Twilight at Monticello by Alan Pell Crawford

Author:Alan Pell Crawford [Crawford, Alan Pell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58836-838-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-11-19T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

“Something Very Great and Very New”

On May 5, 1817, the presence of three men in the Court Day crowd at Charlottesville, the Richmond Enquirer reported, attracted “the eager gaze of their Fellow Citizens.” To create such an impression on Court Day was no small accomplishment, for this was a festive time when the judges who rode the circuit heard cases, and people from outlying farms and settlements rode into town, filling the streets.

The august trio consisted of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. Jefferson was already a legend. Madison, who had just completed his second term as president of the United States, could someday reach legendary status, too; and Monroe, sworn in just eight weeks earlier as Madison's successor, might have greatness in him as well.

They had come together on business that, at first glance, might well have seemed beneath their abilities. At Jefferson's prompting, Madison and Monroe were gathered for the first official meeting of the board of visitors of an obscure, nearly defunct private school originally named Albemarle Academy. At this meeting, the board of what from this day forward was to be called Central College took the bold step of voting to use the few assets the school had to buy land on the outskirts of town. On this land, they further voted to establish a new institution altogether, one that Jefferson hoped would be vastly more significant than Albemarle Academy or Central College. To that end, the board agreed to begin general fund-raising. Jefferson pledged $1,000 to the fund and presented sketches of what he would later call an “academical village.”

As humble as these beginnings may have been, Central College represented in its earliest form the project to which Jefferson would devote much of his energy in the years to come. Since his earliest days in the House of Burgesses, he had dreamed of establishing in Virginia an institution of higher learning to rival Harvard College and the College of New Jersey at Princeton. This new institution would serve an ethical as well as academic function. The way to raise virtuous citizens was through education, and Virginia, the nation, and the world would be better for the upright, disinterested, and prudent young gentlemen this college would produce. Their moral senses would be refined as their intellects were developed.

As the New World's foremost exponent of the Enlightenment, Jefferson had taken upon himself the colossal task of launching this university, working with the materials at hand, however unpromising. Back in March 1814, Jefferson had been made a trustee of Albemarle Academy, established a decade earlier to teach the classics to the sons of county planters. Between the time of its founding and Jefferson's appointment to its board, however, the school had lost all of its students. In 1816, seeking a new start for the moribund institution and a name that reflected his grand ambitions for it, Jefferson obtained permission from the Virginia legislature to change its name from Albemarle Academy to Central College.

But, more important, Jefferson

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