Life of Thomas Jefferson

38. The University of Virginia

The cultivation of the affections and the delights of philosophical and agricultural occupation were subjects which engaged only a subordinate share of the attention of Mr. Jefferson. One other enterprise of public utility which it was reserved for him to accomplish constituted the engrossing topic of his mind from the moment of his return to private life to the hour of his death. This was the establishment of the University of Virginia. Having assisted in achieving for his country the blessings of civil and religious liberty, he considered the work but half completed without securing to posterity the means of preserving that condition of moral culture on which the perpetuation of those blessings depends. It was one of the first axioms established in his mind that the liberties of a nation could never be safe but in the hands of the people, and that too of a people with a certain degree of instruction. A system of education, therefore, which should reach every description of citizens, as it was the earliest, so it was the latest of public concerns in which he permitted himself to take an interest.

The opinions of Mr. Jefferson on the subject of education were given in detail while the revised code of Virginia was under consideration, of which the "Bill for the General Diffusion of Knowledge," drafted by him, was a distinguishing feature. The system marked out in that bill proposed three distinct grades of instruction, which may be explained by adopting a single expression of the author: "to give the highest degree of education to the higher degrees of genius, and to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read and understand what is going on in the world and to keep their part of it going on right." No part of this system was carried into effect by the legislature except that proposing the elementary grade of instruction, and the intention of this was completely defeated by the option given to the county courts. [note] The university composed the ultimate grade of the system and was the one which peculiarly enlisted the zeal of the founder without, however, subtracting from his devotion to the whole scheme. In this institution, like those of the university rank in Europe, it was his intention to have taught every branch of science useful to mankind and in its highest degree, with such a classification of the sciences into particular groups as to require so many professors only as might bring them within the purview of a just economy.

The plan of the university was original with Mr. Jefferson: the offspring of his genius aided by his extensive observations while in Europe. The University of Virginia was emphatically his work. His was the first conception, having been envisioned by him more than forty years before; his, the subsequent impulse which brought it to maturity; his, the whole scheme of its studies, organization, and government; and his, the architecture of its buildings in which he took advantage of the occasion to present a specimen of each of the orders of the art, founded on Grecian and Roman models. He did this last with a view to inspire the youth who resorted thither with "the imposing associations of antiquity," and to retrieve as far as he could the character of his country from that pointed sarcasm in his Notes on Virginia that "the genius of architecture seems to have shed its maledictions over this land." Being located within four miles of Monticello, he superintended its erection daily and with the purest satisfaction. The plan of the building embraced:
. .1st. Pavilions, arranged on either side of a lawn, indefinite in length, to contain each a lecture room and private apartments sufficient to accommodate a professor and his family.
. .2nd. A range of Dormitories, connecting the pavilions, of one story high, sufficient each for the accommodation of two students only -- as the most advantageous to morals, order and uninterrupted study -- with a passage under cover from the weather, giving a communication along the whole range.
. .3rd. Hotels (Refectories) for the dieting of the students, to contain each a single room for dining and accommodations sufficient for the tenants charged with this department.
. .4th. A Rotunda, or large circular building, in which were rooms for religious worship under such regulations as the Visitors should prescribe, for public examinations, for a library, for schools of music, drawing, and other purposes.

The principal novelties in the scheme of its studies were a professorship of the principles of government "to be founded in the rights of man," to use the language of the originator; a professorship of agriculture; one of modern languages, among which the Anglo-Saxon was included that the learner might imbibe with their language their free principles of government; and the absence of a professorship of divinity, "to give fair play to the cultivation of reason," as well as to avoid the constitutional objection against a public establishment of any religious instruction. A Rector and Board of Visitors appointed by the legislature composed the government of the institution, and their first meeting was in August, 1818, at Rockfish Gap on the Blue Ridge, at which Mr. Jefferson presided and drafted the first annual report to the legislature. He was also appointed Rector of the University, in which office he continued until his death, when he was succeeded by Mr. Madison. The establishment went into operation in the spring of 1825, and has continued in a flourishing condition ever since.
The weight of opposition which this institution encountered through every stage of its progress were such as would have been insurmountable to any person possessing less perseverance or less ascendency of personal character than Mr. Jefferson. Besides the ordinary circumstances of resistance common to every enterprise of the kind in this country, it was met at the outset by a combination of religious jealousies, probably never equaled. Hostile as they were in every other point to one another, all the religious sects in the State cordially cooperated in the effort to frustrate an institution which, from the circumstance of its favoring no particular school of divinity to the exclusion of another, was presumed to be inimical to all religion. These antipathies, with the host of sectional rivalries, the steady counteraction of William and Mary College, and the tardy pace of the public patronage, produced an array of difficulties which was observed to cloud the brow of Mr. Jefferson with an anxiety to which he was a stranger under the most afflicting occurrences of his political career. Yet he never despaired, resolving to "die in the last ditch rather than give way." Early on, he burst forth in a letter to one of his colleagues in a strain of despondency mingled with supplication, strongly portraying the difficulties in the way and the solicitude which he felt for the result:

After an exhortation to one of his colleagues to exert all his faculties to allay the opposition and arouse the legislature to a sense of their distresses, he wrote:

Later, he wrote to an old friend of the university and reviewed the struggle in the legislature:

The enthusiasm with which the patriarch embarked in this great undertaking arose in a principal degree from its contemplated bearing on the future destinies of his country in a political sense. He intended it as a school for the future politicians and statesmen of the republic in whose service he had worn out his life. The illustrious man who succeeded him in its rectorship has said: "This temple dedicated to science and liberty was, after Mr. Jefferson's retirement from the political sphere, the object nearest his heart and so continued to the end of his life. His devotion to it was intense and his exertions unceasing. It bears the stamp of his genius and will be a noble monument to his fame. His general view was to make it a nursery of republican patriots, as well as genuine scholars."

The satisfaction with which he reflected on the success of his labors is expressed with a noble pride in a personal communication to the legislature a little before his death.

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