Retiring to Monticello in 1809 at the end of his second term as president, Thomas Jefferson focused all his energies on the creation of a university which would "prove a blessing to my own State, and not unuseful perhaps to some others." Joining him in the enterprise were Presidents James Madison and James Monroe; together with John Hartwell Cocke of Fluvanna County, noted reformer and a general in the War of 1812; and Joseph Carrington Cabell, a delegate and state senator from Amherst County, who supported Jefferson's educational program in the Virginia legislature.