I think on the whole that the Commission report is right about Jefferson’s letter and its import.
Only a few weeks earlier Jefferson was despairing of the legislature’s coming up with the money for his university. And the “lessons of anti-Missourianism” that Southern students were exposed to in the North were indeed on his mind:
http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=FOEA-chron-1820-1821-01-31-1
I’m outside my field here and may be wrong, but the references seem to be to Missouri’s having been admitted to the Union as a slave state; he seems to favor that action, possibly as resistance to a strong Federal government overruling states’ rights; he is against those who opposed it, what he calls “Restrictionists,” those who would restrict slavery in Missouri.
Jefferson seems to be favoring, then, an expansion of the Union by admitting a slave state and is perhaps concerned that not doing so would strengthen the powers of the federal government at the cost of eroding the powers of a state. (For possible support of this position, see an earlier letter: http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=FOEA-chron-1820-1821-02-15-2 ).
In any case, on February 8, in response to Jefferson’s letter, Cabell asks for a letter that “can be shown generally,” a letter “showing no preferences, & and making no imputations.” It’s not clear to me what the last phrases encourage, but Cabell assures Jefferson that the letter will be used with “discretion.” It is clear that General Breckenridge, key to funding for UVA, “wishes” for such a letter and that Cabell writes “at his instance”:
http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=FOEA-chron-1820-1821-02-08-1
The imputation then is that such a letter should be addressed to matters Breckenridge is particularly interested in in terms of what UVA might portend.
And Jefferson responds as requested, writing Breckenridge that
“we are now trusting to those who are against us in position and principle, to fashion to their own form the minds & affections of our youth. if, as has been estimated, we send 300,000.D. a year to the Northern seminaries for the instruction of our sons, then we must have there at all times 500. of our sons imbibing opinions and principles in discord with those of their own country. this canker is eating on the vitals of our existence, and if not arrested at once will be beyond remedy. we are now certainly furnishing recruits to their school.”
From: http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=FOEA-chron-1820-1821-02-15-2
The language here to my mind is not crystal clear, but what is clear is that this is a letter Jefferson was not entirely happy with. Possibly even before it had left his desk, he sought to restrict its circulation:
http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=FOEA-chron-1820-1821-02-15-4
So it seems he foresees possible embarrassment from what he’s written.
The question then becomes, I think, whether he is writing Breckenridge about slavery or about Federalism and states’ rights.
I think it’s slavery. I gather Breckenridge was a committed Federalist:
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Breckinridge_James_1763-1833#start_entry<https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Breckinridge_James_1763-1833%23start_entry>
If so, I don’t think Jefferson would advance an argument in favor of UVA that its students would avoid being infected with Northern, Federalist thinking.
And I don’t think he would have been embarrassed in public as much by asserting states’ rights as he would be by seeming to support pro-slavery thinking at UVA.
But I’m an amateur in all this and welcome corrections.
On Aug 6, 2018, at 1:12 PM, Richard Dixon <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
This modern onslaught against Jefferson dilutes the importance of the moral force he marshaled against his own society. There is no record of any kind which supports the interpretation of the Breckenridge letter which the PCSU advances.
All of Jefferson's correspondence in this time .frame reflects his concern that southern students, educated in northern schools, would become indoctrinated in political principles of federalism. The Board of Visitors adopted a resolution at its meeting on March 4, 1825, “to pay special attention to the principles of government” which are not “incompatible with those on which the Constitution of the state, and of the United States, are genuinely based” ( John Ritchie, The First One Hundred Years, 8).
While the other professors were allowed to choose their textbooks Jefferson would not permit this with the professor of law. It was earlier agreed between Jefferson and Cabell that the chair of law must be filled by an American (Cabell to TJ, 16 Apr. 1824).Jefferson communicated his concern to him about choosing a “Gothic lawyer,” one who did not have an academic background, and who accepted the principle of “consolidation” (20 Jan 1825). This became a rigid test for Jefferson on who might now be selected.His admonition to Cabell, which he also communicated to James Madison, was very explicit that he was opposed to “a Richmond lawyer,” or a believer in “quondam federalism, now Consolidation.” His solution to guard against the “diffusion of that poison” was by prescribing the texts that could be used(TJ to Cabell, 3 Feb. 1825).
The construction firms used by Jefferson did employ slave labor. That was the economic system in Virginia, and until the Revolutionary war, throughout all of the thirteen colonies. But Jefferson died in 1826 and the history of the slaves over the next forty years should not be the basis of any claim that Jefferson constructed the University of Virginia in order to "protect the sons of the South from abolitionist teachings in the North."
Richard Dixon
On 7/31/2018 10:11 AM, Meyers, Terry L wrote:
The report from UVA’s President’s Commission on Slavery and the University has been released.
http://vpdiversity.virginia.edu/sites/vpdiversity.virginia.edu/files/PCSU%20Report%20FINAL_July%202018.pdf
For me (and I was on an advisory board to the Commission), a surprise was Jefferson’s apparent desire to inculcate UVA students with pro-slavery thinking, a dramatic turn from what decades earlier he’d praised at W&M, its teaching skepticism about slavery and his hopes its students could, when in power, do something about it.
The report says
Even in Jefferson’s own imagining of what the University of Virginia could be, he understood it to be an institution with slavery at its core. He believed that a southern institution was necessary to protect the sons of the South from abolitionist teachings in the North. Jefferson wrote his friend James Breckenridge in 1821, expressing his concern with sending the youth of Virginia to be educated in the North, a place “against us in position and principle.” He worried that in northern institutions, young Virginians might imbibe “opinions and principles in discord with those of their own country. This canker is eating on the vitals of our existence, and if not arrested at once will be beyond remedy.”
In other words, Jefferson believed it was important to educate Virginians, and other southerners, in an institution that understood and ultimately supported slavery. In fact, Jefferson’s own world was one that was so intimately connected with slavery that he likely could not imagine a different reality.
Full text of the letter is at
http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=FOEA-print-04-02-02-1839
The report adduces further evidence along these lines—I thought I’d passed along a salient fact not in the report, that long after Jefferson had died, UVA, in 1845, sought to headhunt W&M's special shame, Thomas Roderick Dew.
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Terry L.. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, Emeritus, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg Virginia 23187
http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/tlmeye/
http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html
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Have we got a college? Have we got a football team?....Well, we can't afford both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college. --Groucho Marx, in "Horse Feathers."
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Richard E. Dixon
"The Virginia Presidents: A Travel and History Guide"
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Terry L.. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, Emeritus, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg Virginia 23187
http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/tlmeye/
http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html
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Have we got a college? Have we got a football team?....Well, we can't afford both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college. --Groucho Marx, in "Horse Feathers."
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