A lottery to raise money for East Tennessee College was canceled in 1812, despite letters asking President James Madison and former President Thomas Jefferson to participate. Jefferson’s response letter in 1810 praising the state of Tennessee’s effort but declining to personally participate in a lottery is archived in the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress. In that letter, Jefferson suggested that the college spread out a little to become “an academic village.” Sixteen years later in 1826, the college trustees purchased the land now called the Hill and moved campus there.