passed into the possession of the College by September 16, 1817, is confirmed by Perry's acknowledgment of a deferred payment by Garrett, the late proctor of the College, for Nelson Barksdale was now the incumbent of that office.
Letter of George W. Randolph to Dr. James L. Cabell, Cabell Papers,University Library. Kelly was not a "fool." His high standing as a man of character and business ability, previously mentioned, clearly demonstrated the contrary.
We say " remotely possible " because Jefferson's preference for straight lines was one of the fundamental characteristics of his architectural taste.
XI. The Subscription List
Having acquired a suitable site for the College, the next step was to erect the requisite buildings. Before describing the remarkable architectural plan which Jefferson had already drafted for use, it will be necessary to
Jefferson, Cabell, and Cocke led off with a subscription of one thousand dollars apiece. So speedy was the success following the appeal, that an early meeting of the
Colonel Lewis, of Campbell, made a counter proposition. It appears that he was the owner of a virgin gold mine situated in Buckingham county at a spot not far from Cabell's home near Warminster. "It is the richest mine of that metal ever discovered," he wrote, with honest enthusiasm. He offered to convey a half interest in this amazing underground storehouse of wealth to Central College on condition that the whole was to be drawn for in a lottery, in which twenty thousand tickets were to be used, at a valuation of ten dollars a ticket; or ten thousand issued at a valuation of twenty dollars. The profit would, on this calculation, amount to two hundred thousand dollars, which was to be equally divided between Lewis and the College. The scheme, seductive as it was,
Jefferson too, about this date, found serious impediments in the same path. The main obstruction .which he had to surmount, he wrote Cabell in September, 1817, was the "idea that it was a local thing, a mere Albemarle Academy. I endeavor to convince them it is a general seminary of the sciences meant for the use of the State. In this view, all approve and rally to the object. But time seems necessary to plant this idea firmly in their minds."
When the report of the Visitors was drawn up on January 6, 1818, the total amount of the subscriptions had grown to $35,102; and to this should be added $3,195.86 derived from the sale of the glebes and now in the custody of the court commissioner. Unhappily, the larger proportion of the voluntary contributions was payable in four annual instalments; none were due until April 1, 1818; and some not until three years should have passed after that date. At least one-half of the total amount would be needed in the summer of 1818; and in anticipation of this fact, Jefferson, on January 15, asked Cabell, then in attendance in the Senate in Richmond, to obtain a loan from the banks of ten to twenty thousand dollars on the security of the subscription lists; but the application was turned down until the Board should consent to give their personal endorsement. Although additional subscriptions continued to come in, this had no
Taking the returns of the subscription as a whole, there seems to have been no permanent reason for dissatisfaction. In Albemarle county, where every prominent family put its name in the list, the amount of the several contributions ranged.. from one thousand dollars to twenty dollars; seven citizens pledged themselves each for the former sum and eleven for five hundred dollars respectively; there were one hundred and twenty-nine subscribers in all, and the total sum promised was $27,440.33. In Richmond city, there were only eleven subscribers, and the largest amount pledged was five hundred dollars. Most of these contributors were bound to Jefferson by ties of kinship or personal loyalty. The amount pledged by the eleven aggregated $2,225.00. In Stafford county but one subscriber was secured, and in Winchester, but four, who together pledged themselves for eight hundred dollars. All these subscribers were personal friends of Cabell. In Amherst and Buckingham counties, there was only one subscriber respectively, and each pledged himself for a small sum. In Cumberland county, which faced on the fertile low grounds of James River, and contained the homes of many wealthy and cultured families of gentle descent, the number of subscribers rose to twenty-five. The sum contributed by them was $2,190.00. In Fluvanna, there were fourteen subscribers, -among them General Cocke, -and their offerings amounted to $2,590.00; in Goochland, twenty
The list of the subscribers is a notable one, not simply from a social point of view, but also for the high public spirit and esteem for learning which their contributions so plainly indicate. In the list for Albemarle, we discover the following respected names: Carr, Divers, Coles, Dawson, Duke, Garrett, Gordon, Garth, Harper, Harris, Kinsolving, Lindsay, Maury, Randolph, Lewis, Leitch, Minor, Monroe, Morris, Nicholas, Patterson, Shackelford, Waddell, Southall, Watson, Shelton, Walker, Winn, Wertenbaker, Wood and Woods; in Stafford county, Brent; in Winchester, Carr, Holmes, Lee, and Tucker; in Buckingham, Eppes; in Cumberland, Bondurant, Deans, Daniel, Harrison, Hughes, Page, Skipwith, Trent, Thornton, Walker, and Woodson; in Fluvanna, Cocke, Scott, Cary, Fuqua and Winn; in Goochland, Carter, Garland, Pickett, Pleasant, Pendleton, Sampson, Randolph, and Watkins; in Loudoun, Mason; in Louisa, Morris, Minor, Trueheart, and Watson; in Lynchburg, Harrison, Pollard, and Yancey; in Nelson, Rives, Galloway, Digges, Garland, Lewis, McClelland and Mosby; and in Orange, Madison.
Many of the local subscribers, with the full concurrence of the Board of Visitors, were anxious to pay the entire amount of their contributions in a form that was suggested by the needs of the College in the course of its building. W. D. Garth, for instance, furnished many feet of dressed plank in return for the release of his pledge; Reuben Maury supplied a large quantity of farm products on the same acceptable condition; so did
The following also obtained an acquittance in the like manner.
- John Dunscomb, bacon...........$45.75
- Edward Anderson, plaster.............19.80
- C. Everest, oats.............29.00
- J. H. Terrell, corn................55.00
- Thomas Draffin, plank................45.00
- J. C. Ragland, medical services................42.60
- N. H. Lewis, plank................8.25
- Reuben Maury, plank................10.99
XII. Plan for the Buildings
But a far more important transaction of the Board at this meeting was the adoption of Jefferson's plan for the buildings. This plan, it seems, had been carefully
The same plan, -except that one side was left open, -was submitted to the trustees of Albemarle Academy and accepted by them. The exact description of it as adopted by the Board of Visitors of Central College was in these words: "a distinct pavilion or building for each separate professorship; these to be arranged around a square; each pavilion to contain a school-room and two
In drafting this first plan of his academical village, which was to contain pavilions on each closed side of the square, with dormitories between, -there were two practical advantages that Jefferson kept clearly and constantly before him. The foremost was that this arrangement would sensibly diminish the possibility of serious loss by fire. Had the dormitories and the professors' apartments been crowded into one large building, there would have been a perpetual hazard of the structure being burnt up as a whole; this fate did overtake the central building of the University of Missouri in 1893; and, in 1895, it also befell the Rotunda and its annex at the University of Virginia itself. In the time of Jefferson, there was less facility for smothering an incipient conflagration, and the danger of one was then far more justly alarming because of its certain fatal consequences, should it occur. But the second and most influential reason in Jefferson's mind for the academic village was the ability, which this plan created to prolong the east and west lines of the square indefinitely. He was forced to consider the economic aspects of the situation primarily from the point of view of the cost of supplementary buildings. The scheme of a square open at its southern end was nicely adapted to the financial condition of the College; one pavilion or two pavilions, ten dormitories or twenty, could, from year to year, or decade to decade, be added on to the east and west side, or to both sides, as the increase
With his acute sense of architectural beauty and his taste for building, his mind must have been elated by the prospects of gratifying both, which opened up to him when the Visitors of Central College, on May 5, 1817, recorded their approval of his noble plan and appointed Cocke and himself a committee with full authority, jointly or severally, to carry it out in detail. Not since the completion of Monticello had he possessed such an opportunity to show his extraordinary aptitude for architecture, without being trammeled by the intervention of others. In his designs for the Capitol at Richmond, and for public edifices in Washington and private residences in Virginia, there was always some one with the power to modify or push aside his recommendations. In this new field, he was quite as unhampered as he was in constructing his own home, for Cocke, his colleague on the building committee, while he did not, from a practical point of view, approve the plan in many particulars, never undertook to interfere or obstruct;[30] and this seems to have
Jefferson wrote to Cabell, his most sympathetic correspondent, that, in his judgment, a remarkable "material basis" for the University was necessary "for its intellectual superstructure." It will be recollected that he had once asserted that it was not more costly to build a beautiful house than to build an ugly one, and he tacitly refused to contract his general plan on the score of economy except to cake brick or stone as a substitute for marble, which alone was really in harmony with his splendid design. There was a time, even in the history of Central College, when he was harassed with the thought of his inability to secure the funds which he needed for his projected pavilions and dormitories, but this prospect never caused him to draw back to a commoner level. Indeed, his disposition, after the projection
The question now offers itself: how far were the details of Jefferson's general plan altered by him at the suggestion of others after the Visitors had authorized the erection of the first pavilion? Up to that date, the scheme in its entirety appears to have been precisely the same as he had formed it in the beginning. So far as we now know, not even a hint had as yet been obtained from any one with any pretension to architectural training. The nearest models to his proposed group in existence were the cloistered retreats in Europe that had come down from the Middle Ages. These were distinguished for similar quadrangles and colonnades, with dormitories or cells opening into covered ways, which ran the whole length of the quadrangles. The real inspiration, however, as we shall see, sprang from another and more ancient source.
But that Jefferson received suggestions after May 5, 1817, when the first pavilion was determined upon, which were reflected in the final construction of some of the buildings, is now very clearly proven. Four days subsequent to the meeting of the Visitors, he wrote to William Thornton, the distinguished architect, whom he had known in Washington: "What we wish," he said, "is that these pavilions, as they will show themselves above the dormitories, shall be models of taste and good architecture, and of a variety of appearance, no two alike, so as to serve as specimens for the architectural lecturer. Will you set your imagination to work, and sketch some designs for us, no matter how loosely with the pen, without the trouble of referring to scale or rule, for we want nothing but the outline of the architecture, as the internal must be arranged according to local convenience? A few sketches, such as may not take you a minute, will greatly oblige us."
It is palpable that Jefferson was seeking, not formal designs that would materially alter the fundamental character of his whole scheme, but simply hints or sketches that would further enhance its beauty by variety. Two sketches seem to have been sent to him by Thornton, accompanied by suggestions, some of which were accepted and others ignored. Thornton, counseled that the front of the first pavilion should be supported by. arches next to the ground, with Doric columns above the arches; and this advice was adopted; but not so the advice given at the same time, that the lecture-room should he placed at the top of the house, and the height of the house increased,-changes which were recommended to be followed in .all the pavilions. Thornton, further thought that the roofs of the dormitories should be made to slope outward from a parapet, and that the arcades in front
Jefferson was not satisfied with Thornton's aid alone, but also wrote to Latrobe, his associate in public building during his Presidency, and perhaps the most competent professional architect in the United States at this time. He gives him the same general description of his plan which he had given Thornton, but with several additional details; thus he mentions the width and depth of each pavilion; and furthermore, points out that there is to be a colonnade running the entire length of all the structures as high as the lower story of the principal ones. As in his letter to Thornton, so in this letter to Latrobe, he asks only for outlines, however loose or rough, of fronts; the interior arrangements, he repeats, will be governed by convenience alone. A few sketches only, he concludes, were desired. Latrobe was so much flattered and gratified by Jefferson's request for assistance, that, unlike Thornton, who replied rather promptly, he delayed his answer until June 17 in order to study the plan which had been submitted to him. So bulky were the drawings that he made in the course of this study that he did not venture to enclose them by mail. Jefferson was visiting his estate in Bedford county when Latrobe's letter reached Monticello; and it was not until July 16 that he acknowledged its arrival. "I did not mean to, give you this trouble," he wrote, " but since you have been so kind as to
The magnificent conception of placing a structure of the most imposing character in the middle of the north line had its origin, it would seem, with Latrobe. "The centre building," he wrote on July 24, "ought to exhibit in mass and detail as perfect a specimen of good architectural taste as can be devised." [31] Thornton, it will be recalled, had simply suggested that a single Corinthian pavilion should be erected there instead of the less imposing pavilions, with adjacent dormitories, which had been projected by Jefferson; who seems; however, to have been at once favorably impressed with Latrobe's nobler proposal: "We will leave the north side open," he replied on August 3, "so that, if the State should establish there the university they contemplate, they may fill it up with something of the grand kind." It was characteristic of his architectural taste that the "something" which he finally adopted was on the model of the Pantheon.
The original plan had provided only two rooms for the accommodation of each professor. It has been supposed that Jefferson, having in mind the early principle of the College of William and Mary, favored the employment of unmarried instructors alone, and, therefore, was only inclined to furnish bachelor quarters for each member of the teaching staff. The quick eye of Latrobe caught this defect in the plan at once, but Jefferson, in his reply, explained it away by pointing out that the back-side
The roll of Latrobe's drawings arrived on October 6. Two more pavilions having been authorized by the Board, Jefferson, on the 14th, wrote to him, "We shall certainly select their fronts from these (drawings) . . . . Some of your fronts would require too great a width for us because, the aspects of our fronts being east arid west, we are obliged to give the largest dimensions to our flanks, which look north and south." The influence of Latrobe is distinctly reflected in pavilions III and V, and it possibly comes out also in several of the pavilions erected after the incorporation of the University; but this cannot be positively stated owing to the loss of the drawings. It is most strongly suspected in pavilion X, which closely follows III; and also in pavilion VIII. While both Thornton and himself left the stamp of their genius on some of the important details of the general design, -Latrobe especially, by his recommendation of pavilions at the angles and of a great dominating building at the central axis, perceptibly modified and improved it, -the credit of the general architectural conception of Central College belongs to Jefferson. His fundamental inspiration lay, not in the suggestions of contemporaries, valuable as they were, but in the monumental works of Greece and Rome as delineated in the plates of Palladio. This fact will disclose itself more clearly when we come to describe the progress of the whole design after Central College had been converted into the University of Virginia.
Semmes, in his biography of John H. B. Latrobe, refers to an article written by Bernard C. Steiner on the subject of the Rev. Samuel Knox. In this article, Steiner expresses the belief that Jefferson was influenced by Knox's Essay on a System of National Education in reaching a decision as to the proper constitution and style of architecture for the University of Virginia. Dr. Fiske Kimball, in a letter to the present writer, makes the following comment on this suggestion: "When one comes to examine, with open mind, the architectural proposals of Knox, -a series of concentric squares facing inwards, with a tower in the center, -the certain resemblances which Steiner picks out seem insignificant compared with the fundamental difference of type, especially when Jefferson's preliminary studies, rather than the finished product, are taken into consideration."
Another advantage, which, in his opinion, it possessed was that it would diminish the chances of infection. He thought also that one large structure would absorb too great a proportion of the building fund.
"The more I see and reflect upon the plan and details, the further I find myself from joining you in your admiration of it. Depend upon it, if you live to see it go into operation, its practical defects will be manifest to all." Cocke to Cabell, December 8, 1821. That at leant one of these defects became irksome to the members of the Faculty as early as September, 1826, is demonstrated by their urging upon the Board, at that time, the expediency of attaching to each pavilion the two adjoining dormitories. "The occupation of these dormitories as at present by the students," they said, "subjects the professors to noise and interruption when preparing for the discharge of their official duties, and always breaks in on the privacy of their families. Nor does the good character of those who may occupy such dormitories afford any security against these inconveniences, as they are all subject to be visited by the idle and disorderly, over whom they can exercise no control. The neighborhood of a professor, so far from proving a check to their irregularities, either loses its first influence from familiarity, or by the very sense of restraint it imposes, provokes a spirit of defiance and renders many disorderly for no other reason than to show they are not afraid to be so. The necessary occupations of a family must also sometimes prove an interruption to the student, and yet oftener afford an excuse to the many who gladly seek one for a relaxation of diligence. Such a state of things cannot but encourage habitual disrespect to the professors, and in many ways lead to unfriendly feelings between them and the students. They cannot forbear to express the conviction that the smaller the number of students who are permitted to occupy the rooms on the Lawn, the more favorable it will be to the good order of the institution as well as to the comfort of themselves and their families."
Latrobe thus describes his proposed central building: "Below, a couple or four rooms for janitors or tutors. Above, a room for chemical or other lectures. Above this, a circular lecture room under the dome."
XIII. The Actual Building
The Board of Visitors of the College, it will be recalled, authorized on May 5 (1817) the erection of the first pavilion, and empowered a special committee, composed of Jefferson and Cocke, to supervise the successive stages of construction. The first step was to lay off the plat of ground selected for the site of the institution. It was not until July 18 that Jefferson staked out his plan. The theodolite was fixed in the ground at the middle point of the northern line of the square, on which now rises the circular walls of the Rotunda. In the beginning, there had to be embraced in the survey an area sufficient to allow twenty dormitories to be attached to each of the pavilions projected for the three lines. The same area was still required when the number of pavilions for the east and west lines, respectively, was increased to five, for, at the same time, the number of dormitories to be attached to each pavilion was reduced to ten. At this period, as we have mentioned, the site was simply an open worn-out field rising high and dry by itself, and without any obstructions in the way of trees or bushes. The lay-off was completed under Jefferson's eye, and certainly partly, if not entirely, with his actual assistance. Ten working men, quite probably hired slaves, were promptly turned in to change the surface, with spade and hoe, to the exact condition required for the foundation of the several buildings. The design of East and West Ranges, as distinguished from East and West Lawn, had not yet been considered; the lay-off in the beginning was confined to the present lawn and the sites of the structures that were to confront it.
It was not until October 6 (1817) that the corner-stone
The morning that was to witness the ceremony of laying the corner-stone was at first fair, but the clouds later on began to gather; -happily, however, only to disperse and leave the weather clear again. The county and superior courts, with their promiscuous attendance of citizens, set upon business or amusement, were in session in Charlottesville; but when informed of the impending event, the judges left the bench, and accompanied by the crowd of hangers-on, repaired to the scene. The doors `of all the stores were locked, private houses shut up, and the entire population of the little town darkened the road to the College. They were animated, some by an interest in learning, some by a spirit of diversion, and some, perhaps, by a desire to gaze at a group of three men composed of two former Presidents of the United States, Jefferson and Madison, and the present incumbent of that office, Monroe. Among the persons who occupied the seats of prominence at the ceremony was David Watson,
The corner-stone was laid with the customary state by Lodges 60 and 90. Rev. William King was the chaplain, John M. Perry, the architect, and Alexander Garrett, the worthy grand-master. President Monroe applied the square and plumb, the chaplain asked a blessing on the stone, the crowd huzzaed, and the band played "Hail Columbia." Corn was now scattered, and then Valentine W. Southall delivered the address to the general audience. With the grand-master's address to the Visitors, the ceremony was concluded.
Alexander Garrett, as proctor, had already contracted with John M. Perry for the erection of the first pavilion. It was to be built of brick and was to contain one large room on the lower floor, two on the upper, and offices and a cellar in the basement. All the carpenter's and joiner's work was to be done by Perry; and he was also to supply the lumber as well as the ironmongery. Payment was to be made in three instalments: two hundred dollars to be delivered in cash at once; five hundred so soon as the roof was raised; and the remainder when the house was accepted as satisfactorily finished. This contract is interesting for a reason additional to its being the first: it not only bore the signature of Jefferson, but it was witnessed by William Wertenbaker, then a young man, but afterwards to become one of the most useful and honored officers of the institution through more than half a century.
Jefferson had early taken steps in person to procure bricklayers of the highest expertness. With that purpose in view, he, during his sojourn at Poplar Forest, in Bedford county, in the summer of 1817 visited Lynchburg,
So dilatory were the workmen in constructing the first pavilion that he grew doubtful as to whether it would be finished before the ensuing January. He rode down to the College on alternate days, although, at this time, in his seventy-fifth year, to quicken the laborers by the stimulus of his presence. "I follow it up," he wrote Cabell on October 24, "from a sense of the impression which will be made on the Legislature by the prospect of its immediate operation. The walls should be done by our next court, but they will not be by a great deal." In the following December, while again stopping at Poplar Forest, he visited Lynchburg a second time to hire bricklayers to construct the two additional pavilions which the Board of Visitors had ordered to ,be erected. At that time, this class of workingmen were asking fifteen dollars a thousand for laying place-brick and thirty for laying oil-stock, there having been recently a sharp advance in prices owing to the increased charge for corn. Jefferson entered into a provisional engagement with Matthew Brown, a local builder, to pay him as much as was obtainable for similar jobs in Lynchburg; but he hoped that, for a contract involving the purchase and use of three hundred thousand to four hundred thousand bricks, a cheaper undertaker might be found in Richmond; and for that reason he urged Cabell, then attending a session of the Senate, to look about for one in that city. "Pray make a business of it," he wrote, "make such a bargain as you can and inform me immediately." Cabell, although assisted by Major Christopher Tompkins, a builder of experience, was unable to conclude a satisfactory arrangement,
He preferred to use slate for roofing, and in June, 1818, corresponded with Colonel Bernard Peyton, of Richmond, for the purpose of obtaining a man with sufficient practical information to pass correctly upon the quality of the products of certain quarries in Albemarle county and willing to undertake the contract for covering the pavilions and dormitories, should that quality sustain the requisite test. One Jones, of Wales, who had already done work of this character in Charlottesville, had removed to Richmond, and it was he whom Jefferson was anxious to employ. It was soon shown that the stone in the strata around the College was not suitable for a delicate tool, -it proved both expensive and tedious to chisel it. In July, 1817, Jefferson had been authorized by the Board of Visitors on his own motion to import a stone-cutter from Italy; he had decided to construct the two additional pavilions on a more ornate and ambitious model than the one followed in the first pavilion; and for this reason, he thought that it would be imprudent to depend exclusively on the domestic workingman, and that he ought to go abroad for the most highly trained skill that could be found there. One of the most competent of the domestic builders was James Dinsmore, whom Jefferson had, in 1798, discovered in Philadelphia and brought to Monticello, where he remained as his principal employee in house joinery for ten years. "I have never known," said Jefferson, "a more faithful, sober, discreet, honest, and respectable man." Associated with Dinsmore at Monticello was John Neilson, whom Jefferson had also come to know in Philadelphia, in 1804, and who continued under contract to him during a period of four years. Both of these men were
Jefferson was sanguine that the first pavilion, with its dormitories, would be completed before the end of 1817, but it was not finished by August 4, 1818, although it was, on that date, reported to be "far advanced." A second pavilion, with its dormitories too, was expected, -without good reason, however,-to receive the final stroke of the hammer and trowel by the ensuing January (1818).
XIV. The First Professors Elected
Long before these pavilions, with their annexes, were built, Jefferson had been revolving the anxious question as to how the professorships were to be filled, and which of them, if necessary, should have the preference. The Board of Visitors, at their meeting on October 7, 1817, the day following the laying of the corner-stone of the first pavilion, -had decided as to who should be the occupants of the one already going up, and the two additional ones which they had just concluded to erect. The first they determined to set aside for the professor of languages, belles-lettres, rhetoric, oratory, history and geography; the second for the professor of chemistry, zoology, botany and anatomy; whilst the third, until wanted for the remaining professor, should be converted into a boarding house, to be rented to a respectable French family on condition that only the French language should be spoken there by the students in the course of their meals. At the meeting of the Board of Visitors
Writing on January 18, 1800, to Priestley, Jefferson said, "We should propose to draw from Europe the first characters in science by considerable temptations, which would not need to be repeated after the first set had prepared fit successors, and given reputation to the institution. From some splendid characters, I have received offers most perfectly reasonable and practical." It will be recalled that, at one time, he had just reason to be confident that he would be able to secure the talents of Say for a chair in Central College so soon as incorporated; and also that he had sanguinely fixed his eye on other aliens of equal celebrity. It seems like an unexpected and puzzling anti-climax to discover that the first man who was invited to become a professor in that college was a clergyman and an American, Dr. Samuel Knox, of Baltimore; at a meeting of the Board, held on July 28, 1817, several weeks before the corner-stone of the
Dr. Knox, either appalled by the burdens which the task of teaching in so many departments of knowledge would impose on him, or repelled by the non-sectarian; character of the projected institution, briefly, vaguely, but discreetly, replied that " he had gone out of business "; which would seem to prove that he had been a professor as well as a preacher by calling. His shadowy figure enjoys this distinction in the history of the University down to the War of Secession: he was the first clergyman who was asked to fill one of its chairs during that period. Some years afterwards, Jefferson appears to have made it plain to Francis Walker Gilmer that, in his search for English scholars, the application of no minister of the Gospel was to be considered with favor.
On October 7, about two months after Knox's refusal, the compass was boxed by the Board of Visitors, under Jefferson's prompting, in extending to Dr. Thomas Cooper, an invitation to become the professor of chemistry and law. Cooper, if not openly and frankly an infidel, was so vague and shifty in his religious beliefs that he acknowledged that he himself could not state definitely what they were. He seems to have been a very erratic, if not unsavory character, on the whole, in spite of his indisputable
Was Cooper the marvelous political economist, jurist, and chemist that Jefferson pronounced him to be? Jefferson's insight was sometimes rather awry, as his unqualified encomiums on Ossian and the obscure economist, Tracy, prove. It is not beyond the range of probability that Cooper's general attainments were overrated by some of the communities of the New World in which he lived simply because their culture was not yet sufficiently discriminating, as in the Old, to detect the superficiality amid the rather glittering pretensions. But whether he was a man of as phenomenal parts as Jefferson and others supposed, it is not to be denied that he had, throughout his career, exhibited a rough contempt for the sentiments and feelings of others; and that discretion in expressing his own views was a quality which he seemed to esteem but little, and show but rarely. He was an Englishman by birth, who had begun his active life as a member of
Jefferson had been first interested in Priestley in consequence of his heterodox writings, which had largely influenced his own religious creed; and he had been further drawn to him by the fact that he was one of the first persons of his nation to perceive the importance of physical science in education. The religious and political persecution to which he had been ruthlessly subjected recommended him still more warmly to Jefferson, who detested every form of oppression, intolerance, and injustice, no matter how erratic, unworthy, or humble the object of it might be. Association with Priestley in scientific tastes, and in a common martyrdom for opinion's sake, was all that was needed to rivet his good-will and respect for Cooper, now a citizen of Pennsylvania, and this was further justified by the reputation which Cooper had won as a judge, and afterwards as a professor in Dickinson College and a lecturer in the University of Pennsylvania. He is said to have been imprisoned at one time by the
Jefferson was made very sanguine by this liberal offer, and on the 14th, about a week later, wrote cheerfully to Francis Walker Gilmer, "Our Central College looks up with hope. Cooper, I think, will accept a professorship in it. We are in quest of a Ticknor for languages, but have not yet found one. If left to ourselves, we shall be better than William and Mary, but if the Legislature adopts us for the University, we will then be what we should be. I have considerable hope they will do it and at the coming session."
These words let out into the light an important, if not the principal, reason for Jefferson's urgency in hurrying the first three buildings to a finish and for his premature nomination of professors: he wished to be in a
By his shrewd stroke of making the Governor of the State the patron of the College, Jefferson secured the tactical advantage of laying before the General Assembly annually a complete record of those proceedings of the Board of Visitors which formed the history of the institution during the previous twelve months. This offered a regularly recurring opportunity of arousing an interest in the College in the minds of the persons who had the most power to serve it. In the report for January 6, 1818, he dwells on the plans that had been adopted for filling the several chairs. "Our funds already certain," he wrote, "will enable us to establish, during the ensuing season, two professorships only with their necessary buildings; and to erect a pavilion, and -if the outstanding subscription papers fulfil our hopes, -the dormitories also for a third; depending for the salary, as well as for the salary and buildings for the fourth, on future and unassured donations. The four are to be languages, mathematics, physiological and ideological sciences. "Each of these important professorships, on account of
"I find the impression very general," Cabell wrote Jefferson, Feb. 19, 1819, "that either in point of manners, habits or character, he is defective. He is certainly rather unpopular in the enlightened part of society."
XV. Fight Against Cooper
By February, 1818, the prospect of retaining Cooper had become overclouded. An acute hostility to his appointment had already been expressed by members of the religious denominations. During the following autumn, after the Report of the Rockfish Gap Commission, in favor of converting Central College into the State University, had been drafted for delivery to the General Assembly, Abbe Corrèa endeavored to strengthen Cooper's position by trumpeting his great attainments. "Learning and love of science and of its diffusion," he wrote Francis W. Gilmer, "are as different as light and caloric. They are not always united. I have met through life many a phosphoric savant who did not communicate heat. Judge Cooper does both." The University having been chartered, his reappointment came up
Chapman Johnson, one of the most astute lawyers of the State, and a very accomplished and winning man, had taken David Watson's place on the Board. He, together with Cabell and Cocke, were averse to Cooper's reappointment. Cabell had written to Jefferson and hinted a doubt about the expediency of the choice, but if he was employed, said he, he should not be permitted to come alone. Nevertheless, Cabell thought that Jefferson should be sustained if he had committed himself to Cooper; and this seems to have been Johnson's attitude, too, when he learned from R. H. Lee, of Staunton, who had been one of Cooper's pupils, -that his character was entitled to unquestionable respect. Cocke, however, was not so much inclined to yield, though pained by the position in which his conscientious objections put him. "The thought of opposing my individual opinion," he wrote Cabell on March 1, 1819, "upon a subject of this nature against the high authority of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison, has cost me a conflict which has shaken the very foundations of my health, for I feet now as if I should have a spell of sickness. But I could not act
Jefferson, however, was not to be turned in his resolution; he urged that the new institution was bound in law to enter into a contract with Cooper, should he accept the proposal which had been made to him.[33] "Moreover," he added with the extravagance which tinged his impressions quite frequently when the spirit of the partisan was aroused in him, " Cooper is acknowledged by every enlightened man who knows him to be the greatest man in America in the powers of his mind, and in acquired information, and that without a single exception. I understand that a rumor unfavorable to his habits has been afloat in some places, but I never heard of a single man who undertook to charge him with present or late intemperance, and I think rumor is fairly outweighed by the counter-evidence of the great desire shown at William and Mary to get him; that shown by the enlightened men of Philadelphia to retain him; and the anxiety of New York to get him; that of Corrèa to place him here, who is in constant intercourse with him; the evidence I received on his visit here, when the state of his health permitted him to eat nothing but vegetables and drink nothing but water; his declaration to me at the table that he dared not drink ale or cider or a single glass of wine, and this in the presence of Corrèa, who, if there had been any hypocrisy in it, would not have failed to tell me so."
Jefferson carried his point, and on March 29, 1819,
The deep aversion of the religious sects now again raised a threatening voice. Cooper had published an edition of Dr. Priestley's works, in the preface to which he had given expression to views flagrantly unorthodox.[34] Dr. John H. Rice, editor of the justly influential Evangelical Magazine, who, as we shall soon see, had taken an energetic part in creating a popular sentiment favorable to the passage of the University bill, came out with a vigorous but temperate article condemning Cooper's employment as a teacher of youth. The quotations which he submitted from Cooper's writings were such as to shock the minds of a conservative people like the Virginians; and he was, therefore, sustained by public opinion in the assertion that, as the University was a State institution, the different denominations who joined in supporting it had a right to be offended by the selection of professors whose heresies struck, as they thought, at the foundations of "social order, morals, and religion." Jefferson's choler was quickly and thoroughly aroused by these clerical reflections on Cooper, who, he declared with bitterness, had been charged with Unitarianism "as presumptuously as if it were a crime.." "For myself," he wrote General Robert B. Taylor, "I am not disposed to regard the denunciation of these satellites of religious inquisition"; but his colleagues differed in view from him, and when the mortified Cooper offered his resignation,
Jefferson did not disguise his chagrin over this miscarriage. "I have looked to him," he wrote General Taylor, in May, 1820, "as the corner-stone of our edifice. I know of no one who could have aided us so much in forming the future regulations for our infant institution, and although we may hereafter procure from Europe equivalents in the sciences, they can never replace the advantages of his experience, his knowledge of the character, the habits, and manners of our country, his identification with its sentiments and principles, and the high reputation he has obtained in it generally." Such was the unlucky upshot of the only formal arrangement which was entered into to procure a professor for Central College. The contract was passed on to the University, where it ended in the disaster which has been described. The later experience with Professors Long and Key, who did not remain until the end of the terms for which they were employed, confirms the pertinency of Jefferson's reasons for so ardently wishing to engage Cooper so far as those reasons related to his residence of many years n the country, and to his sympathy with Republican doctrines and institutions. From other points of view, his resignation, perhaps, was no cause for regret. He seemed to flourish most in a storm-centre created by himself; but that was not the atmosphere which would have
Writing to Cabell Feb. 19, 1819, Jefferson says, "Our engagement with Dr. Cooper obliges us to receive him, and I shall propose to let an usher of our nomination and under our patronage, give a grammar school for the senior classes in Charlottesville on his account altogether, receiving nothing from the College. In that case, Cooper may take the highest or higher classes and may open his law school."
"I fear that Cooper's appointment," William H. Cabell wrote to his brother, Joseph, March 21, 1820, "will do the University infinite injury. His religious views are damnable, as exhibited in a book published by him shortly after the death of Priestley. You will have every religious man in Virginia against you."
XVI. The Bill for Conversion
In the midst of all these plans for building pavilions and dormitories and engaging professors, how did Jefferson expect to acquire the funds which would be needed for so many purposes? The subscription list was his only immediate reliance, and knowing how slender and inadequate it was, he began to direct a wistful eye towards the State treasury, which now possessed, in the Literary Fund, a source of large income for the benefit of public education. He was convinced that no institution of permanent importance could be sustained by private contributions alone; and this, as we have already pointed out, was a powerful motive with him in hastening the completion of the College, for as long as it was without pavilions, dormitories, and instructors, no appeal could be made to the General Assembly for assistance with any prospect of success.
When, in the winter of 1817-18, Jefferson's bill for general education was submitted, with an alternate clause for the adoption of Central College as the university then talked of, Cabell hoped that, should that clause be ignored and no university authorized, a separate bill asking for an appropriation for the College would be more fortunate. "I have often observed," he wrote shrewdly to his chief at Monticello, "a disposition in the Assembly to console the disappointed by granting them something on the failure of a favorite scheme. Miserable omen for science and literature that their friends should fly to such a sentiment on such an occasion, yet it would be better to do this than to fail altogether." It was his plan, should
After struggling against this illiberal attitude, and witnessing the defeat of Jefferson's bill, Cabell became so much disheartened that he doubted the expediency of petitioning for the desired annuity at this session. "Let it be done at the next," was his frequently reiterated advice. Such was the character of the present House, he said, that it was questionable whether it would grant the College even the right to hold a lottery. "Certain interests," he continued, "have conspired to cause the Assembly to turn its back on literature and science. A portion of the middle country delegation, by cooperating with these interests, have darkened our prospects on this occasion. These, it is thought, are opposed to the Central College, partly because of their hostility to some of the persons who support it, or from other motives but little more commendable. It is of infinite importance to the best interests of the State to send some able and virtuous men to the next Assembly." And again he said,
Whilst Jefferson's bill, which really aimed at the conversion of Central College into a State university, was thrown out at this session, nevertheless an Act was passed, as a substitute, that authorized the establishment of a great seat of learning for the whole Commonwealth, and the selection of a commission to choose its site. The struggle for that site was to be adjourned to Rockfish Gap, and the conference there was to be attended by Jefferson. For the first and last time in the history of this protracted controversy, he was to be present in person on the ground where the battle was actually fought; and the complete success which crowned his participation in that occasion, demonstrates that the influence of his tongue could be quite as powerful as the influence of his pen, whenever he considered it wise to exert it.
SECOND PERIOD
GERMINATION -ACADEMY AND COLLEGE History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919; The Lengthened Shadow of One Man, Volume I | ||