University of Virginia Library

I. Method of Treatment

The history of the University of Virginia, during the one hundred years of its existence, can be related in three different ways. First, as annals, with an inflexible fidelity to the flow of events from year to year; second, as a series of monographs, -the theme of each to be treated separately for the entire interval of time lying between 1819 and 1919; or third, as a succession of periods, -each period growing out of the preceding one, but dissimilar in length, in problems, and in achievements. To present that history in the form of annals would be to introduce unavoidably definite elements of incoherence and desultoriness. To narrate it in the form of a series of independent monographs would be to destroy its fundamental unity, and the close inter-relations of its almost innumerable phases. On the other hand, to consider it as a succession of periods permits of the retention of all the advantages of chronological sequence and of separate exposition subject by subject, with the discursiveness of the one and the disconnection of the other substantially modified.

The history of the University of Virginia lends itself fully to a narration by periods. Thus we have the First Period, -the period when there was a persistent struggle for the incorporation of a university, in which Jefferson was the great protagonist; the Second Period, -the period of germination, when Albemarle Academy and Central College were rapidly developing into a seat of higher

learning; the Third Period, -the period of construction, which saw the erection of the buildings, the adoption of the regulations, and the selection of the professors; the Fourth Period, -the period of formation and experimentation, which began with the opening of the University to students; the Fifth Period, -the period of reformation and expansion, as illustrated in the introduction of the Honor System, the establishment of the Young Men's Christian Association, and the addition of new lecture halls and new schools; the Sixth Period,-the period of the war, when the activities of the institution were almost suspended; the Seventh Period,-the period of reconstruction and re-expansion, which succeeded that conflict; the Eighth Period,-the period of restoration, which followed the Great Fire; and finally, the Ninth Period, -the period of the presidency, in which the drift has been towards a broader democratization, in harmony with the dominant spirit of our own times. It is this division of my general subject which I have adopted in the present work.