Thomas Jefferson, the Apostle of Americanism

by Gilbert Chinard

Finally, in order "to avail the commonwealth of those talents and virtues which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as among the rich, and which are lost to their country by the want of means of their cultivation", the visitors would select every year a certain number of promising scholars from the ward schools to be sent to the colleges and from the colleges to be sent to the University at the public expense.

This was essentially the Bill for the Diffusion of Knowledge proposed to the Assembly in 1779. Jefferson had incorporated in it such modifications as he may have borrowed from Du Pont de Nemours, but essentially the plan was his own. That Jefferson himself was perfectly aware of it appears in a short mention of the fact that "the general idea was suggested in the 'Notes on Virginia.' Quer. 14."[545]

It was soon realized that neither the Assembly nor the public were ready for such a comprehensive scheme. Part of the plan had to be sacrificed, if a beginning was to be made at all. Jefferson did not hesitate long; the elementary schools could be organized at any time without much preparation or expense; secondary education was taken care of after a fashion in private schools supported from fees; but nothing existed in the way of an institution of higher learning. Young Virginians had to be sent to the northern seminaries, there "imbibing opinions and principles in discord with those of our own country." The university was the thing, and, in order to provide sufficient funds to start it, Jefferson proposed that subsidies from the literary fund to the primary schools be suspended for one or two years. In his opinion this measure did not imply any disregard of primary education, and Jefferson vehemently protested to Breckenridge that he had "never proposed a sacrifice of the primary to the ultimate grade of instruction"; but, "if we cannot do everything at once, let us do one at a time."[546]

The fight in which Jefferson engaged to obtain recognition for his project, to have Central College or, as it was finally to be called, the University of Virginia, located near Monticello, where he could watch its progress and supervise the construction of its buildings, has been told many times and does not need to be recounted here.[547]

On the board of visitors with Jefferson were placed James Madison, James Monroe, Joseph C. Cabell, James Breckenridge, David Watson and J. H. Cocke. Jefferson was appointed Rector of the University at a meeting held on March 29, 1819, at a time when the university had no buildings, no faculty, no students and very small means. Everything had to be done and provided for. It would have been possible to put up some sort of temporary shelter, a few ramshackle frame houses, but Jefferson wanted the university to endure and he remembered that he was an architect as well as a statesman. It was not until the spring of 1824 that he could announce that the buildings were ready for occupancy—the formal opening was to be held at the beginning of the following year—but the master builder could be proud of his work. The university was his in every sense of the word: not only had he succeeded in arousing the interest of the public and the Assembly in his undertaking, but he had drawn the plans himself with the painstaking care and the precision he owed to his training as a surveyor. He had selected the material, engaged the stone carvers, the brick layers and the carpenters, and supervised every bit of their work. After his death he would need no other monument.

Then, as everything seemed to be ready, a new difficulty arose. Ever since 1819, the visitors had been looking for a faculty. Ticknor, with whom Jefferson had gotten acquainted through Mrs. Adams, had refused to leave Cambridge although disgusted with the petty bickerings of his colleagues. Thomas Cooper had proved inacceptable, and the very mention of his name had aroused such a storm among the clergy that the appointment had to be withdrawn. After a long and fruitless search for the necessary talents at home, Jefferson and his fellow members on the board of the university decided to procure the professors from abroad. This time, however, they were not to repeat the mistake of the proposed transplantation of the University of Geneva. Several prominent Frenchmen suggested by Lafayette were turned down as too ignorant of the ways of American youth and the language of the country. There remained only one place from which satisfactory instructors could be obtained; this was England. Their nationality did not raise any serious objection, for, to the resentment of the War of 1812 had succeeded the "era of good feeling", and Francis Walker Gilmer was commissioned to go to England in order to consult with Dugald Stewart and to recruit a faculty from Great Britain, "the land of our own language, habits and manners."[548]

Eighteen months later, the Rector declared the experiment highly successful, and the example likely to be followed by other institutions of learning.

It cannot fail—wrote Jefferson—to be one of the efficacious means of promoting that cordial good will, which it is so much the interest of both nations to cherish. These teachers can never utter an unfriendly sentiment towards their native country; and those into whom their instruction will be infused, are not of ordinary significance only; they are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country, and to rule its future enmities, its friendships and fortunes.[549]

Thus after fifty years, Jefferson was able to make real his educational dream of the Revolutionary period, to endow his native State with an institution of higher learning in which the future leaders of the nation would be instructed. They would no longer have to be sent abroad to obtain the required knowledge in some subjects; nor would they have to study in "the Northern seminaries", there to be infected with pernicious doctrines; above all, they would be preserved from any sectarian influence during their formative years; for no particular creed was to be taught at the university, although the majority of the faculty belonged to the Episcopal Church.

The University of Virginia was the last great task to which Jefferson put his hand, an achievement of which he was no less proud than of having written the Declaration of Independence. To bring it to a successful conclusion this septuagenarian displayed an admirable tenacity, a resourcefulness, a practical wisdom, a sense of the immediate possibilities and an idealistic vision, the combination of which typifies the best there is in the national character of the American people. It would take many pages to study in detail Jefferson's educational ideas, as he expressed them in the minutes of the board and in his many letters to John Adams, Thomas Cooper and Joseph Cabell. The most remarkable feature of the new institution was that, for the first time in the history of the country, higher education was made independent of the Church, and to a large extent the foundation of the University of Virginia marks the beginning of the secularization of scientific research in America. Its "father" certainly gave some thought to the possible extension of the educational system that had finally won recognition in his native Virginia, to all the States in the country; but he was too fully aware of the difficulties to follow his old friend Du Pont de Nemours and to propose a Plan for a National Education. At least he "had made a beginning", he "had set an example", and he built even better than he knew. The man who wished to be remembered as the "father of the University of Virginia" was also, in more than one sense, the father of the State universities which play such an important part in the education of the American democracy.