University of Virginia Library

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

that, by this means, the sum of $20,000 would be collected for distribution as prizes. The largest of these prizes was to amount to five thousand dollars; the next largest to two thousand; and the third, fourth, and fifth, to one thousand dollars each. The remaining ten thousand dollars was to be divided into smaller sums for prizes running all the way from one of five hundred dollars to one thousand of five dollars respectively. The profit was to be derived from twenty-six hundred and eighty-five blank tickets, to be disposed of at the same time as the prize tickets at five dollars a piece. The drawing was to take place in Charlottesville eighteen months after the sale of all the tickets had been completed; or if the trustees should so determine, at an earlier date.

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

the General Assembly for an appropriation, in support' of the Academy, out of the money that had arisen from the sale of the plebe lands of St. Anne's and Fredericksville's parishes. By an act passed February 13, 1811, the county court of Albemarle had been authorized to appoint a commissioner to invest the funds accruing from this sale in the stock of the Bank of Virginia. It seems that only the interest, at this time at least, could be used for the establishment of a public school or schools in the county, in harmony with the provisions of the Act of 1796 for the education of the people. But before either principal or interest could be disposed of, the consent of the freeholders had to be obtained, as required by the Act of 1802, already referred to. It was important for the trustees of the Academy to secure this acquiescence beforehand, since it would fortify their petition for the entire sum when brought before the General Assembly. At this moment, the money was already in the custody of John Winn, a member of the Board, who had become the commissioner by order of the court; and it seems now to have only needed the approval of a majority of the voters, and the authorization of the Legislature, to assure the immediate diversion of the whole amount, -principal as well as interest, -to the use of the Academy.

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

in the board's possession, the committee recommended that the choice of the site should be put off until a definite offer could be submitted.

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

degree, to alienate the young from the spot of their nativity, to instil into their young, open, and unsuspecting minds, opinions and sentiments inimical to the interest and happiness of their parent country (Virginia), for we see that they have too frequently returned back into the bosom of that country with a respect and affection for everything abroad, the effect of which is a contempt and disrespect for everything at home." [18]

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,

and admit of enlargement. With the first (primary) grade of education, we shall have nothing to do. The sciences of the second grade are our first object: (1) languages, including history; (2) mathematics, including chemistry, zoology, botany, mineralogy, anatomy, and the theory of medicine; and (3) philosophy. To adapt them to our slender beginnings, we must separate them into groups comprehending many sciences each, and greatly more in the first instance than ought to be imposed on, or can be completely conducted by, a single professor permanently. They must be subdivided from time to time as our means increase, until each professor shall have no more under his care than he can attend to with advantage to the students and ease to himself. In the further advance of our resources, professional schools mist he introduced and professorships established in them also."

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

scheme which he had in mind; but he was clearly aware of the opposition which he would have to overcome before he could hope to obtain even a meagre legislative appropriation; and he was, therefore, the more earnestly disposed to husband the few petty resources for public education which he knew could not be disputed or withheld. In the prosecution of his plans, he seems to have gone so far as to submit to the trustees of the Academy a sketch for the building of a separate pavilion for each separate school, with the entire number grouped along three lines of a square, and in each a spacious lecture-hall and two apartments for the use of the professor who would occupy it.[19] This is an additional proof of how little he was thinking of the small local academy, and how much of the university which he intended to take its place. The Academy, indeed, was a mere figure of straw in his scheme, to exist only for such time as would be required to procure the charter of the College, which was to forerun the University somewhat as the Academy was to forerun the College.