University of Virginia Library

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

shapes and voices. He was, of his own personal knowledge, aware that the College of William and Mary had been, and probably still was, as saturated with the vapours of Episcopalianism as Oxford itself. No influences but his shrewd recognition of the sentimental value of age in a seat of learning, the prestige of its situation at first in the capital, and that affection for his alma mater which still tarried in his breast, had, perhaps, impelled him, even in the beginning, to plan for its elevation to so high a point that it would satisfy the educational wants of the whole State. But all these influences, powerful as they once were, in making his attitude towards the ancient college so favorable and so sanguine, must have gradually weakened and fallen away as he perceived, with ever increasing clearness, that popularity with the old dissenting sects was not likely to be won even by the proposed broadening of its curriculum; and that the mere suppression of the theological school would not suffice in itself to blot out the historic sense of the unquestionable, though, perhaps; exaggerated, wrongs which those sects had suffered in the past, through the workings of the Episcopalian system. In his own heart, he probably sympathized with their lingering animosity, although he may have thought that they were hardly justified by common patriotism in letting that feeling deprive the new university of their support, without which it could not hope to represent the whole community in its attendance of students.[11]

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

that, without his dominating personality and his indefatigable supervision, it would have presented to the eye to-day perhaps the most beautiful group of college buildings, the noblest academical setting, to be discovered on the American Continent.

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,

discussed between them. The President thought " the attempt premature," by which cryptic expression he probably meant that the museum should be reserved for the institution which was yet to be established elsewhere. He returned the same reply to De la Costa, when his assistance was sought directly at a somewhat later date. In the meanwhile, Coles had fully stated Jefferson's present mental attitude towards the venerable college and the hoped-for new university. " If I could bring myself," he wrote to Cabell, " to consider Williamsburg as the permanent seat of science, as the spot where the youth of our State, for centuries to come, would go to be instructed in whatever might form them for usefulness, my objection would, in great measure, cease. But the old college is declining, and perhaps the sooner it falls entirely, the better, if it might be the means of pointing out to our legislative body the necessity of founding an institution on an extended and liberal scale. Instead of wasting your time in attempting to patch it up, a decaying institution, direct your efforts to a higher and more valuable object: found a new one."

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

make the most of it, as it is all we have, indulging at the same time the hope that the Legislature will either remove it to Richmond, or found a new one in the upper country." [13]

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

of this place. The long and lingering decline of William and Mary, the death of the last President (Bishop Madison), its location and climate, force on us the wish for a new institution more convenient to our country generally, and better adapted to the present state of science." When these words were written, Jefferson, unknown to himself, was within a few months of the practical inauguration of a scheme, started by others, but soon adopted by himself, which was destined to expand, in a comparatively short time, into the very institution which he had been pondering over for so many years. Before taking up the narrative of the very small acorn which was to grow into so great a tree, it will be germane to our subject, anti conducive to a clearer understanding of it, should we give a short description of the immediate country in which the proposed university was now so soon to be planted, a summary history of its settlement, and a concise recital of the social influences which had governed it down to the establishment of that seat of learning.