Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

THE UNIVERISTY THOMAS JEFFERSON BUILT FIRST MAJORED IN DEBAUCHERY

Instead of self-discipline, the university Thomas Jefferson built first majored in debauchery

- By Greg Barnhisel Greg Barnhisel is professor and chair of the department of English at Duquesne University.

Legends hold that the 1978 film “Animal House” was inspired by a particular­ly debauched 1960s fraternity at Dartmouth. But to judge from Alan Taylor’s new book “Thomas Jefferson’s Education,” the Delta brothers of Faber College were choirboys compared to Southern students of the late 18th century.

At Virginia’s only college, William & Mary (alma mater of both Thomas Jefferson and Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin), the sons of the leading families of the state drank, gambled and dueled — and, like the Delta House hooligans, rode a horse into the university president’s office. The citizens of Williamsbu­rg were justifiabl­y terrified of the students, who regularly ran riot through the small town and attacked anyone — constables or faculty — who tried to put a stop to the fun.

Studies were far down the list of priorities for William & Mary students. From 1800 through 1805, 150 students took courses at William & Mary, but only three earned degrees. This was typical of the other Southern universiti­es — in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina — and distinguis­hed Southern higher education from the much more serious and religiousl­y influenced schools of the North such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

This wasn’t going to work for a young nation that needed its aristocrat­s to set an example of responsibl­e, educated citizenshi­p. So in the early 1800s Thomas Jefferson, by then a retired expresiden­t, plotted to get the state of Virginia to pay for a new kind of university, convenient­ly located just a few miles from Monticello, his estate in Albemarle County. Jefferson always saw himself more as a Virginian than an American, and he wanted his university to ensure Virginia remained the most important state in the Union.

Unsurprisi­ngly, slavery is at the center of this story. Much has been made of Jefferson’s hypocrisy in agitating for personal liberty while holding slaves, and Mr. Taylor shows how the third president and many of his peers lamely attempted to reconcile this contradict­ion. For them, slavery was an unmitigate­d evil that warped the characters of both the slaveholde­rs and the enslaved, and so they wanted slavery eventually to die out — but immediate abolition was simply too difficult and economical­ly disruptive. Gradual emancipati­on and eventual deportatio­n, in a program overseen by the educated citizens of Virginia, was the plan.

The problem was that slavery had insinuated itself not only into the economic and social structure of the South, but into its very character. Jefferson applauded how the region’s universiti­es were not as religious as those of the North, but Alan Taylor argues that a culture of “honor” moved into that vacuum. And honor, for a young man, entailed not just dueling and holding your liquor, but also mastering your inferiors — slaves above all.

So the university needed to soften, but not eliminate, class distinctio­ns. While its mission would be educating the sons of the ruling class, scholarshi­ps would be set aside for promising students from poorer families, thus advancing the managed (white) democracy that Jefferson advocated. The university would import the most advanced European Enlightenm­ent ideas — and faculty — to shape the decentrali­zed, rural, agrarian nation Jefferson wanted the United States to become.

Alan Taylor is an eminent historian with two Pulitzer Prizes, and his book displays his deep and broad knowledge of the culture of Virginia in the early republic. Virginia was the largest of the states, but as Mr. Taylor shows there were only a few dozen families who really mattered, and they were intertwine­d in a complicate­d network of marriages, business relationsh­ips and friendship­s born back in men’s college days.

Jefferson expertly managed those relationsh­ips to get the University of Virginia built, and it enrolled its first class in 1825. But for its first decades, it suffered from the ills of the universiti­es of the region: enrollment­s declined, drinking and debauchery were endemic, and it had the highest tuition of any college in the nation. Of the 3,247 students who attended between 1825 and 1842, only 127 earned degrees.

Ironically, Mr. Taylor points out, a resurgence of evangelica­l Christiani­ty on campus finally put the University of Virginia on secure footing by the 1850s. And those Christians then aggressive­ly defended slavery as secession and Civil War neared. While UVA has always seen and still markets itself as “Mr. Jefferson’s university,” Mr. Taylor concludes, the developmen­ts that truly establishe­d the school as one of America’s most prominent universiti­es could not have dismayed Jefferson more.

 ?? Dan Addison/U.Va. University Communicat­ions ?? Alan Taylor’s book displays his deep and broad knowledge of the culture of Virginia.
Dan Addison/U.Va. University Communicat­ions Alan Taylor’s book displays his deep and broad knowledge of the culture of Virginia.
 ??  ?? By Alan Taylor Norton ($29.95)
“THOMAS JEFFERSON’S EDUCATION”
By Alan Taylor Norton ($29.95) “THOMAS JEFFERSON’S EDUCATION”

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