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13. Diffusion of Knowledge
e come now to consider the last and clearly the most important scheme of public reformation contained in the revised code, forming as it does the entrance and a perpetual guard to the enjoyment of all the others. The system proposed for the diffusion of knowledge through the whole mass of the people by extending to every degree of capacity a proportionate degree of education, and placing all upon an equal footing for obtaining the first and necessary degrees, was an original idea; than which nothing would seem more admirably contrived for the foundation of a durable and well-ordered republic. This portion of the work fell more properly within the division assigned to Mr. Pendleton, but it was agreed, on the urgent recommendation of Mr. Jefferson, that a new and systematical plan of universal education should be proposed, and he was requested to undertake it. He did so, preparing three bills for that purpose, proposing three distinct grades of instruction in the following order: 1. Elementary schools, for all children generally, rich and poor, without distinction. 2. Colleges, or, as they are more usually styled in this country, academies, for a middle degree of instruction, calculated for the common purposes of life, yet such as would be desirable for all who were in easy circumstances. 3. A University, in the place of William and Mary College, constituting the ultimate grade for teaching the sciences generally, and in their highest degree.
The first and second bills were for the organization of this system, and the third for the establishment of a public library and gallery, by the appropriation of a certain sum annually for the purchase of books, paintings, and statues.
The organization of the system in all its parts exhibits a model of republican equality and harmonious arrangement. It proposed the division of the State into twenty-four districts and the subdivision of these into wards called hundreds of five or six miles square, according to the size and population of the district. In each hundred was to be established an elementary school in which should be taught reading, writing, and common arithmetic, the expenses of which should be borne by the inhabitants of the country, every one in proportion to his general tax rate. All free children, male and female, resident in the hundred should be entitled to three years instruction at the school free of expense, and to as much more as they chose by paying for it. In each district was to be established an academy or grammar school to be supported at the public expense in which should be taught the classics, grammar, geography, and the higher branches of numerical arithmetic.
The bill provides further for the annual selection of the most promising students from the elementary schools whose parents were too poor to educate them, who should be transferred to the district institutions at the public expense. And from the district institutions also, a certain number annually were to be selected of the most promising character but whose parents were unable to incur the burthen, who should be sent on to the University to receive the ultimate degree of intellectual cultivation. Genius and worth would thus be sought out of every walk of life, and to adopt a favorite sentiment of the author, the veritable aristocracy of nature would be completely prepared by the laws for defying and defeating the pseudo-aristocracy of wealth and birth in the competition for public trusts.
It was further in the contemplation of the author, had his system been carried into operation, to have imparted to the wards or hundreds all those portions of self-government for which they are best qualified, by confiding to them the care of their poor, their roads, police, elections, the nomination of jurors, administration of justice in small cases, and elementary exercises of militia; in short, to have made them little republics with a warden at the head of each, for all those concerns which, being under their eye, they would better manage than the larger republics of the country or State. A general call of ward meetings by the wardens on the same day throughout the State would at any time embody the genuine sense of the people on any required point and present a forceful illustration of democratic government.
The three separate bills for the ward schools and the district institutions, for the University, and for the establishment of a library and gallery, were all brought before the legislature in the year 1796. The first only was acted upon and finally adopted, but with an amendment which completely defeated it. They inserted a provision leaving it to the court of each county to determine for itself when the act should be carried into execution. The effect of the bill being to throw on wealth the education of the poor, and the justices being unwilling to incur the responsibility, the plan was not suffered to commence in a single county. The proposition to erect the College of William and Mary into a University encountered insuperable impediments. The existing college was an establishment purely of the Church of England; the visitors were required to be all of that church, the professors to subscribe to its thirty-nine articles, the students to learn its catechism, and one of its fundamental objects was declared to be to raise up ministers for that church. The dissenters took alarm lest the enlargement of the institution might give an ascendency to the Anglican sect, and refused to act upon the proposition. The bill for the establishment of a library and gallery met a similar fate; and thus no part of this grand and beneficial system was ever permitted to take effect.
Perhaps there was no one feature of the revised code on which Mr. Jefferson placed a more justly exalted estimate than that which proposed the diffusion of education universally and impartially among the people. Knowledge is unquestionably, to use an expression of his own, "the key-stone of the political arch" in popular governments, and the only foundation which can be laid for permanent freedom and prosperity. Upon this point he was enthusiastically pertinacious. His efforts were perseveringly directed to its attainment in the form originally proposed by him on all possible occasions which subsequently offered; and on his final retirement from public affairs, he made it the great business of his life. Being in Europe, as before stated, at the time the main body of the revisal was entered on, he was prevented from raising his voice and uttering his opinions in the legislature with the power and authority he had formerly done; but his letters to his friends in Virginia from that time abound with the most eloquent persuasions of the importance which he deemed most essential to the freedom and happiness of the people. Among these, the bill under consideration occupied a prominent share of his solicitude, as is manifested by the following extract of a letter to Mr. Wythe, dated from Paris on August 13, 1786.
"I think by far the most important bill in our whole code, is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness. If anybody thinks that kings, nobles, or priests are good conservators of the public happiness, send him here. It is the best school in the universe to cure him of that folly. He will see here with his own eyes that these descriptions of men are an abandoned confederacy against the happiness of the mass of the people. The omnipotence of their effect cannot be better proved than in this country, particularly where notwithstanding the finest soil upon earth, the finest climate under heaven, and a people of the most benevolent, the most gay and amiable character of which the human form is susceptible; where such a people, I say, surrounded by so many blessings from nature are loaded with misery by kings, nobles, and priests, and by them alone. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils, and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance. The people of England, I think, are less oppressed than here. But it needs but half an eye to see when among them that the foundation is laid in their dispositions for the establishment of a despotism. Nobility, wealth, and pomp are the objects of their admiration. They are by no means the free-minded people we suppose them in America. Their learned men, too, are few in number and are less learned and infinitely less emancipated from prejudice than those of this country." (ME 5:396)
Such are some of the innovations on the established order of things contained in the celebrated revised code of Virginia in 1779, all of which Mr. Jefferson was the originator and draughtsman. It is impossible for later generations to form an adequate idea of this great political work or of the genius and application it required. On the authority of Mr. Madison, we are enabled to say, "that it, perhaps, exceeded the severest of Mr. Jefferson's public labors." And the whole of this magnificent undertaking was executed during the short interval of three years chiefly by an individual, and carried into action mainly by his own efforts, supported, indeed, by able and faithful coadjutors from the ranks of the house, very effective as seconds, but who would not have taken the field as leaders. The natural equality of the human race, the first maxim of the author's political creed, was the governing principle of his general plan. Four of the bills reported were remarkable illustrations of this principle, sufficient "to crush forever the eternal antagonism of artificial aristocracy against the rights and happiness of the people." They were marshaled in phalanx by the author for the express purpose of carrying out the principle of equality in all its latitude, as appears by his own record of the transaction.
"I considered four of these bills, passed or reported, as forming a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of ancient or future aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government truly republican. The repeal of the laws of entail would prevent the accumulation and perpetuation of wealth in select families and preserve the soil of the country from being daily more and more absorbed in Mortmain. The abolition of primogeniture and equal partition of inheritances removed the feudal and unnatural distinctions which made one member of every family rich and all the rest poor, substituting equal partition, the best of all Agrarian laws. The restoration of the rights of conscience relieved the people from taxation for the support of a religion not theirs; for the establishment was truly of the religion of the rich, the dissenting sects being entirely composed of the less wealthy people; and these, by the bill for a general education, would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government: and all this would be effected without the violation of a single natural right of any one individual citizen. To these, too, might be added, as a further security, the introduction of the trial by jury into the Chancery courts, which have already engulfed and continue to engulf so great a proportion of the jurisdiction over our property." (Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:73)
ur detail of the public and official services of Mr. Jefferson must now give place to an incident in private life which discovers his social affections and his general philanthropy. At the memorable surrender of Burgoyne in 1777, it will be recollected, about four thousand British troops fell prisoners of war into the hands of the American general; and by an express article in the capitulation it was provided that the surrendering army should be retained in America until an authentic ratification of the convention entered into between the belligerents should be received from the British government. The troops were at first ordered to Boston, where they remained about a twelve-month, when they were removed to Charlottesville in Virginia, a short distance from Monticello. They arrived at the latter place in January, 1779, harassed by a long journey during a most inclement season and doomed to encounter the severest hardships on their arrival from the unfinished state of their barracks, the insufficiency of stores, and the condition of the roads, which rendered the prospect of a timely and competent supply of subsistence almost hopeless.
A general alarm was disseminated among the inhabitants, insomuch that reasonable minds were affected by the panic. Mr. Jefferson remained tranquil and unmoved. He stood among the multitude and exhorted them to patience and composure; and soon, agreeably to his repeated assurances, every difficulty disappeared and every apprehension vanished. The planters, being more generally sellers than buyers, availed themselves with great alacrity of the advantages produced by the extraordinary demand for provisions and quickly removed a scarcity merely accidental to their own evident benefit.
In the meantime, Mr. Jefferson engaged personally in erecting barracks for the privates and establishing accommodations for the officers. It is true these men were the instruments of a cruel and implacable enemy, foes to the freedom and happiness of their benefactor, and who, he well knew, regarded him with such animosity that under any other circumstances they would have treated his offers of generosity with contempt. They were enemies of his country, whose cries were now ascending to Heaven against the injuries of its oppressors; but they were human beings, and as such entitled, in his opinion, to the same offices of kindness and hospitality when in distress as those who were united to him by the ties of national alliance. He was indefatigable in his endeavors to render the situation of the captives comfortable. Aided by the benevolent interposition of the citizens of Charlottesville and by the genius and humane dispositions of the Commissary, his exertions were attended with the most gratifying success. In a short time the residence of the prisoners assumed an air of comfort and ease; the barracks were completed, and a plentiful supply of provisions was procured. The officers had rented houses at an extravagant price, erected additional buildings at their own expense, and hired small farms in the neighborhood on which they beguiled the tedious hours of captivity in the occupations of agriculture and gardening. The men imitated, on a smaller scale, the example of the officers. As a result, the environs of the barracks presented a charming appearance.
But these extensive and promising arrangements were scarcely completed when the executive of Virginia, who had been invested by Congress with certain discretionary powers over the "convention troops," as they were called, came to the determination of removing them, either wholly or in part, from Charlottesville, on the ground of the insufficiency of the State for their animal subsistence. The rumored intelligence of this determination filled the soldiers with the deepest regret and disappointment. Loud complaints were heard against the inhumanity of the measure; the nation was accused of violation of faith, and such was the degree of excitement among the prisoners that mutiny was seriously apprehended.
The citizens among whom they were quartered participated in the general disapprobation. They contemplated the proposition with regret and mortification. Mr. Jefferson addressed a long letter to Gov. Henry and arrayed before him the public reasons which militated against the measure.
The reasonableness of this appeal produced the intended effect. The governor and council, on a dispassionate review of the arguments submitted by Mr. Jefferson, were convinced that the removal or separation of the troops would be a breach of the public faith and fix the character of unsteadiness and, what was worse, of cruelty on the councils of the nation. The proposition was accordingly abandoned, and the troops permitted to remain together at Charlottesville.
The conduct of Mr. Jefferson on this occasion and his uniform endeavors during their confinement to ameliorate their suffering condition excited in the soldiers the liveliest emotions of gratitude. They loaded him with expressions of their sensibility, and no time could obliterate the impression from their hearts. Subsequently, when ambassador in Europe, Mr. Jefferson visited Germany; and passing through a town where one of the Hessian corps that had been at Charlottesville happened to be in garrison, he met with Baron De Geismar, who immediately apprized his brother officers of the presence of their benefactor. They flocked around him, greeted him with affecting tokens of their remembrance, and spoke of America with enthusiasm.
On taking leave of Charlottesville, the principal officers -- Major Generals Phillips and Riedesel, Brigadier Specht, C. De Geismar, J. L. De Unger, and some others -- addressed him letters expressive of their lasting attachment and bidding him an affectionate adieu. Phillips emphatically extolled his "delicate proceedings." Riedesel repeatedly and fervently poured out his thanks and those of his wife and children. To all these letters, Mr. Jefferson returned answers, and some of these answers have been preserved. "The great cause which divides our countries," he replied to Phillips, "is not to be decided by individual animosities. The harmony of private societies cannot weaken national efforts. To contribute by neighborly intercourse and attention to make others happy is the shortest and surest way of being happy ourselves. As these sentiments seem to have directed your conduct, we should be as unwise as illiberal were we not to preserve the same temper of mind."
To General Riedesel he thus wrote: "The little attentions you are pleased to magnify so much never deserved a mention or thought... Opposed as we happen to be in our sentiments of duty and honor, and anxious for contrary events, I shall nevertheless sincerely rejoice in every circumstance of happiness and safety which may attend you personally." (May 3, 1780. ME 4:85)
To Lieutenant De Unger he replied in the following manner: "The very small amusements which it has been in my power to furnish in order to lighten your heavy hours by no means merited the acknowledgments you make. Their impression must be ascribed to your extreme sensibility rather than to their own weight... When the course of events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action where laurels not tarnished with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor and preferment which may gladden the heart of a soldier. On the other hand, should your fondness for philosophy resume its merited ascendancy, is it impossible to hope that this unexplored country may tempt your residence by holding out materials wherewith to build a fame founded on the happiness and not on the calamities of human nature? Be this as it may, whether a philosopher of a soldier, I wish you personally many felicities." (Nov. 30, 1780. ME 4:139)
De Unger was a votary of literature and science. He was a frequent visitor at the hospitable mansion of Mr. Jefferson and enjoyed his library advantages, which his taste combined with his situation to render doubly precious. Other officers loved music and painting; they found in him a rich and cultivated taste for the fine arts. They were astonished, delighted; and their letters to several parts of Germany attributed to the American character ideas derived from that exalted specimen. These letters found their way into several Gazettes of the old world, and the name of Jefferson was associated with that of Franklin, whose fame had then spread over Europe. "Surely," says historian Girardin, "this innocent and bloodless conquest over the minds of men whose swords had originally been hired to the oppressors of America, was in itself scarcely less glorious, though in its effects less extensively beneficial, than the splendid train of victories which had disarmed their hands." (pg. 327)
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