Past ten years and before that, he taught at the university of california davis and Boston University on topics ranging from the colonial period from the war of 1812 and beyond. In 1996 that went to the william coopers town to the establishment of the university of virginia, jefferson of course regarded the university of one of his signature achievements and ellen got interested in pursuing a book on the subject after coming across some correspondence in various ways which the revolution impacted society of politics in the early years of the country and the story of jeffersons attempts at educational reform through the founding of the university of virginia certainly fits the focus. But it also has particular relevance today in the context of command reform and controversy over the goals and funding for education. As recounted in the book, things didnt quite turn out as jefferson hoped for the university of virginia and envisions establishing the democratized system of education, one that would cultivate the group of the future leaders and rejects slavery and usher in a dallas area and society. Society. That meant the sons of wealthy families could afford to attend, and many of them proved to be unruly and abusive students. Far from embracing reforms that change virginia, these early graduates remain deeply conservative, continue to hold reviews and went on to serve in the confederate civil war. All in all, he presents a case of jeffersons noble intentions falling short amid the inequalities and injustices of the Virginia Society of the time. Ellen spoke alan spoke about the literature of jefferson and itthe book page called it in observing narrative that offers crucial insight into jeffersons thinking as he pursued his vision what he hoped would be a Better Future so ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming alan taylor. [applause] that was such a good introduction i have almost nothing to add to it. I do want to thank brad and also elizabeth and cody for their help in the event and all of you for turning out. I just want to make clear at the start i do like the university of virginia but i dont think i would have liked it in the 1820s. It didnt get off to the kind of start Thomas Jefferson had hoped for. So, in the book that i pretend i am trying to address i think three questions. First why is it the states suddenly decides to invest in Public Education and the team teams, no not sooner, not latert the teen teens because this was a complete new development which wasnt known for spending on anything public. Until that point. When it chose to invest in Public Education, why did they choose just to build a university and not say Primary School systems that would have benefited many more people. Why does it choose a relatively Small University that is very expensive and would educate only the sons of the wealthiest families . Third, why did it go so badly . This story is set in virginia but its a story that i would argue has national significance. Jefferson is the most influential figure in the United States in his lifetime other than washington. 1740s and the 1820s. Second, virginia is the largest, richest, most powerful state in the union of the time. Just about all the president s except for john adams come from virginia and has the largest congressional delegation. Virginia assumed they were going to be the leading element in the country and it turns out they were right. When that starts to shift in the eight team teams that plays into why they established the university of virginia when they do. Virginia is also home in 1792 halves of the enslaved people in the country in the one state that virgin. 40 of the population is held. A it is some troll to everything, to the economy, to the society, to the culture. It affects a threedimensional life in virginia including what is possible in terms of educational reform. Now the book is in part about the work jefferson receives. Doeas he learned, what does he l you, what was he like as a student. Thats primarily what kind of education does he think young men of the next generation should receive and we also pay a little bit of attention to what the young women should learn that his focus is on young white men. The people that he asked that are going to be the leaders in the next generation. And he focuses on them for a couple of reasons. One is he does want to change Virginia Society. There are things he doesnt like about it. He wants it to become a more Democratic Society for white men. He also does want to end slavery, but he wants to end it in a very peculiar way. His plan, and he lays out several times, is always linked to the deportation of free blacks. He cannot imagine a virginia which white and blacks can live as equals and as neighbors and that is the great small. It isnt unique to jefferson. This is the common thinking of the relatively liberal people in virginia of that generation is that blacks and whites cannot live together in safety in which both are free. That is a great small in his thinking but again not unique to jefferson. The first letter is from june of 1760. Hes a young man, 17yearsold, and its about education. Its about his education and hes writing to the executors of hihis fathers estate but fathero control his money, his inheritance because he isnt 21 yet. And hes asking them to free up the funds so he can go to the one college that then existed, the college of william and mary. The only place you can go for Higher Education in i the late colonial period. You might go off to princeton in the way James Madison did but if you are going to go to college during the colonial period, will you marry is your only option and there are no universities to the south of virginia to go to until after the revolution. And he writes as long as i stay on the mountain come and its what would later be monticello, he lives on the plantation which is at the foot of the mountain, but thats Cold Mountain sometimes. The loss of one fourth of my time is inevitable by companies coming here and detaining me. In other words, his social life is too rich if he stays and hes trying to justify to the executors he will learn more if he goes away to school, so hes an unusual young man, the first and probably the last that will claim he will party less if he goes to college. It turns out he got into some hijinks, he did go to college but in the end, he is about the most studious person to go to the college of william and mary. In 1808 looking back on it 40 years later and hes writing today. Code about a grandsons education and he says that he credits education from saving him from the society of horse races, foxhunters and if he hadnt been saved from the company he would become as worthless to the society as th they. So, this goes to jeffersons mixed feelings about virginians. He thought of them as gregario gregarious, sociable, generous, not intellectual, not particularly hardworking. Again, hes talking about the elite class of gentlemen who prided themselves. There is plenty of hard work going on in virginia that they arbut theyare not the ones doin. They are the beneficiaries of it. So, jefferson really wanted to change virginia and make them more like himself, disciplined, hardworking, cosmopolitan, benefiting from education. He wants to change them but this is one of the keys to jefferson, he doesnt want to come front of them. Jefferson has a very thin skin. He doesnt like contention. His favorite philosopher preachers moderation, serenity, just having a life with as little agitation as possible. This usually isnt a good philosophy for a politician. Jefferson is a complex guy, very brilliant and capable of being a close critic of the society he lives in the slavery, but he does not want to contention which means he isnt going to push the changes he. Thats for the next generation. So, for jefferson it is important the next generation must be prepared to do the things he wasnt able to achieve which is a more Democratic Society and also a society that has lightened itself by getting rid of slavery and also getting rid of black people. So, it isnt entirely admirable what he would like to pull off and it by the virginia standards of that time, he is considered a dangerous radical as those thatt do know his thinking. Jefferson is famous for a plan he put out for comprehensive Education System that would have been Primary Schools, it would have been what we call high schools now, the academy is. Primary schools would have been for girls and boys. Academies would have been just for adolescent boys and then the third level of the system would be the university. Initially reformed by william and mary but then he decided william and mary was hopeless and doomed and he would like to help kill it and create a new university of preferably you could see it from the top of monticello. And hes a very good politician. He has some very powerful friends and they end up making it happen. A key moment comes 1718 det 18 when the state has a windfall amounts of money that its gotten from the federal government but its not enough for jeffersons full system, all three tiers. Another politician says lets build a Primary School system first and jefferson says no. Lets build a university first. Theres only a limited amount of money. I want to spend it on the university to educate many fewer people. This clashes with our usual thinking of him being a democratic figure, and in many ways he is, but again, it goes to the peculiarities of a man who wants to democratize society that once the next generation to do it. He thinks that the way you get there is not why uplifting the entire population, but by educating the future leaders from the elite families and they will do it. I think you can probably imagine what is going to go wrong in this scenario. Now also, jefferson is getting to be elderly and he wants to see a payoff before he dies, and its reasonable to think that if he could build a university, one university to educate approximately 200 young men faster than you could set up a whole educational system for the state with fewer complications. And plus he likes architecture. He liked designing things. Hes not going to design a lovd one room school houses. He would much rather designing neoclassical campus for a university. He thinks by designing the right kind of architecture he can reengineer young men to be the kind of young and who will do the kind of good deeds he wants the next generation to do. But the problem is the young men who show up at the university of virginia, they are the foxhunters and horse racers and theyve been conditioned by a society theyve grown up in that sense if you are to be the future masters of plantations, you must be very prickly about your honor and you need to make a show of your ability to practice leisure and generosity to prove you are not one of these yankees have the north and that you are not some sort of poor white that might have to actually work hard and get your hands dirty and certainly you are not an enslaved person. So this class is brought together. Its the most expensive institution of Higher Education in the 1820s in the United States so the only people that cannot afford them ocan afford g from the plantations. It turns out they are not capable of transforming them in the way jefferson thought that it was. Its about their noble intentions, noble in most ways, not all that the compulsory deportation of africanamericans is certainly the least attractive element of the sche scheme. But how it falls short. And in part it falls short because why jefferson is able to pitch this in the eight team tens they are nervous finding out virginia isnt the largest state anymore. Its not the richest state anymore and they are fearful it isnt going to be the most politically powerful anymore because its skipping relative to the state of new york and pennsylvania and they are nervous that ohio is coming up very fast, too in other words population and wealth is shifting towards the north. They decided they do not trust a union in which they are not the most powerful state. They will be able to win arguments in congress and send off a, so jefferson has created a university in partnership with the other leaders in virginia you that has two contradictory missions. Theres jeffersons preferred admission that his reform the state from within, and the other mission that hes also bought an too which is to defend off the influence including antislavery activist so it will do so on its own terms at an undetermined date in the future. It turns out that these young men from the plantations are much more prepared for the fact to defend their institutions and to preserve in a conservative way the virginia theyve grown up in rather than to fulfill jeffersons vision to transform virginia into Something Else so that is what the book is about. Thank you. Happy to take any questions that you have. [applause] if you have a question if you would please go to the microphone. Im just trying to think about how to frame this. Throughout your talk i heard you say he was kind of waiting for the next generation to take over. Was that clearly stated or was that something he kind of looked back on an and said i didnt fot my generation, i was looking at the next generation. He starts saying it in the 1780s when hes 43yearsold. Is there any indication on why he didnt want to change the current . When he is a young legislator he one to introduce a piece of legislation that in a very small ways going to improve the conditions. He does it as a young legislator so one of the most senior respective legislators emphasized while you present this and he says okay i will do it and he gets attacked by all the other legislators saying we dont talk about that kind of stuff. Then an enslaved people will get ideas we are setting up a dynamic that will lead to their freedom and they may want to rise up in rebellion to accelerate that so shut it completely down. Jefferson never, ever wants to take an unpopular stance. My very shallow understanding is that he was quite effective at getting what he wanted and im kind of surprised to hear he was thinskinned. The different fights between all of those revolutionaries it seemed like he was out there pushing pretty hard for what he wanted. Is a very good competition. One of the things is he figures out the majority leaders around him and what they want. And how he can nudge them in just a bit in the direction he wants to go but he also knows when he can push them too far when there will be a major push back. Also because he doesnt like contention and he says in his letters criticism or contention is ten times more painful than any praise is positive for him so somebody like Alexander Hamilton thinks of jefferson as a conniving backstabbing kind of guy that will smile in your face and in wireless working behind the scenes with other people to achieve the political and. He is an in your face that i didnt see conference of the coe people who dont want to do it. That is a jefferson style. I dont say that in the book but i couldnt understand saying that. [inaudible] since then we havent actually produced any. What is the great competition, i live across the river so the reason i ask the first question is during the summer i took my children to visit monticello and the only attractive thing is perhaps Thomas Jeffersons monticello and the university of virginia. I didnt know this until my children mention. I have zero clue to help me understand. No other experts i talked to. Virginia isnt the largest state in the union. Its kind of a middle states now and thats why the political influence has diminished over time. But virginia is also a changing state right now in part because the suburbs of washington are the vibrant growing and economically part of the state and they are becoming much more influential in the state of virginia. The question about charlottesville, and it very much goes to the politics of the city council and is also goes to the racial politics of the city. Historically the Africanamerican Community has been marginalized. Their sensitivities havent been considered by the city council and this particular vote was as in so many things that go on in politics these days it is about the symbols of who is considered legitimate and who is not and those are shifting all the time and contest it. You can think of examples in other places other than charlottesville. There is a long tradition of africanamericans feeling that their feelings have been ignored and this is an effort by the city council to say if i can finish what im saying here is i understand the sentiment behind it but i dont think that it was the right way to go because it plays out in the country but they are rejecting Thomas Jefferson and everything about him and ive found it difficult in talking about the book with people today because the question everybody keeps coming back from both ends of the political spectrum its basically is jefferson a good guy or not. Its a terrible question i believe. The question is why was jefferson so important in the time he lived in. What influence did he have over his time and in what ways does that influence survives today. Earlier in the 20th century it was like he is just the greatest thing ever because hes got the declaration of independence, creator of democracy, separation of church and state, louisiana purchase, it is a pretty winning record. People just didnt talk about slavery. People are writing the history is and it just wasnt part of the story. Now we shift to the early 21st and then people are suddenly paying catchup. He is talking about all men are created equal yet he owns all these people. It doesnt free more than a handful of them in contrast to George Washington who freed up just about all of the people that he had on so whats going on here and then again, my position is you swing to the other extreme and say that he is just purely evil and there are people i on the city council who are just part of the loop and what i am saying is we ought to be able to think about jefferson and all his complexity we can think about the things that we can still admire like separation of church and state, seeking democracy, american independence and then also acknowledged that he could not free himself from slavery in the and and say why is it somebody could be capable of these extraordinary accomplishments and still feel that he couldnt do anything more to change this society other than create a university and hope the next generation would make the changes he couldnt. I would like us to think about him in this kind of complicated way which we cant do this every question as a referendum on whether we like them or not. You probably wont like my question then. [laughter] having read a lot about jefferson, one thing that set him apart obviously is also his arrogance and this desire to avoid confrontation. Certainly in the relationship with washington because they are very, very close as washington was with James Madison. The stuff that he circulated that kind of separates him from some of the other people like madison who also broke with washington to side with jefferson because he became your eitheyouare either with me or ae very i never understood that to the extent. Its when he came and paid a condolence call and realized because the relationship is broken down. Theres also times when he tried to persuade washington to run for a third term which is a little jarring because again, as you pointed out, he is working behind the scenes to plant some stories in the papers that make washington a bad. What concerned him as washington was so concerned with hamilton and they were a team, closer and closer team over time in pursuing their vision of what the country should be. But jefferson kept hoping he could somehow disconnect and he hoped washington could just become a more passive kind of father figure and jefferson could replace hamilton as this kind of Prime Minister in the system and so he doesnt want washington to cease to become president because the alternative he knows is not going to be jefferson probably, its going to be john adams, chip was and he thought john adams is much more clearly committed to this. He is capablhes capable of dois behind the scenes to his political competitors but theres a long tradition in the politics of the country of people doing similar things. A little bit of a followup to that question, so you said that jefferson didnt like contention that he was a great politician. On the ruling myths and unseriousness of the students at william and mary he manages to engineer an Opposition Party that comes to power and this place is a very formidable first party tha but is it to accomplih that and he pulled it off and then he comes obligated the power of this party and he consolidated the power and basically destroyed the federalists. So there is that accomplishment and then he achieves things like the louisiana purchase. We have to set aside and do something that isnt in the constitution. He was a strict constructionist until it didnt serve his purposes at which point the constitution becomes more of an accordion. But its a good accomplishment for the country saved it from a real crisis at the time. And then on the local level at 300,000 doesnt sound like a lot of money but to get it out of the state of virginia for Higher Education is an extraordinary accomplishment because nobody had ever done that before and jefferson is very proud of it. He played a game of chicken with the state legislators which is they wanted him to open up one half of the buildings built just to get it going. There isnt a student coming in here until its done. And he largely fulfilled dot but it wasnt completed at the time they opened up the doors. But he pulled this off and gave an interview not with a press member but probably a visitor describing just how cleverly he had manipulated the legislature to get all of this money and the university built and unfortunately this guy that didnt know him very well published a story about it and jefferson is just livid. He didnt want a white to be shown. They are the worst in the south and there were northerners that were the most numerous which was princeton. The trouble in the north is mostly over food service which is terrible and the students and basically having food fights in riots. They found i founded in the 187d 90s and as early as 19th century. You pointed out that jefferson made a choice of funding the University Rather than k12 and in the recent years they are comparing asia. They lived in boarding houses with no adult supervision and so people kind of hated the students because nobody looked at them and so, what was the process by which the students got tamed . About the church in the revolution through jefferson at addisons, they destroy the churcchurch establishment. The colonial virginia to levy a tax on everybody to support the Anglican Church that would later become the Episcopal Church is the highest single tax tha sings 1 feet and it means there are 110 or so and virginia. They are not truly Public Schools but they are schools where jefferson goes to one of them. Where the church state establishment gets taken away. Just about all the schools were gone elsewhere. Education is in worse shape. In part because what jefferson had done. But jefferson had expected when they destroyed the church state establishment they would take the tax savings and invest it in Public Education. There is a struggle between jeffersons vision of the Secular University note chapel, no professor of theology, purely secular, nothing like this in the world at the time. Very important for jefferson to do it that way. That starts to break down once hes dead and during his enterie there was an element. The. What happens is the culture that young gentleman and virginia a vault in part through the influence of their mothers into a more evangelical culture which promotes a kind of self control that means they are not just fox hunters. Its slow and starts to kick him in a serious way in the 1850s and so if you look at the people that are uva graduates active in the confederacy, there are people who are pious christians of a certain sort who are committed to preserving slavery. I have a question that is a bit offtopic but i think it relates to our relations today in the American Education and what you are talking about because you are an educator. I have five sons and ive told them all they should study math and chinese and they all ignored me. They are all studying History History . One z. What is the best advice youve got from your parents and he said study matty and chinese and i totally ignored by god. We didnt have things like africanamerican studies and womens studies and i thought who needs them and overtime, im an old white guy you may have noticed a lot of things have come out and we never learned about them. Im wondering you as an educator do you think i should have told my sons to study africanamerican studies, womens studies because i wanted to make this not a racial discussion and some of these other things. I can see that it could have helped with Critical Thinking and a liberal arts education, but im still kind of like you should have studied math and chinese. Anyway. I do think people should study math and chinese but they should also study art and literature and history. But i understand your point and this is a dilemma that we are in at the cost of Higher Education as its gone up. We feel compelled to tell students to start specializing in to specialize in things that will make money sooner rather than later. Entirely understandable because of the burdens of families in the students are faced with because of a Public Investment in education that has gone down. Im never going to dismiss somebody that gives advice to people that have to cope with these burdens or the family has to cope with it. More should be studying math and chinese. But there is a place to also have a say in history or literature or art or music and this will make them better at being businesspeople in the future if they have this range to their own intellect and the capacity to investigate things along several different avenues is what im thinking. But be an english minor asthma would be my design for the education. William mary likes to claim the alumni so i was interested in your discussion about the fact he wasnt a fan and went on to establish. Its funny when you go to william and mary commanded them just to talk, they have an ambivalence about jefferson. On the one hand they want to claim him and on the other hand, they know he tried to do the school in. So, jefferson persuaded himself that had good reason. There was major violence between the students int and the communy and the faculty and it suffered from various. Williamsburg was an eye in town after the capital moved back and to richmond. So they blocked that new and used that opportunity to say since they invited the legislature to look into the operations why dont we just take the money away from them as they williamsburg academy. In the end they dont succeed in math. It still exists but is nearly killed at the tim the time the y was created. Is this covered in your book because that would be fascinating. There was a guy that has written a dissertation on the subject so i used his work rather than to repeat what he did. My other question back then they were still pretty agrarian. Would it even had them practical in a reasonable bound of practicality or expense to create a primary system of education everywhere . Since there wont be the manor to do the statewide primary system. It is a reasonable question cause thecaused a suspiciously e farms and plantations and they dondont have a lot of village. So its not like new england. The population density in new england is twice what it is in virginia and also included West Virginia at that time. People do with more dispersed in virginia and new england and new england was the only part of the country at that time until the 18 teams that have primary Public Education and jefferson said its easy for them to do because you can walk to school. For a lot of it is too far to walk and a lot of virginians couldnt afford shoes. Theres a lot of poverty affects time. With that said, people still want to have education and if they hatheyhad a system of whatd all the field schools which were set up and its hard to have comprehensive coverage because what you would need is a Critical Mass of parents would be willing that have children in the right ages and they lived reasonably close enough that they could sustain one of these oneroom schools. Some years you had that and some years you didnt. Still, if there have been more money put into this to support the teachers, more of the schools would have existed. Because eventually after the civil war when virginia isnt much more, they do set up a comprehensive Primary School system. You are right it is difficult, but they could have done a lot more than they did because they decided t to prioritize the University Rather than a primary education. You mentioned the presbyterian churches. We were told the honor system. Its not the central factor it is the honor code that saved it. Its part of a digger cultural shift. Initially it is very narrow it just basically says you will not cheat in exams. It doesnt keep you from going out and burning tar barrels on the lawn and disrupting the faculty. But it is a step in the right direction and its part of the cultural shift that is influenced by evangelical christianity. So it isnt the beall and endall. Like any kind of popular history, you want to boil things down to reasonable explanation and not have a history professor tell you how complicated it is youre giving a tour or trying to explain to undergraduates today why the university. You have to set a good example. I want to get you to talk a little bit more about the scholarship that went into this book. I read somewhere and it was mentioned in the introduction of that come across some correspondence between jefferson and an associate and this is what initially kind of drew you in, but there is some stuff in the book. What got me going is the correspondence about jefferson and state senator for whom those of you that have been there is the chief person that gets the law passed and funding and theres interesting correspondence about the politics in the state of virginia. I was interested in the regional politics and how they play into the decisions of what kind of education virginia should be funded. But i tried to do in the book is bring in other characters who are not attended to in the usual story. Francis gilmore is the guy sent over to england to recruit most of the first faculty. He was considered by jefferson to be the most brilliant young man, essentially the only smart young man in his opinion before the university of virginia comes along and jefferson really relies on Francis Gilmer to get things done to help create the university in the specs tend to be the first law professor which were jefferson is the most important faculty position at the university. Then i found fascinating letters written and he didnt trust jefferson at all. Delaware was a young ultraconservative who said the purpose of the university of virginia is to defend virginias way of life, period. So it turns out hes the profite prophet of what it would be rather than jefferson and his letters are full of im trying to save the university from jefferson so he is pulling something over on jefferson that he is going about writing to his friends and his brother about dont worry about their ideas of the future. Or a very pious christian and hes one of the leaders of the universitys writing from the inside to take it over and doesnt get anywhere until jefferson dies. Its going to be a real influence over what the university will become in the 1830s and 40s and 50s. You have to go to the microphone or i can repeat it for you. Article in the Washington Post mentioned that there is another book by one of your former colleagues on the same ground but what i learned if i read those books flex you should read my book. [laughter] if you are going to read to come you should read mcguinness and warren nelson. Its a collection of essays which is or about the long run of the history. Im very much focused on jeffersons lifetime. They are focused on, they are kind of taking a baton where i leave off. They are taking it anymore for work they. Happy to sign some books. Thank you all. [applause] copies are available at the checkout desk and alan will be over there signing. Thank you again for coming. Thank you again for coming