Rot, Riot, and Rebellion: Mr. Jefferson's Struggle to Save the University That Changed America

14. Henry St. George Tucker and His “New” Old Strategy

14 Henry St. George Tucker and His “New” Old Strategy America was changing. Railroads, steamboats, the telegraph—all were combining to transform the American landscape. The university was changing too. Following the loss of three professors in 1840—Bonnycastle to death, Davis to murder, and Blaettermann to scandal—Rector Chapman Johnson and the Board of Visitors moved to fill the crucial vacancies. As the new school year began, only five professors remained. Gessner Harrison continued to teach Greek and Latin. Emmet, the last professor left from the inaugural year, still taught chemistry. Tucker remained chair of moral philosophy. James L. Cabell, one of Virginia ’s Cabell clan, lectured in anatomy and surgery. And finally, Henry Howard was the medical professor, the third to fill the role since Robley Dunglison’s departure in 1833. Johnson was eager to fill the vacancies as quickly as possible because the number of professors a≠ected the school’s perpetually tenuous revenue stream as well as the size of student enrollment. Despite almost two decades in existence, the school still struggled to attract students. The class that entered in the opening year of 1825 peaked at 125 students. By 1840, the number had grown only to 179. The class that entered in 1841 numbered an even more dismal 170. Davis’s murder had dampened enthusiasm for the school. University leaders believed too many people still unfairly considered the school a godless and violent enclave. Meanwhile , the new southern states, such as Alabama, had opened their own universities to compete with other long-standing southern universities in Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee. By 1842, the number of students entering Je≠erson’s university had plummeted to Henry St. George Tucker and His “New” Old Strategy 129 128, the lowest number since the class of 1828–1829, the class that had been struck by typhoid. Incredibly, the 1842 enrollment was less than half of what it was in 1836, a mere six years earlier. The school was so hard-pressed for money that Johnson and his fellow board members were forced to decline a proposal by the Society of Alumni to create a department of history and English literature. The state’s support, never enthusiastic, had remained stagnant at $15,000 a year since 1819. Looking to quickly improve the university’s perilous situation, the Board of Visitors met in July 1841 to fill the three vacant posts. They hired J. J. Sylvester of University College, London, to teach math. Blaettermann’s job in modern languages went to Charles Kraitser, a Hungarian whose Catholic religion caused some grumbling in Richmond . Both of these were one-year appointments. The hire that would prove most relevant to the university’s immediate circumstances was the recruitment of the esteemed Henry St. George Tucker as professor of law. The board made the world-wise Tucker chairman immediately, replacing the still youthful Harrison. Tucker, in his early sixties, was the son of a U.S. district judge. Tucker himself was currently chief judge of the Virginia Court of Appeals. A graduate of William and Mary College , he had settled in Winchester, Virginia, at the age of twenty-two and begun practicing law. With the advent of the War of 1812, he enlisted as an o∞cer. He served four years in the U.S. House of Representatives and another four years in the state senate. He served as the state chancellor before becoming an appeals judge. Perhaps the board that hired him did not know that Tucker held Je≠ersonian views on human nature and believed that appeals to honor and a sense of right were more e≠ective than strict rules and punishment . That belief had led Je≠erson to found a university with a uniquely lax disciplinary system. Je≠erson believed students would govern themselves . “The insubordination of our youth is now the greatest obstacle to their education,” Je≠erson had written Ticknor, of Harvard, back in July 1823. “We may lessen the di∞culty, perhaps, by avoiding too much government , by requiring no useless observances, none which shall multiply occasions for dissatisfaction, disobedience and revolt.”1 Tucker held identical views. However, he entered an “academical 130 Rot, Riot, and Rebellion village” that had been increasingly run along opposite lines. While enrollment languished, rule making flourished. Many of the students of 1841 behaved as abominably as Virginians had come to expect they would. Attending class seemed...