Foreword

After making his way down the eastern seaboard during his celebrated visit to the United States, Lafayette arrived in Albemarle County early in November 1824.Throngs of admiring American citizens greeted the popular hero of the American Revolution all along his route, and newspapers reported widely on his touching reunion with Jefferson.Israel Gillette (later Israel Jefferson), then enslaved at Monticello, later recalled overhearing a conversation between Jefferson and Lafayette on the topic of slavery.Gillette remarked that Jefferson assented "in part" to Lafayette's support for the abolition of slavery, but he lamented that, while Jefferson assented to teaching enslaved people to read, he thought that they should not be taught to write, since that would "enable them to forge papers, when they could no longer be kept in subjugation."The reformer and author Frances Wright, who traveled with Lafayette's party, observed that Jefferson was "anxious" that measures he saw as "preparatory" to ending slavery in Virginia be adopted in the legislature in the coming months.A month after Lafayette ended his stay at Monticello, Professor George Ticknor, of Harvard University, his wife Anna Eliot Ticknor, and United States congressman Daniel Webster arrived for a visit that lasted about five days.Ticknor described the eighty-twoyear-old Jefferson as "entirely absorbed" in the University of Virginia and commented that he was "very active, lively, and happy."Francis W. Gilmer returned from his trip abroad "emaciated to a shadow," but he had successfully engaged five European professors for the University of Virginia.George Blaettermann and George Long, the professors of modern and ancient languages, respectively, arrived late in 1824.The unexpected delay of Charles Bonnycastle, professor of natural philosophy, Robley Dunglison, professor of medicine, and Thomas Hewitt Key, professor of mathematics, forced Jefferson to change the institution's opening date from 1 February to 7 March 1825.On this side of the Atlantic, John P. Emmet was appointed to instruct in natural history and George Tucker in moral philosophy, thus completing the founding faculty.The law professorship remained open, Gilmer having refused to accept the post, and Jefferson informed James Madison that he was "almost in despair" over the vacancy.While the University of Virginia prepared to enroll students, the General Assembly debated a plan to move the College of William and Mary to Richmond.Jefferson, eager to ensure that the University of