6782

1860 University of Virginia, Jefferson Society Debating

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money Start Price:550.00 USD Estimated At:1.00 - 1,000,000.00 USD
1860 University of Virginia, Jefferson Society Debating
<B>1860 University of Virginia, Jefferson Society Debating Medal.</B></I> Gold. 51.4 mm (with bezel). 46.0 grams (with bezel). Thomas Jefferson saw his University of Virginia as a village--an Academical Village, a place where students and faculty would come together in an integrated landscape of learning. The first students at Mr. Jefferson's University saw things differently. The vices of Virginia--drinking, gambling, dueling, etc.--all flourished amid Jefferson's red bricks and white columns. Jefferson's carefully ordered buildings became a foil for the general rowdiness of the young cavaliers. Night-time cavalcades prompted the University to install one of the country's first bullet-proof clocks in the Rotunda. The University's student-run honor code--the oldest in the nation--was instituted after a masked student shot a professor. Like students at other Universities in the United States and Europe, students at the University of Virginia organized themselves into various clubs and societies. These groups usually adopted names that suggested intellectual inquiry and sober study. But more often than not their meetings consisted of drinkin', fightin', and cussin'. In response, the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society was founded on July 14, 1825 by 16 disgruntled members of the now (long) defunct Patrick Henry Society in Room Seven, West Lawn.<BR> The present medal for "Best Debater" was given at a pivotal moment in the history of the United States, the University of Virginia, and the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society. James M. Boyd received this medal on July 3, 1860. Less than a year later--on April 17, 1861--Virginia seceded from the Union. The University's enrollment shrank. The Jefferson Society's meeting hall became a hospital for wounded Confederates. And Boyd's classmates--and probably Boyd himself--followed Virginia into the Confederacy and helped to lead