Washington replied that he had resolutely shut his hand against every
pecuniary recompense during the revolutionary struggle; and that he
could not change that position. He added that, if the legislature would
allow him to turn the gifts from his own private emolument to objects of
a public nature, he would endeavor to select objects which would meet
the most enlightened and patriotic views of the Assembly of Virginia.
The proposition met with hearty approval, and Washington held the stock
in both companies, awaiting the time when proper and worthy objects
should be found for the benefactions.

In 1785 he proposed to Edmund Randolph and Thomas Jefferson, that the
revenue of the stock in those companies be used for the establishment of
two schools, one upon each river, for the education of poor children,
particularly those whose parents had fallen in the struggle for liberty.
The idea was a noble one, yet Washington's call to the large service of
the College of William and Mary as its Chancellor, and to the country as
its President, prevented him from carrying it out. He carried out the
spirit of his idea by giving fifty pounds a year for the instruction of
poor children in Alexandria, and by making large provision for the
education of the sons of soldiers. In 1783 he honored a Princeton
commencement by his presence, and bestowed upon the College a gift of
fifty pounds. A tour through Georgia in 1790 gave him opportunity to
visit and approve of the Academy of Augusta. About the same time the
indomitable Kirkland, missionary to the Iroquois, was trying every
source of influence and money in behalf of an academy in Oneida County,
New York, to be located near the old Property Line, where both the sons
of the settlers and the children of the forest might be educated. His
visit to Philadelphia secured a generous benefaction from Washington,
and at the same time his influence and that of others, so that Congress
appropriated $15,000 yearly to "instruct the Iroquois in agriculture and
the useful arts."

Washington had now matured his idea of a national university. He was
ready to lay it before the country, and to be the first contributor to
its endowment. Virginia was taking new interest in its schools and the
influence of William and Mary College was widening: there was a demand
for more thoroughly equipped academies. The school at Augusta, which the
Revolution had been the means of christening Liberty Hall, had become
promin