extensive and liberal scale that our circumstances would call for jefferson considered the university to be one of his three greatest achievements with the declaration of independence and the virginia statute for religious freedom. in his post-presidential years he was able to devote himself to fulfilling the dream of an academical village. today, we'll hear from andrew j o'shaughnessy about jefferson's aspirations for his university. his book is a twin biography of jefferson and retirement and of the university of virginia's first years in seeking to understand figures from the past the ability to read their own recorded thoughts is immensely valuable today's author andrew j. o'shaughnessy used founders online in researching. this book founders online a website hosted by the national archives through the national historical publications and records commission has transcriptions of thousands of documents written by and to the nation's founders. jefferson's letter to peel is easily accessible on founders online and that portal also gives us the context for the title of today's book. in an 1820 letter at the end of a proud description of the new university jefferson told us correspondent. this institution will be based on the limitable freedom of the human mind. for here. we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead nor to tolerate any error. so long as reason is left free to combat it. andrew jayashaughnessy is vice president of the thomas jefferson foundation at monticello and saunders director of the robert h smith international center for jefferson studies. his previous books included an empire divided the american revolution and the british caribbean and the men who lost america joining him in conversation is holly brewer burke professor of american history and associate professor at the university of maryland now that's here from andrew o'shaughnessy and holly brewer. thank you for joining us today. hello everyone. thank you so much for coming. i think this is going to be a very fun conversation about a terrific book and an important topic that's it continues to be relevant and powerful. and most particularly the questions are about what is the legacy of the american revolution? what does it mean in terms of? citizenship on especially higher education and how should we understanding conflicts of her ideals versus realities in the complex atmospheres in the republic? but education is currently and especially higher education is currently very strongly deb. ated what extent? as it's the found, you know, the universities that were founded in the wake of the revolution in particular to what extent were they? tainted or compromised by questions of slavery and those questions of particularly surrounded the founding of the university of virginia. as it mirrors, it's 200th anniversary. i guess it's just passed it right andrew. well, it's somewhat arbitry had in 2019. they celebrated the year that the bill was passed to create the university of virginia. but in actual fact is a rolling anniversary. so 2025 will be the bison henry of the very first students. oh university and when it opened it's doors should have had this book for 2019 that i feel that it's still relative to that bicentennial requirements. i wrote it feeling that this is much more important than the university of virginia. it's alumni and the students. i think there are. ah lessons in this book and insights that are relevant to any of us interested in our education and education more. generally. it's such a creative vision that it's useful to engage with as we think today about the purpose of the university. and the role of university okay, so when i talk about education and the impact of the revolution on education, i always emphasize briefly to my students. that there wasn't much public education before the revolution in massachusetts a little bit of you know grammar school for especially aimed at moving the bible. but outside of massachusetts and a few other places. normally you had to be wealthy to get in education and everything costs quite a bit of money. it wasn't much funding by the state if you want to call it that and that we should think of public education as a consequence in part of the american revolution although a hard bought one. what is jefferson's role in in pushing for education in virginia and generally in and what is his general impact on the american after the revolution? well, there is really no other founder who was so engaged in the idea of creating a university. i see the american revolution really is the origins of that initially was interested in reforming william and mary, but the university was just the apex of this much broader educational vision that i think very remarkable for the time it took the form of bill in 1779 for the general diffusion of knowledge in virginia. and this would have really created the first public school system as you rightly note, massachusetts and connecticut had very high rates of literacy and large numbers of schools. thanks to the puritans later congregationalists and presbyterians who wanted to have a school in every town so that = could read the bible, but it was not an entirely systematic public school system scotland. the same reasons is new england and connecticut. prussia and some of the autographic countries were issuing decrees for public school education system, but that wasn't realized in pressure until the early 19th century. so jefferson's bill had us which would have given. both boys and girls an education for three years basic primary school education and as he told a quaker abolitionist in the early 1790s, the bill did not specifically. exclude free african americans louis suspected that the way it would be interpreted by this for the planters would result in that but it was a very enlightened measure. do point out sir in this book the limitable freedom of the human mind, is literally just out. um, i point out there's a real difference between what he was doing and what crush was doing in prussia and these what are sometimes called enlightened despotisms? up, they were interested in strengthening the state. by training bureaucrats and functions jefferson was as much interested. in educating people to hold the government accountable and he felt it essential for the survival of the republican system about which he was paranoid or would be seen so today because he was very where historically that all republics and failed. i think it's very brittle system that usually they resulted in a military coup in civil war. and he saw education as we still do to some extent as the panaceae against that he was also interested in creating what he called a natural aristocracy, which was different from a european aristocracy and that it essentially saw his based on merit and educated elite and what he hunts was that they would go to these talk universities and that they would be in terms of the time that they put their self-interest aside and look to the public good but he was always quite cynical about that and he insisted throughout his life. but what was most important was actually the public? school system that it would be better if you had to choose to have the population largely educated rather than just a few so far from being utterly liters. you recognize the importance of popular education ironic that he ended up. just serving me elites and creating the university, but the fact is he tried several times infinity and 1821 with very similar bills to introduce public education. one of the reasons he kept failing and why he opposed the public education bill of a political opponent was he was utterly opposed to any kind of religious education and he saw that as actually mandated by his virginia statute for religious freedom. he wouldn't even have clergy teaching in the schools at a time when education everywhere. was dominated by different religious denominations, and we should give credit to the fact that the whole evolution of universities. was -- initially to the catholic church, and that a lot of our ceremonies and expressions. come from like the expression of the term dean or rector. mm-hmm, even the wearing of roads eating the degree ceremony. some of the old ones have the laying on the fence these come from, you know, religious traditions. right, you've talked about a lot there. i want to be apart some of those threads. but can i just pause for many and i wanted to remind you of a quote would you no doubt now from more than a century before by sir william berkeley governor of virginia and 1671. hearing answer to a question from the authorities in britain in england said i thank god there are no free schools nor printing and i hope you have not have these hundred years for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sex into the world. that is seth secs religious into the world and printing has devolved them and libs against the best governments. god keep us from both. what do you think? jefferson would have had to say to berkeley and do you think some of that sentiment that berkeley expressed still existed in virginia century later? i i love that quote. it's one of my favorites that education essentially opens. pandora's box needs to anarchy. yeah, of course jefferson would have deployed it. he would deployed berkeley is the royalists and the cavalier. ironically the university sports teams. no known as the cavaliers they really the royalists who fought against parliament. so i've always seen the tournaments almost subversive of by students of jefferson's round head commentary vision, but you're quite right. it's cavalier tradition continued ironically elite virginians like to think of themselves as the descendants of cavaliers the descendants of english aristocrats as opposed to the puritan roundheads in the north because many of those who went to massachusetts and the great great migration and 1620s went to escape charles the first the what's known as the period of personal rule by the yeah monarchy. and the virginian leaked the love to think of themselves as our expression there's a small grain of truth in the idea even though a lot of in fact would descended from indentured servants and even convicts the the only british lord it moves the americas was lord fairfax, and they actually used to own one of the most splendid castle. it's castle in england, which is not in the city of leeds. it's much further south and has a moat is often used by the tourist authority and they were the people who were the patrons of george washington. so there were enough real cavaliers and to some extent that anti-intellectual tradition and untie education remained. this was another reason why jefferson couldn't get his education bills passed. they simply weren't willing to expand that amount of money and he was become quite desperate by the early 19th century because he recognized that virginia was falling behind places like, new york and massachusetts, and i didn't especially behind in education. so, you know you i'm sure you know that at the debates over the a new constitution virginia in 1830 one of the worries one of the open concerns expressed about expanding the sufferings to create white adult men was that then they would all vote for republic education. this is actually this year in 1830, even then and the we weren't necessarily willing to pay for it. but they were willing to find at least in part these literary funds which set up an annual payment of i think 15,000 a year you show, um, they were willing to find this institution for for a universe a university. um, but with an american republic. i mean in famous correspond in famous letter he wrote to um atoms in 1813. he talks about an of virtue and talent. what did he mean by that and how how what we see arguing with adams about and how did that fit into his vision for the university? well, they in many ways had different ideas of an aristocracy talentment. john adams was always much more a pessimist. and felt that you would always get an aristocracy in society, and they may not have titles. it may not be in the context of the monarchy, but you would get these very wealthy people who's differences were odds with the population a large and who would pursue their self-interest to detriment of others and to the public goods um, jefferson certainly recognized the danger of that. it's not an entirely utopian. but he did believe that by having real competition i'm i'm the university of virginia. it's from the first in america to have an examination system. yeah, well, they doesn't use the language of merits which is one of my former colleagues here at the university shows is a language that actually comes in very much later and the whole notion of merit. is a complicated one not least is we'll have such different levels of opportunity based on their background race gender, but still there isn't notion of the with jefferson not of pure elitism. i one of the most impressive features of his vision is that it does say that very poor are capable of producing talents. he wanted scholarships at the university and that so the poorest could potentially be part of the natural aristocracy right, and that was based in part two on his overall plan. that would have included republic education and those who did well could be could be moved into more, you know could be pushed up the the scale of education so and yet the worst call it where their scholarships. i mean, i've seen what i remember reading in your book. is that the tuition ended up being higher than a lot of other colleges across the country $75 a year now, she's really cheap. but of course then it wasn't quite as cheap. do you think he actually worked in the first few years to um promote and aristocracy over to intolerant or did it actually promote the more traditional wealthy hereditary leaders of virginia who already started with their but but in the strip as it were. well like his other great project the declaration independence, it was flawed and as you said in your introduction, it was obviously like all colleges the south had the blemish presence of slavery and although he had wanted to have scholarships. they were not introduce until about 20 years later. and then only a very few of them and his critics of whom there are many. i'll argue that actually the numbers scholarships containers built the general diffusion of knowledge and his later bills was very very small, although they don't take into account political feasibility. we always hold jefferson to absolute standards. we forget was a politician and his bills don't necessarily represent what he would most like to do the point, right especially in their final form, right? it's very keen that should be a public. university and that there should be a public school system and certainly represented a movement right direction in terms of opportunities for the larger populace. right, so can we explore this question of slavery a little bit more. there's been there's been several reasons books and also the report that was generated by university of virginia itself in 2018 here i'm thinking about books by. by especially mcginnis and nelson educated and tyranny and alan taylor's recent book which have argued that you know. you know, let's be honest if there was a whole lot of just playing celebration of the university of virginia for a long time and not much criticism about about its connection with slavery and not even much exploration of that topic. there's now university of virginia has joined many other universities including my own the university of maryland. in exploring more some of the connections to slavery in the origins from the role that slaves played in actually building the buildings. i remember seeing at the university of mississippi the hand prints on one of the bricks. it's one of the slaves enslaved people who left that print. i'm from building the buildings to the fact that they were serving as you know, there was servants to some of the students unto the professors and they were enslaved sometimes hired out to the you know, so there's there's been this big exploration going on and these books have pushed back into almost um almost that the reason for this was to perpetuate slavery. could you talk about why you what your opinion is about that? i mean, i read you were saying that that is misguided that is that is misleading in terms of what the university of virginia was all about. can you explain more? yes, um, i would say from the outset and most of these books came out so during the bicentennial university in 2019 by commission on slavery. for the university and they do represent a very important corrective. to earlier work in acknowledging the presence of slavery and it's unbelievable. now that earlier history is really just didn't discuss this feature of the university or only tangentially. and i profited a lot from these books and i incorporate their insights information where i disagree with them is where they give a causal role. to slavery in jefferson's motivation to create the university of virginia. i can see why they do. it is jefferson's constantly talking about major reason to have a a university of university of virginia so that our pupils will not go north. and be contaminated by what he calls the poisonous ideas in the north. the problem with the thinking that this is just code for slavery. is that firstly? 1780s and 1790s when he's first embarked on a project to create a major university in virginia and basically to transform the college of william and mary. what divided the north and south most was not a debate on slavery and the historians? ah argue evening during the constitution this debate was ongoing but it was a debate really on the how one represented in slave population in terms of electoral college votes and the voting numbers of votes in the south. what does that the south could keep this historical dominance over the north and would dominate the presidency and the senate much like the southern game we continue to play but in terms of real abolitionism and a major abolitionist movement. that was very slow low. it occurred after the american revolution. it was slow to rise with other major issues like the perif southerners really resented paying the tariff to import goods from england because they imported so much and it was protecting northern manufacturers. the banking system and the credit system. these were issues between the north and south the real issue the real poison for jefferson. was firstly that most of the education system and all of it in the north was dominated by his political opponents federalism. and most of the educational system was also dominated by presbyterians, even if there's some colleges and south a lot of them were right created and set up by federalist presbyterians and certainly all of them were religious colleges except for transylvania and the universe in north carolina, which experimented was secular education, but they didn't continue it. and it's very interesting to me. now the first mentions name and i didn't think anyone has made this connection. he first mentions the name the university of the virginia and his desire to create the university interestingly enough the unitarian british radical. physical refugee priestley with whom largely discussing religious ideas. it's to him that he says i he wants to found the university. significance the year 1800 is that he was engaged in the most bruising? election presidential election almost in our history compares very much almost with the even the civil war and is that hurt? jefferson's most was the attack upon him? and the accusations of being a radical of being an atheist claims that he would make everyone sing the car came president the entrancement french revolution. um, he bitterly resented these attacks and some of the worst attacks actually came from presidents of northern universities wh