desire to appoint a non-Federalist to the post, and Tucker's connections with Cabell and St. George would also have facilitated his selection. Another factor was Tucker's recent 1822 Essays on Various Subjects of Taste, Morals, and National Policy, which included papers from the Port Folio. Madison had been provided a copy of these and recommended them to Jefferson, saying they were "among the best answers to the charges of our national ...backwardness." Tucker's selection may also have been an accommodation to some of the school's opponents, including Episcopalians, Federalists, and notable western Virginians, many of whom were friends of Tucker's. Presumably, his prior monetary indiscretions were overlooked since no related formal charges were extant. From Tucker's perspective, the offer was most opportune, as he considered his congressional seat in jeopardy, as well as his pocketbook. The professorship included a steady income, extra fees from philosophy students, tenure, and rent-free quarters on the University Lawn. Tucker accepted the offer, effective in 1825, and also was chosen the first chairman of the faculty. As well as his primary discipline, he also assumed charge of the subjects of Political Economics and Rhetoric for the university. He was content with family life in Charlottesville, Virginia, though he "found solitude unbearable" after Maria's death and began an earnest search for a wife, whom he found in Louisa A. Thompson, a widow from Baltimore. In their thirty years together Tucker later said he had found "the same warmth and devoted affection with which I have been previously blest." Tucker's primary philosophical interest was what he and his contemporaries called "mental philosophy," which involved the investigation of the principles and faculties of the human mind. He maintained that modern philosophers had acquired the discipline to free themselves from medieval "mysticism and folly," in the same manner that modern chemists cast aside alchemy. Tucker's effectiveness in the lecture hall is not objectively certain, and he may well have encountered difficulty with public speaking as he had in the courtroom previously. His continued faculty chairmanship certainly testified to his relative popularity among colleagues, and he published numerous works—including one satire, a fiction, three books on economics and statistics, a Jefferson biography, as well as two pamphlets. Together with Robley Dunglison he founded and edited the Virginia Literary Museum (1829–1830) in which he published voluminous writings, and he frequently sent essays to newspapers and other magazines. Later politics and major