University of Virginia Library

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

three months afterwards, there seems to have been a readjustment of this assignment of houses: on that occasion, there were submitted estimates of the cost of four pavilions, with dormitories attached, -the pavilions to be reserved for the use of the professors of languages, physiology, mathematics, and ideology, respectively. It was determined that, should there be, before the following April, a failure to collect the whole amount that was due by written promise, -this being the only fund that was expected to be available for the construction of the buildings, -then the money needed to pay the salaries of the professors of chemistry and languages, the first who were to be appointed, should be obtained by floating a loan with the banks on the security of the property of the College, and the several instalments of the subscriptions as they should fall in.

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

first pavilion was laid, he was named for the chair of languages, belles-lettres, rhetoric, history, and geography, -a multiplicity of courses that called for the most versatile accomplishments in the teacher. As remuneration for the performance of these laborious duties, he was to receive a fixed salary of five hundred dollars, and the sum of twenty-five dollars for each pupil; and since the field to be traversed by him was wide and popular, the accumulation of fees on this account was expected to be very large.

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

learning and versatile talents.[32] Jefferson enthusiastically admired him for more than one acquirement. For instance, he was so much impressed by a judicial decision which Cooper had delivered that he predicted, in a letter to Cabell, that it would "produce a revolution on the question treated; not in the present day, because old lawyers, like old physicians and other old men, never change opinions which it had cost them the whole labors of their youth to form; but when the young lawyers sit on the bench, they will carry Cooper's doctrine with them." "The best pieces on political economy which have been written in this country," he added, "were by Cooper. He is a great chemist, and now proposes to resume his mineralogical studies."

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

the bar; and even in his youth, was so radical and so rampant in his opinions that he was sent on a sympathetic mission to Revolutionary France as the representative of eight British democratic clubs. He became a friend and disciple of Priestley at an early date on account of their similar relish for scientific researches, for unorthodox religious beliefs, and for a freedom in political affairs that verged on extreme republicanism. Priestley suffered for his liberal opinions by their bringing down on his head the fury of the mob that pulled his Unitarian chapel to pieces and set the torch to his home. In his very natural disgust, he resolved to seek an asylum in the less heated atmosphere of the United States; Cooper, who also found Birmingham at this time an uncomfortable spot, accompanied him; and both settled in a quiet back region of Pennsylvania.

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

Federalists, doubtless under the Alien and Sedition Acts; and this, naturally enough, further magnified his merits in the eyes of Jefferson, whose feelings towards that party, it will be recalled, were tempered by little of his customary philosophy. The Board of Visitors, when they convened on October 8, 1817, in order to secure Cooper's services, by making it most advantageous to his pecuniary interests to accept their appointment, agreed to reimburse him for the expense of transporting his collection of books and minerals to Central College, and to continue to pay him interest, at the rate of six percent., for the use of his philosophical and chemical apparatus and mineralogical specimens, until there should be surplus enough (after the indispensable charges upon the funds of the College had been defrayed) with which to buy the entire quantity; and should this surplus not arise within a defined time, then the purchase was to be made with money to he borrowed from the banks. The cost of materials needed in the course of the chemical lectures was to be taken over by the Board.

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

position to say, just so soon as the discussion over the establishment of a university should begin in the General Assembly at its approaching term, that Central College was now, in reality, a working institution, in possession of teachers, dormitories, and pavilions; and that it only needed the necromantic touch of the wand of the State treasury to expand almost at once into a great seat of learning. It will be recalled that he did endeavor to turn the property of the College over to the Commonwealth by the bill for general education, which he submitted in the winter of 1818; that effort failed, as we have seen; but a second was to end in the desired success, at the meeting of the Assembly in the winter of 1819, by the adoption of the Rockfish Gap Report.

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

its fixed remuneration of five hundred dollars, and the cost of the pavilion and the dormitories to be attached to it, would call for an expenditure at the start of at least $8,333.30 Jefferson was not at all content with the thought of limiting the number of chairs to four, as he was aware that it would be impossible for this number of instructors to find the time to teach in every subdivision of the extensive and pregnant subjects which would be assigned to them. "To do this as it should be done," he said, "to give all its development to every useful branch of all the departments, and in the highest degree to which each has already been carried, would require a greatly increased number of professors, and funds far beyond what can be expected from individual contributors. For this, the resources at the command of the Legislature alone is adequate."