To James Madison from Thomas Jefferson, 23 January 1825
From Thomas Jefferson
Monticello Jan. 23. 25.
I inclose you a letter from mr. Cabell and a copy of the bill I prepared and sent him as he requested.1
I send you also a letter from mr. Gilmer,2 by which he seems determd. not to undertake our professorship. What are we to do? I abhor the idea of a mere Gothic lawyer who has no idea beyond his Coke Littleton,3 who could not associate in conversation with his Colleagues, nor utter a single Academical idea to an enquiring stranger. The only substitute for Gilmer I can think of is Wm. C. Preston who wrote the answer to Shelby on the charge against his gr. father Colo. Wm Campbell of King’s mountain.4 He is a fine young man, has travelled to great advantage, and left behind him the most respectable recollections. I wrote to Genl. Breckenridge to enquire concerning him but have no answer. I hear nothing further from Tucker, nor of our three Professors from London. Gilmer seems to have made a considerable purchase of books. They are at the University, but cannot be opened for want of the Catalogue, for which I have written to him. I desired him to give expectations to Dr. Emmet. Affectly. yours
Th: Jefferson
RC (DLC: Rives Collection, Madison Papers); draft (DLC: Jefferson Papers). Minor differences between the copies have not been noted.
1. Joseph C. Cabell to Jefferson, 16 Jan. 1825 (Cabell, Early History of the University of Virginia, 332–33). The bill Jefferson drafted was “a bill for the discontinuance of the College of William and Mary, and the establishment of other colleges in convenient distribution over the state.” It was intended to be a response to any bill introduced to move the college from Williamsburg to Richmond (ibid., 499–501).
2. Francis Walker Gilmer to Thomas Jefferson, 13 Jan. 1824 [1825] (Richard Beale Davis, ed., Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson and Francis Walker Gilmer, 1814–1826 [Columbia, S.C., 1946], 128–29). Gilmer wrote about the law professorship that as “anxious as I am to contribute every thing to the university, & to my native county, I see distinctly that it is impossible for me to accept it.”
3. “Coke Littleton” refers to the first volume of Sir Edward Coke’s four-volume Institutes of the Lawes of England, which was known as Commentary upon Littleton, requisite study for American legal training of the time (, 1:110 n. 4; Davis, Intellectual Life in Jefferson’s Virginia, 355).
4. For Preston’s defense of William Campbell, see Francis Preston to JM, 15 May 1823, and n. 1.