University of Virginia Library

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

C. Cabell in the Senate. Why was it that David Watson, the delegate of a neighboring county, was preferred for an important service that did not concern directly his own constituents? He was probably a friend of Carr's, and perhaps more influential than the Albemarle delegates; but to pass the latter by was a slur upon them which the future interest of the new seat of learning apparently did not justify. Why were not the papers enclosed first to Cabell, the senator for that district? Possibly because Cabell, having married and resided in Williamsburg, was supposed to be a staunch friend of the College of William and Mary, the prospects of which were certain to be damaged by the establishment of a college in Albemarle. In spite of this fact, it is probable that, had Jefferson been consulted, he would have recommended Cabell as the principal steersman, for Cabell also represented the district, and although, at that time, not intimately known to him, was sufficiently known to raise a high opinion of his talents in Jefferson's mind.

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

foresight, he had been careful to retain duplicates of the originals. The package forwarded contained: (1) a letter that described the plans for the institution; (2) Jefferson's reply to the observations of Dr. Cooper on this plan; (3) the trustees' petition; and (4) the draft of the Act which the General Assembly was expected to pass.

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

throughout by alternate dejection and encouragement, was pursued with an unselfish persistence and devotion that forms one of the most inspiring chapters in the history of American education.

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

has drafted a beautiful scheme of a college at Charlottesville."

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

proctor of the College with all the functions of a justice of the peace within the academic precincts. Cabell hurried off a letter to Jefferson the very day the bill was reported in the Upper House (February 16, 1816), to find out why this stipulation had been inserted. His purpose was to silence the unfriendly senators. Jefferson, in his reply, which was delayed until the 24th, pointed out that he had simply suggested the adoption of a rule which had always prevailed in every great European seat of learning; and that if the proctor was a man of integrity and discretion, -which might be presumed from his selection for his office, -he was just as likely as the neighboring justices of the peace to prove himself entirely trustworthy in the exercise of all his judicial powers. Another desirable feature was, that, acting as he would do in the privacy of the College, he would be able to shield culprits among the immature students from the disgrace of the common prison by confining them to their rooms, when their offenses were not very heinous. "My aim," Jefferson added, " was to create for the young men a complete police of their own, tempered by the paternal affection of their tutors." Nowhere, in his opinion, would such a local police be so much required, for the history of the College of William and Mary had demonstrated, both before and after the Revolution, that students and town boys would be constantly kicking up rows and breaking out into riots to gratify their mutual feeling of animosity. Should the proctor, in the performance of his magisterial duties, expose himself to the charge of either partiality or remissness, the nearest magistrate could quickly and easily interpose.

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

both Mr. Yancey and the Governor had expressed their emphatic objection as being impolitic and untimely.

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

stated, that, in his opinion, Charlottesville offered no special advantages that would justify Mr. Broadwood in removing his school thither. A large town, like Richmond, was far preferable for such an establishment. The aims of an academic college and the aims of a school for the deaf and dumb were fundamentally different. The one was designed for science, the other for mere charity. "It would," he added, "be gratuitously taking a boat in tow which may impede but cannot aid the motion of the principal institution."

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

be established without the elimination of the Academy. So much for the hold which Triplett Estes had on the affections of the one hundred and forty-seven citizens of Albemarle who had been urging the lottery as a means of raising the fund needed to buy his property in Charlottesville! An independent bill was submitted in the Senate authorizing the lottery to be carried out, and providing that, if the Visitors of the new college should prefer the Old Stone tavern as a site, they should have the right to buy it with the proceeds of the lottery. Should they fail to do so, however, this sum could be used to secure that site for the revived Academy. Cabell offered an amendment that the proceeds should be put absolutely at the disposal of Central College even if the Visitors should decide that it would be improper to locate the institution in the Estes house or unwise to purchase that house even at a .reasonable price. Cabell feared that, if the bill should become law without this amendment, there would arise a conflict between the Academy, -which, under the terms of that bill, would have to be placed in the Old Stone tavern, -and the Central College, created by an entirely. different Act, under the provisions of which its Visitors were impowered to choose a site wherever their judgment should guide them. The bill for the lottery was rejected by the Senate, and with it disappeared all danger of the threatened duality.