It's very telling that the degree of convenience for the white population was a prime reason for the location of the University; in fact, this is a clear display of the beliefs white leaders had on education at the time. Of course, the University was established around 50 years before slavery was abolished in the 13th amendment, but seeing the complete disinterest in providing an education for those other than white people is alarming. As shown in The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States by Delaney, the advancements African Americans made in education were individual and without any help from the white population. Section V of the document discusses how African Americans had no choice but to be consumers in a white man's world- as the latter was able to make literary, scientific, and social advancements. The document states how changes must be made in order to have any sort of advancement in equality for African Americans, and an important change could have been seen here if those writing this document had decided to change the focus of students for this University to make it more available to African Americans, even in the slightest degree.

Ashley McGraw

I find this line very interesting. It is stated that reading can improve your morals and faculties; while the latter is obviously true, the idea that reading can improve your morals is debatable. Reading more does not make someone a better person. Reading can make you more open to other ideas, which can be a very good thing, but this implies that reading can improve your morals, which is an odd statement. I wonder what books they would have considered to improve morals, and what books didn't make the cut. Actually, even more so, I wonder what kind of "morals" were being striven for.

I find it very interesting that in this context, chemistry is only used to comprehend the theory of agriculture. It seems odd that, even though chemistry has so much more to offer and explore (such as Dalton's atomic theory in the beginning of the 1800s), Agriculture is the only thing mentioned. This was a time when there was so much about to be discovered but that seems to not be acknowledged even if UVA was to be a great place of education.