Volume 2: 16 November 1809 to 11 August 1810
Forward from Volume 2
The 519 documents printed in this volume cover the period from 16 November 1809 to 11 August 1810. During these nine months Thomas Jefferson remained busy tying up loose ends from the close of his public career. The Marquis de Lafayette urged Jefferson to help him establish his title to lands just north of New Orleans that Congress had granted him in 1804. In a lengthy memorandum he explained that his participation in the American and French revolutions had devastated his finances and emphasized his need to borrow against the value of his American possessions in order to make ends meet. At the behest of President James Madison, Jefferson asked his Albemarle County neighbor James Monroe whether he would accept an appointment as governor of the Louisiana Territory. Although Monroe rejected the proposal, it helped end a political feud between Madison and Monroe that had arisen over the question of who was to succeed Jefferson as president. The controversy over the seizure in 1807 of the Batture Sainte Marie at New Orleans as public property also loomed large during this period. As soon as he became aware that he was being sued by the claimant, Edward Livingston, Jefferson hired a team of experienced attorneys to defend himself; obtained exhaustive official documentation to support his arguments; received detailed comments about the case from Orleans territorial governor William C. C. Claiborne, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, Madison, and William Wirt; composed a lengthy legal brief outlining the evidence for the use of his lawyers (a work that would ultimately serve as the basis for his 1812 monograph on the case); and recommended that the successor to Cyrus Griffin, the ailing federal judge for the District of Virginia, be Governor John Tyler, a man whom Jefferson thought would favor his interpretation of the case more than the other magistrate who would hear it, Chief Justice John Marshall.
Jefferson had other legal entanglements. Samuel Scott complicated Jefferson’s sale of his Ivy Creek lands in Campbell County by claiming part of the tract. Disagreements with Eli Alexander over the terms of his lease and with John Harvie over the ownership of a parcel of land near Monticello both required intense negotiations before being resolved. Furthermore, Jefferson found himself drawn into attempts to settle the estate of his Milton neighbor John Peyton, to help unravel the remaining issues associated with the estates of Bathurst Skelton and John Wayles, and to obtain the money owed to Meriwether Lewis’s servant John Pernier.
In addition, Jefferson received letters on a multitude of other topics. William Lambert sent him both a statistical examination of the moon’s latitude, longitude, and hourly velocity and his “Ode for the Fourth of July.” Robert Fulton submitted a piece he had written about torpedoes (mines) and submarine explosions, which he predicted would curtail Britain’s domination of the seas, and a diagram of a new type of hydraulic ram. The Quaker George Churchman implored Jefferson to act to improve the lot of the “unhappy people descended from an African Stock,” and Gideon Fitz and Godefroi Du Jareau respectively forwarded designs for a windmill and a machine for raising water. In July 1810 the noted French économiste Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours mailed Jefferson a lengthy manuscript proposing that the United States replace its reliance on import duties with a single tax on land values. Du Pont argued that this change was necessary because American industrialization would eventually cause its citizens to import fewer and fewer finished goods from abroad. By this reasoning the revenue the United States derived from import duties would eventually dry up.
The range of Jefferson’s own correspondence is likewise impressive. He suggested to his son-in-law Congressman John Wayles Eppes a way for the House of Representatives to limit debate on important matters. In a letter to William Baldwin, Jefferson composed and then deleted sections criticizing organized Christianity and accusing the Society of Friends of hypocrisy, if not treason. He asked the Richmond silversmith John Le Tellier to prepare a set of eight tumblers according to his specifications in a style now commonly known as the Jefferson Cup. Jefferson continued to experience financial difficulties and obtained short-term relief by arranging to loan himself $4,500 from money he was managing for Tadeusz Kosciuszko. He proposed, along with Madison, to distribute merino sheep as a public service to every county in Virginia, and he discussed his thoughts about the university as an “academical village” in a letter to the trustees of an abortive lottery to benefit East Tennessee College. Jefferson inquired into the schooling of his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, drew up an extensive list of books on agriculture that his friend and Albemarle County neighbor Wilson Cary Nicholas had probably requested to guide purchases for the Library of Congress, and expressed satisfaction that he was spending much of his time outdoors directing the operation of his various farms.
The 519 documents printed in this volume cover the period from 16 November 1809 to 11 August 1810. During these nine months Thomas Jefferson remained busy tying up loose ends from the close of his public career. The Marquis de Lafayette urged Jefferson to help him establish his title to lands just north of New Orleans that Congress had granted him in 1804. In a lengthy memorandum he explained that his participation in the American and French revolutions had devastated his finances and emphasized his need to borrow against the value of his American possessions in order to make ends meet. At the behest of President James Madison, Jefferson asked his Albemarle County neighbor James Monroe whether he would accept an appointment as governor of the Louisiana Territory. Although Monroe rejected the proposal, it helped end a political feud between Madison and Monroe that had arisen over the question of who was to succeed Jefferson as president. The controversy over the seizure in 1807 of the Batture Sainte Marie at New Orleans as public property also loomed large during this period. As soon as he became aware that he was being sued by the claimant, Edward Livingston, Jefferson hired a team of experienced attorneys to defend himself; obtained exhaustive official documentation to support his arguments; received detailed comments about the case from Orleans territorial governor William C. C. Claiborne, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, Madison, and William Wirt; composed a lengthy legal brief outlining the evidence for the use of his lawyers (a work that would ultimately serve as the basis for his 1812 monograph on the case); and recommended that the successor to Cyrus Griffin, the ailing federal judge for the District of Virginia, be Governor John Tyler, a man whom Jefferson thought would favor his interpretation of the case more than the other magistrate who would hear it, Chief Justice John Marshall.
Jefferson had other legal entanglements. Samuel Scott complicated Jefferson’s sale of his Ivy Creek lands in Campbell County by claiming part of the tract. Disagreements with Eli Alexander over the terms of his lease and with John Harvie over the ownership of a parcel of land near Monticello both required intense negotiations before being resolved. Furthermore, Jefferson found himself drawn into attempts to settle the estate of his Milton neighbor John Peyton, to help unravel the remaining issues associated with the estates of Bathurst Skelton and John Wayles, and to obtain the money owed to Meriwether Lewis’s servant John Pernier.
In addition, Jefferson received letters on a multitude of other topics. William Lambert sent him both a statistical examination of the moon’s latitude, longitude, and hourly velocity and his “Ode for the Fourth of July.” Robert Fulton submitted a piece he had written about torpedoes (mines) and submarine explosions, which he predicted would curtail Britain’s domination of the seas, and a diagram of a new type of hydraulic ram. The Quaker George Churchman implored Jefferson to act to improve the lot of the “unhappy people descended from an African Stock,” and Gideon Fitz and Godefroi Du Jareau respectively forwarded designs for a windmill and a machine for raising water. In July 1810 the noted French économiste Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours mailed Jefferson a lengthy manuscript proposing that the United States replace its reliance on import duties with a single tax on land values. Du Pont argued that this change was necessary because American industrialization would eventually cause its citizens to import fewer and fewer finished goods from abroad. By this reasoning the revenue the United States derived from import duties would eventually dry up.
The range of Jefferson’s own correspondence is likewise impressive. He suggested to his son-in-law Congressman John Wayles Eppes a way for the House of Representatives to limit debate on important matters. In a letter to William Baldwin, Jefferson composed and then deleted sections criticizing organized Christianity and accusing the Society of Friends of hypocrisy, if not treason. He asked the Richmond silversmith John Le Tellier to prepare a set of eight tumblers according to his specifications in a style now commonly known as the Jefferson Cup. Jefferson continued to experience financial difficulties and obtained short-term relief by arranging to loan himself $4,500 from money he was managing for Tadeusz Kosciuszko. He proposed, along with Madison, to distribute merino sheep as a public service to every county in Virginia, and he discussed his thoughts about the university as an “academical village” in a letter to the trustees of an abortive lottery to benefit East Tennessee College. Jefferson inquired into the schooling of his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, drew up an extensive list of books on agriculture that his friend and Albemarle County neighbor Wilson Cary Nicholas had probably requested to guide purchases for the Library of Congress, and expressed satisfaction that he was spending much of his time outdoors directing the operation of his various farms.
The 567 documents printed in this volume cover the period from 12 August 1810 to 17 June 1811. Thomas Jefferson was now ensconced in retirement at Monticello and Poplar Forest. His papers address a beguiling diversity of agricultural, local, legal, intellectual, and political topics. In February 1811, for example, Jefferson produced a detailed draft constitution for an agricultural society, abstruse astronomical calculations, notes on plantings at Poplar Forest, and estimates of the cost of shipping flour. Nonetheless, political and legal affairs dominated his correspondence during this period, with the controversy over the 1807 federal seizure of the Batture Sainte Marie at New Orleans looming particularly large. In preparing for his defense against Edward Livingston’s lawsuit, Jefferson corresponded frequently with his legal team of George Hay, Littleton W. Tazewell, and William Wirt, as well as President James Madison, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, Attorney General Caesar A. Rodney, Orleans territorial governor William C. C. Claiborne, and New Orleans mayor James Mather. Accompanying this correspondence are numerous enclosures bolstering Jefferson’s legal position. He relied heavily on the brief prepared by Louis Moreau Lislet, which is summarized at length in this volume. This exchange of information supported the February 1811 filing by counsel of six pleas of not guilty and one motion to dismiss the case.
Jefferson inserted himself into political affairs both great and small during this period. In November 1810 he asked William B. Giles and John Wayles Eppes to intervene in any batture-related debates in the House of Representatives, lest Livingston’s “assiduities and intrigues” induce Congress to legitimize his claim by referring it to commissioners. Jefferson urged Eppes to advocate the invasion of West Florida before it fell into British hands. When Justice William Cushing passed away he called for the “appointment of a decided republican” to counterbalance the Federalist philosophy that he regarded as ingrained on the Supreme Court. Jefferson sought to assist William Duane, who was embroiled in controversy because of his vehement published attacks on Gallatin and, implicitly, the Madison administration. Jefferson looked to rehabilitate both Duane’s finances and his Republican sympathies by appealing to Richmond Republicans for support. When he learned from William Wirt that no help would be forthcoming, Jefferson chastised Duane, arguing that his increasingly strident assaults on Gallatin were jeopardizing party unanimity. Similarly, he praised James Monroe’s January 1811 election as governor of Virginia as a sign of harmony within the Republican ranks, and welcomed his subsequent appointment as United States secretary of state even as he worried that the removal of Robert Smith from the Cabinet threatened party unity.
During this period Jefferson also commented on political philosophy. In August 1810 he endorsed Destutt de Tracy’s reflections on Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws, portions of which appear in this volume, and he spent the next several months working with Duane to get it published. Jefferson reviewed the translation and supplied a preface anonymously praising the book as an important corrective to positions by Montesquieu that he questioned, even if he privately was not persuaded by all of Destutt de Tracy’s points. In a letter to Destutt de Tracy he particularly argued against the latter’s preference for a plural executive. Jefferson suggested to John B. Colvin that during emergencies presidents and military leaders must act even without obtaining prior consent from Congress. Without using Jefferson’s name, Colvin included portions of this letter in memoirs he ghost-wrote for James Wilkinson to vindicate the latter’s behavior in New Orleans with respect to Aaron Burr’s expedition. Finally, Jefferson described the political and philosophical divisions between himself and John Adams in a letter advising Benjamin Rush of his openness to rekindling the dormant friendship.
Closer to home, Jefferson found himself embroiled in a dispute with the Rivanna Company over its asserted right to expand Jefferson’s dam in front of Shadwell Mills. The company also wanted to use his canal and suspend mill operations while they added to the dam. These issues led to extensive correspondence with Peter Minor, the company’s treasurer, as well as with Monroe. An initial compromise to resolve the controversy proved to be only the opening act in what would become a long-running dispute.
Slaves and slavery are a recurring theme. In January 1810 a hired slave named Tom Buck ran away rather than reporting to Jefferson. He returned in February with severe frostbite, and over the course of this volume Jefferson corresponded with William Chamberlayne, Buck’s owner, and Doctor Charles Everette regarding the cost and pace of Buck’s recuperation. He also commented to King George County planter Nathaniel Hooe on the unfortunate death of Edmund, another hired slave who suffered from what was described as a “hernia.” To John Lynch, meanwhile, Jefferson revealed his thoughts on the colonization of freed American slaves. Finally, after visiting Monticello and talking with Jefferson’s neighbors, Elijah Fletcher wrote a letter giving a distinctly unflattering portrayal of the ex-president’s standing in the community and relations with his slaves.
The 581 documents printed in this volume cover the period from 18 June 1811 through 30 April 1812. Between these two dates, Thomas Jefferson found himself as busy as ever. Although he had to fight off several bouts of rheumatism and had difficulty walking long distances, he continued to be in relatively good health and to enjoy his life at Monticello and Poplar Forest. As Jefferson wrote to Charles Willson Peale on 20 August, “no occupation is so delightful as the culture of the earth, & no culture comparable to that of the garden.” In the same letter he remarked that although he was “an old man, I am but a young gardener.” In a letter to Peter Minor, Jefferson expressed eternal “hostility to dogs” and a willingness to “join in any plan for exterminating the whole race,” and shortly thereafter he joined a group of Albemarle County residents who petitioned the Virginia legislature to put a tax on dogs in order to reduce their numbers and, thereby, protect sheep and improve domestic manufactures. Jefferson also calculated lines for a horizontal sundial for Poplar Forest; surveyed his Bear Creek lands in Bedford County; and drew up detailed slave lists, a catalogue of his landed possessions, and a schedule of the work he wanted done at Poplar Forest in 1812.
The arts and sciences continued to attract Jefferson. During this period he was reelected president of the American Philosophical Society and chosen president of the Philadelphia-based Society of Artists of the United States. Jefferson took readings of a solar eclipse in September 1811; attempted to determine Monticello’s longitude with the assistance of William Lambert and Bishop James Madison; ordered an astronomical case clock from Philadelphia; and measured Willis Mountain with his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph. On 10 November he wrote an impassioned letter to Robert Patterson concerning the need for a fixed international standard for measures, weights, and coins. Foreign correspondents such as Madame de Tessé, Valentín de Foronda, Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, and Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy continued their long-distance discussions with Jefferson about everything from chestnuts and the Spanish constitution to taxation and political economy.
Legal issues also took up a great deal of Jefferson’s time. A developing controversy with Samuel Scott over the ownership of a piece of land in Campbell County threatened to disrupt Jefferson’s plan to sell this tract. Of greater significance, the litigation that grew out of Jefferson’s eviction of Edward Livingston from the New Orleans batture in 1807 finally came to a head early in December 1811. United States circuit court judges John Marshall and John Tyler, sitting in Richmond, dismissed Livingston’s suit on jurisdictional grounds. Because the dispute had not been decided on its merits, Jefferson moved immediately to lay his case before the American people. He accordingly engaged a New York publisher, Ezra Sargeant, to print 250 copies of the lengthy statement he had prepared for his legal counsel. Jefferson arranged to have a copy given to each member of Congress, and he began distributing the remainder to various friends and acquaintances during the spring of 1812.
Nor was this the full extent of Jefferson’s involvement in the publication of his own work and that of others. With his permission, Joseph Milligan published a revised second edition of Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice in March 1812. Jefferson received a second manuscript volume from Destutt de Tracy in February 1812 and began the laborious process of seeing it into print. In a belated response to William Wirt’s request for information to assist him in writing a biography of Patrick Henry, Jefferson forwarded a lengthy, colorful, and largely negative portrait of his former colleague. James S. Gaines sent Jefferson a detailed plan for a revised constitution and legal code for the state of Virginia, and Jefferson and Virginia governor James Barbour had an important exchange on the proper limits of executive power.
Perhaps the most important development for posterity documented in this volume is the resumption of correspondence in January 1812 between Jefferson and his former rival for the presidency, John Adams. Although the two men had had little contact since Jefferson’s inauguration in March 1801, their mutual friend Benjamin Rush’s persistent efforts to heal the rift finally succeeded. Aided by reports that Jefferson’s neighbors John and Edward Coles had found Adams open to reconciliation during a visit to Quincy, Rush urged Jefferson and Adams to “Bury in silence all the causes of your separation. Recollect that explanations may be proper between lovers but are never so between divided friends.” Adams and Jefferson each came to relish the renewed opportunity to engage with a fellow founder whose mind was as wide-ranging, imaginative, and thought-provoking as his own. These first tentative letters initiated a body of correspondence that not only enriches the papers of Adams and Jefferson, but also provides a useful lesson to their political successors, that ideological differences can be overcome through a mixture of compassion, understanding, and patriotism.

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The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series

The 592 documents in this volume span the period from 1 May 1812 through 10 March 1813. In addition to managing his plantations in Albemarle and Bedford counties, Thomas Jefferson devoted himself to the needs of family and friends, read widely, and carried on an extensive correspondence regarding the arts and sciences, agriculture, technology, business and legal issues, politics, and war. The impending conflict with Great Britain and the American declaration of war on 18 June 1812 provided opportunities for Jefferson and his fellow Republicans to justify the conflict and excoriate anti-war Federalists. Jefferson alternated between counseling moderation and reconciliation within his own country and making bellicose pronouncements, such as his suggestion that if Britain bombarded New York or Boston, America should recruit discontented British incendiaries to burn London. With the war’s onset, expansionists like Jefferson underestimated the difficulty of annexing Canada to the United States. A grim realization slowly emerged that the War of 1812 would neither be smoothly executed nor end quickly, as Isaac A. Coles’s remarkable year-end letter from the Canadian front shows. Jefferson’s transmission of Coles’s letter to President Madison exemplifies the former president’s continuing role in public policy questions, but Jefferson had no desire to return to Washington, as some of his admirers proposed.
As the war unfolded, Jefferson received an unusually large number of requests for letters on behalf of military and governmental job applicants. With varying degrees of enthusiasm, he often agreed to help these men, some of whom he knew, but others of whom were total strangers. The exigencies of war stimulated American arts, technology, and manufactures. A colorful assortment of authors and inventors also asked Jefferson for his influence and patronage. He responded with insightful assessments of the wide-ranging projects described to him. In order to meet plantation cloth needs, Jefferson enhanced his domestic textile production by acquiring the latest machinery. Whether ordering spinning machines, cataloging his library, making a distribution list for slave blankets, keeping meteorological notes, or amassing legal evidence, Jefferson continued to pay methodical, detailed attention to recordkeeping.
Jefferson expended considerable time on his legal troubles. A new dispute with David Michie over land in Albemarle County nearly culminated in a duel between Michie and Jefferson’s agent Craven Peyton. Jefferson’s ongoing controversy with Samuel Scott over the ownership of approximately fifty-five acres in Campbell County was apparently even more galling to Jefferson, who privately denounced Scott’s idle mind and “beastly drunkenness.” Taking frequent notes on this legal case, the former lawyer accumulated copious evidence and carefully prepared his answer to Scott’s bill of complaint. Regardless of his anger at the elder Scott, Jefferson graciously wrote a letter of introduction to the secretary of the navy for his son, Beverly R. Scott.
During this period Jefferson learned of the deaths of George Jefferson and Joel Barlow. He read of his cousin’s death in an August 1812 newspaper before receiving a detailed account of the ailing man’s final days from family friend Fontaine Maury. Answering Maury, Jefferson predicted that the loss would stir “deep & long regret,” but he advised “resignation” in response to a grief-stricken letter from George Jefferson’s partner Patrick Gibson, who succeeded him as the ex-president’s agent in Richmond. Later that year Joel Barlow, minister plenipotentiary to France, was caught up in the chaos of Napoleon’s retreat from Russia and died in what is now Lithuania. The “excellent Barlow” was mourned in a February 1813 letter from Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours that enclosed an obituary on which he collaborated with Konrad E. Oelsner. Jefferson in turn forwarded this tribute to the Richmond Enquirer for publication.
Jefferson was accessible to a diverse spectrum of the educated American public. From Norfolk, Thomas Williamson wrote asking Jefferson to settle a bet about whether the former statesman had ever been to London and met the king, and Jefferson duly replied in the affirmative. He received two anonymous letters from a correspondent who persisted in recommending books that would help Jefferson convert to Christianity. If others had doubts about his religion, Jefferson himself did not fail to contemplate his own mortality. He advised William Duane that “the hand of age is upon me” and that his faculties were gradually failing. Later he declined to subscribe to an American edition of Macklin’s Bible, because “age and infirmity warn me from engaging in new undertakings which will require for their completion more years than I have to live.” Jefferson lived for more than thirteen years after making these pessimistic statements.
The 516 documents printed in this volume cover the period from 11 March to 27 November 1813. Although Thomas Jefferson assured his old friend George Logan on 3 October that “an entire confidence in the abilities and integrity of those now administering the government, has kept me from the inclination, as well as the occasion, of intermedling in the public affairs, even as a private citizen may justifiably do,” he found it impossible to disassociate himself from politics completely. As the conflict with Great Britain dragged on, he recommended to President James Madison that gunboats be used to protect the Chesapeake Bay and wrote three long letters to his son-in-law John Wayles Eppes, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the United States House of Representatives, urging the moral necessity of providing for the rapid repayment of the national debt and reining in a banking system he regarded as corrupt.
Despite his concern that the combined effect of the British naval blockade and the worst drought in half a century would ravage his personal finances, for the most part Jefferson remained active, optimistic, and healthy. As he commented to Abigail Adams on 22 August, except for recurring bouts of rheumatism “I have enjoyed general health; for I do not consider as a want of health the gradual decline & increasing debility which are the natural diathesis of age.” The septuagenarian found it difficult to walk long distances, but his love of horseback riding remained undiminished, and during this period he traveled three times to his beloved Poplar Forest retreat. Jefferson also continued to entertain a steady stream of visitors at Monticello, including the noted Portuguese botanist José Corrêa da Serra, who made the first of many visits to the mountaintop in the summer of 1813. Such friendships aside, family remained a high priority for the ex-president. He happily supervised the education of his grandchildren and other relations, procured a gold watch for the seventeenth birthday of his granddaughter Ellen W. Randolph (Coolidge), and exchanged more letters than usual with his younger brother Randolph Jefferson, who lived nearby in Buckingham County.
The volume and diversity of Jefferson’s other correspondence also showed no sign of abating. Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours forwarded a French translation of the treatise on education in the United States that he had written at Jefferson’s behest more than a decade earlier. Although he claimed to have little affinity for grammar, exchanges with John Waldo and John Wilson reveal Jefferson’s love of neologisms and well-developed ideas about how to improve English orthography. The engineer and inventor Robert Fulton sent a detailed description of the military potential of submarine weaponry, and Fulton’s business partner, the entrepreneur John Devereux DeLacy, requested Jefferson’s endorsement of their plan to use steamboats to improve navigation along the Atlantic seaboard. In a 13 August letter to Isaac McPherson, Jefferson sought to restrict the scope of Oliver Evans’s milling patents with an eloquent call for limits on government-sanctioned intellectual-property rights. Furthermore, Jefferson responded favorably when Paul Allen, who was in the process of preparing Nicholas Biddle’s History of the Expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark for publication, asked for biographical information about the two famed explorers. While he had little to offer Allen on William Clark, Jefferson supplied an account of Meriwether Lewis’s life and career on 18 August that includes a penetrating study of Lewis’s mental state leading up to his apparent suicide. Jefferson’s narrative, which was printed in 1814 in the introductory section of Biddle’s work, remains among the most frequently quoted primary-source documents regarding his former private secretary.
Finally, this volume contains the most intense period of communication between Jefferson and John Adams during their many years in retirement. Adams, who firmly believed, as he wrote on 15 July, that the two men “ought not to die, before We have explained ourselves to each other,” sent Jefferson twenty-five letters between the latter part of May and the end of November, and Jefferson reciprocated with six lengthy replies. A few tense moments resulted when the older statesman read several decade-old letters from Jefferson to Joseph Priestley critical of Adams and his administration, which appeared without Jefferson’s prior knowledge or permission in the recently published Memoirs of the Late Reverend Theophilus Lindsey. In general, however, Adams and Jefferson enjoyed considerable success in steering clear of recent political controversies. Instead, their letters abound with wide-ranging discussions of government, philosophy, religion, and a host of other topics. These exchanges, while sometimes threatening to degenerate into intellectual one-upmanship, provide real insight into their respective worldviews and their hopes and fears for the young nation they had done so much to create.
The 526 documents printed in this volume cover the period from 28 November 1813 to 30 September 1814. The War of 1812 continued its negative impact on the American economy, which was further strained in Jefferson’s neighborhood by a poor growing season. In a 23 February 1814 letter to William Short, Jefferson commented that the embargo, the blockade, and drought had caused him to suffer “more than any other individual.” He kept abreast of current events through correspondents at home and abroad as well as newspapers that provided regular updates from American battlefronts and from Europe, including accounts of Napoleon’s abdication in April 1814. Jefferson initially discounted reports of the destruction late in August 1814 of the public buildings in Washington D.C. When the reality could no longer be denied, he was quick to write his old friend, Samuel H. Smith, now federal commissioner of the revenue, enclosing a catalogue of his library and offering his massive book collection as a replacement for the Library of Congress. Ultimately, in January 1815 Congress bought Jefferson’s 6,707 books for $23,950, an acquisition that has served as the nucleus for one of the world’s great libraries.
During the months covered in this volume, Jefferson showed an interest in the documentation of history. In reviewing the extant sources on the 1765 Stamp Act crisis to aid William Wirt in preparing his biography of Patrick Henry, Jefferson observed that “It is truly unfortunate that those engaged in public affairs so rarely make notes of transactions passing within their knolege. hence history becomes fable instead of fact. the great outlines may be true, but the incidents and colouring are according to the faith or fancy of the writer.” At the behest of Walter Jones, Jefferson recorded his largely positive impressions of George Washington’s character. He also advised Joseph Delaplaine in his preparation of a series of biographies of famous Americans. Delaplaine was particularly anxious to locate suitable portraits of his subjects, and Jefferson went so far as to trace an image of Christopher Columbus for Delaplaine from the preface to a book in his possession, Theodor de Bry’s Americae Pars Quinta. In response to his friend John Minor’s request for a legal reading list, Jefferson transcribed and updated a document he had initially drawn up about 1773 for the namesake son of Bernard Moore. Jefferson’s recommendations included Eugene Aram’s 1759 defense at his murder trial, a speech printed elsewhere in this volume, which he considered to be a model of logic and style and one of the finest orations in the English language.
Jefferson sometimes claimed during this period that his advancing age was impairing his physical abilities. His activities demonstrate no evidence of weakness. Early in the spring of 1814 Jefferson became a trustee of the Albemarle Academy. He was soon actively involved in planning for the establishment of the school. Jefferson served on a committee to draft rules and regulations for the board of trustees and propose funding options for the institution. His 7 September 1814 letter to Peter Carr laid out an expansive vision for the school’s future as an institution of higher learning. Although the Albemarle Academy never opened its doors under that name, it was the earliest direct ancestor of the University of Virginia. Jefferson further displayed his enthusiasm for the cause of education in correspondence and conversations exchanging ideas with such respected scholars as Thomas Cooper and José Corrêa da Serra. He also furnished Richmond educator Louis H. Girardin with his formula and explanation of John Napier’s mathematical theorem and continued to help educate his grandson, Francis Eppes.
Jefferson’s correspondents engaged him on a wide range of topics, from the arts and sciences to religion and politics. Oliver Evans defended himself against Jefferson’s doubts about the validity of his patent. Miles King urged the retired president at great length to reflect on his personal religion, eliciting an eloquent and tolerant rejoinder. Edward Coles, an Albemarle County friend and neighbor, called on Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence to use his prestige to promote the abolition of slavery. In his diplomatic response, Jefferson reiterated his view that slavery was evil, but he discouraged any measures beyond gradual emancipation and expatriation. Ultimately he declined further involvement and left the problem to the next generation: “this enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to it’s consummation. it shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old man.”
The 591 documents in this volume cover the period from 1 October 1814 to 31 August 1815. As usual, Thomas Jefferson both followed closely the events of the day and attended diligently to the needs of his farms, friends, and family. He was overjoyed by American victories on land and at sea during the last year of the War of 1812, optimistic about the nation’s prospects, and highly interested in the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Ghent that closed the contest. Napoleon’s return to power in France early in 1815 and defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in June were also a source of much reflection. Jefferson resigned the presidency of the American Philosophical Society in November 1814, continued to circulate his ideas about finance, supported David Bailie Warden’s consular pretensions, and occasionally provided recommendations for federal employment. Most of his time, however, was spent on issues a bit closer to home.
Following Congress’s decision to purchase Jefferson’s library in January 1815, he oversaw the counting, packing, and transportation of his books to Washington, D.C. He used most of the funds from the sale to pay old debts. Famously remarking to John Adams that “I cannot live without books,” Jefferson also spent some of the proceeds from his library acquiring replacement titles, both in the United States and Europe. In preparation for the payment of his wartime taxes, he drew up extensive lists of his possessions: real estate, manufactories, slaves, and household furnishings, among other items. Inventions and literary matters were still a source of diversion and, occasionally, exasperation. Jefferson engaged in the controversy over the originality of Walter Janes’s loom, complained about patent abuses, corresponded with Horatio G. Spafford about his improved wheel-carriage, and received information from William Thornton about lining cisterns and a new type of filter. He continued to be stymied in his attempt to secure the early publication of a manuscript by Destutt de Tracy, revised draft chapters of Louis H. Girardin’s continuation of John Daly Burk’s and Skelton Jones’s History of Virginia, and provided information to William Wirt on Virginia’s and Rhode Island’s Stamp Act resolutions. Of particular interest is Jefferson’s vindication in a letter to Girardin of the bill of attainder he drew up in 1778 against the renegade Josiah Philips.
The third president’s religious beliefs remained a topic of interest to many of his contemporaries. Several writers questioned him on the subject, his friend Charles Clay worried that he intended to publish his ideas, and Jefferson himself drafted but then drastically abridged a long letter to Peter H. Wendover criticizing the discussion of politics from the pulpit. Nor did the ex-president’s regard for education wane. Toward the end of 1814 Jefferson drew up a detailed estimate of the cost of constructing an education pavilion and twenty dormitory rooms. He also drafted a bill to transform Albemarle Academy into Central College and offered to help tutor his grandson Francis Eppes in French and Latin.
As had hitherto been the case, visitors flocked to Monticello. Francis W. Gilmer, Francis C. Gray, and George Ticknor all left long descriptions of the mountaintop and its inhabitants, and Gray’s visit led to an exchange about how many generations of white interbreeding it took to clear Negro blood. When the French philosophe Jean Baptiste Say expressed a desire to relocate to Albemarle County, Jefferson provided him with a comprehensive analysis of the local climate, agriculture, economy, society, and land values. Family also remained a primary focus. Although both his nephew Peter Carr and brother Randolph died in 1815 and ill-health beset other members of the family at various times, the marriage on 6 March 1815 of his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph to the daughter of his friend Wilson Cary Nicholas was a source of happiness. Jefferson also helped to oversee the conveyance of a tract of land to trustees as a way to protect his granddaughter Ann C. Bankhead and her children from the difficulties arising out of her husband’s descent into alcoholism.
Two last documents deserve special mention. This volume begins with an extended satirical piece addressed to Jefferson and published in a Federalist newspaper that lampooned the sale of his library to the nation. Second, John Strachan’s 30 January 1815 letter, which was published in the Montreal Herald and responds directly to Jefferson’s missive of the preceding September offering his books to Congress, argues that the burning of the American capital in August 1814 was a justifiable retaliation for similar depredations committed by United States forces in Canada. Although Jefferson probably saw neither document, their intrinsic interest is so great that they are both printed below in full.
The 523 documents in this volume cover the period from 1 September 1815 to 30 April 1816. During these eight months Jefferson made three trips to Poplar Forest. On a visit early in autumn 1815, he had two important items on his agenda. The first was a stop in Buckingham County, where he presented evidence to the Superior Court in the lawsuit between the children and widow of Jefferson’s late brother, Randolph. On 15 September Jefferson wrote out his own deposition in the case, which concerned the validity of competing versions of Randolph’s will. The second project engaged Jefferson and two of his scientific colleagues, José Corrêa da Serra and Francis W. Gilmer, on an expedition to measure the elevation of the Peaks of Otter and study the botany of the region nearby. On this journey Jefferson made preliminary observations that he researched further on a trip later in the year, of which he wrote to his friend Charles Clay that “I was five days absent in my trip to the peaks of Otter, and have been five days engaged in calculating the observations made.” During this second autumn visit Jefferson welcomed the returning war hero Andrew Jackson in a brief visit to Poplar Forest, accompanied him on a procession into Lynchburg, and offered a toast at a public dinner held in the general’s honor.
With the War of 1812 over, Americans could once again freely order and receive shipments from Europe. Jefferson wrote the Norfolk wine importer John F. Oliveira Fernandes that “Disappointments in procuring supplies have at length left me without a drop of wine.” In addition to restocking his wine cellar, Jefferson also sought books to begin replacing those he had sold to Congress. The young scholar George Ticknor, who had visited Jefferson at Monticello the previous spring, was now in Europe to undertake literary studies. He served as Jefferson’s purchasing agent there and gave him his opinions on the merits of various editions of classical works.
Although Jefferson had not practiced law for several decades, he expended significant effort assisting his friend Joseph Miller, sometime brewmaster at Monticello, as Miller sought to gain possession of his own deceased brother’s Virginia property. Jefferson’s legal advice was also requested by Mary Blair Andrews, daughter of John Blair, a former associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. Jefferson found himself further embroiled in the settlement of the estates of his old friend Lucy Ludwell Paradise and of Charles Bellini, late professor of languages at the College of William and Mary. With the death of Philip Mazzei in March 1816, Jefferson was soon to be drawn into yet another series of legal concerns that would carry on for the rest of his lifetime and only be settled by his heirs.
Jefferson composed several pieces that were published in newspapers in this period. By early December his comments summarizing the conclusion of his calculations on the Peaks of Otter were reprinted in several newspapers. In drafting a letter to Horatio G. Spafford, Jefferson penned what he himself described as a “tirade” against a religious pamphlet written by the New England clergyman Lyman Beecher. Thinking better of expressing such strong views to a mere acquaintance, Jefferson revised the letter, but he retained the excised text and soon sent it to the Richmond Enquirer publisher Thomas Ritchie with permission to publish, so long as Ritchie kept Jefferson’s authorship secret. An anonymous letter to the publishers of the Washington Daily National Intelligencer elicited a similarly anonymous response from Jefferson, who attempted to prevent an opinion he had written as George Washington’s secretary of state from establishing a broad precedent.
Jefferson’s incoming mail continued to span a wide array of correspondents and subjects. He received several updates on the debates in the Virginia General Assembly from Joseph C. Cabell, Thomas W. Maury, and Charles Yancey. In a letter to Yancey, Jefferson articulated his views of the importance of state funding for education, famously remarking that “if a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be.” The passage of a resolution calling for a report on education and of a law calling for a resurvey and mapping of the state led Governor Wilson Cary Nicholas to seek Jefferson’s advice on these issues, resulting in two detailed explanations from the retired statesman. Alden Partridge, a Vermont soldier and educator, sent Jefferson a series of geographical surveys and meteorological observations. An anonymous correspondent from Baltimore wrote a revealing description of the organization and personnel policies of a Baltimore cotton factory where young girls constituted the majority of the employees.
Jefferson’s family circle continued to grow with the birth of a great-granddaughter, Margaret Smith Randolph, the first child of Thomas Jefferson Randolph and Jane H. Nicholas Randolph. Granddaughter Ellen spent time in Washington with the President and Mrs. Madison and provided Jefferson with some news from the nation’s capital. A false report of his death having surfaced from an unidentified source, Jefferson reassured his old friend Elizabeth Trist that “I am here, my dear Madam alive and well, and notwithstanding the murderous histories of the winter, I have not had an hour’s sickness for a twelvemonth past.”
The 558 documents in this volume cover the period from 1 May 1816 to 18 January 1817. As heretofore, Thomas Jefferson followed current events closely. Although pleased by Napoleon’s downfall, he was dissatisfied with the political settlement that brought peace to Europe after a generation of warfare. In the short term, Jefferson expected a political upheaval in Great Britain, continued uncertainty in France, and the expulsion of Spain from its colonies in the New World. In the United States, he hailed the Federalists’ dwindling electoral prospects and welcomed the forthcoming presidential transition from James Madison to James Monroe. Jefferson also advised against the installation of an inscription commemorating the British destruction of the United States Capitol and recommended that John Trumbull be hired to execute historical paintings for the restored structure.
While contending in Virginia with an extraordinary drought and unseasonably cold weather, as well as torrential rainfall and widespread flooding, Jefferson contributed privately to the debate over amending the state constitution. In three letters to Samuel Kercheval and in notes he compiled on the same subject, he suggested a number of substantial alterations: an expanded male franchise, equal electoral districts, popular gubernatorial elections, the elimination of the Council of State, and the division of each county into wards, among others. In addition, Jefferson prepared a legal defense against the claims of the three youngest heirs of Bennett Henderson, who had decided not to confirm the sales of their Milton lands made during their minority; and he gave occasional legal advice, including an opinion on the possibility of committing perjury before a grand jury.
Jefferson grieved over the deaths of Philip Mazzei and Gouverneur Morris and complained about the burden posed by his extensive personal correspondence. He rejected requests that he sell Natural Bridge or forward advice about the internal governance of an agricultural and manufacturing society composed of expatriated Frenchmen. He also calculated the latitude of both Poplar Forest and Willis’s Mountain; endeavored unsuccessfully to obtain a competent clockmaker for Charlottesville; exchanged the last of a long series of letters with Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours on education and finance; and was appointed, along with Madison and Monroe, as a visitor of Central College. As usual, sojourners flocked to Monticello. Richard Rush, George Flower, and Josephus B. Stuart left brief accounts of their stays there, while the Baron de Montlezun and Francis Hall compiled lengthy, informative accounts of Jefferson’s home, art collection, and thoughts on a wide range of subjects. The diversity in Jefferson’s correspondence is also typified by Marcus Dyson’s explanation of an underwater breathing apparatus, Eusebio Valli’s intense discussion of the causes of yellow fever, and letters with John Adams about the functions of human grief, the earthly balance between pleasure and pain, and the hypothetical question of the willingness of the two men to live their lives over again.
Books remained central to Jefferson’s life. He spent much time and energy attempting to replace many of the volumes he had sold to Congress a year earlier. Moreover, Jefferson persisted in his quest to bring both the unpublished papers arising from the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Destutt de Tracy’s Treatise on Political Economy into print, and he provided Joseph Delaplaine with biographical information about himself and Peyton Randolph (ca. 1723–75) for Delaplaine’s Repository. The artist Bass Otis executed Jefferson’s life portrait, the first of his retirement, at Monticello for use in the latter publication, and shortly thereafter the sculptor Giuseppe Valaperta modeled a miniature likeness of him in wax. Jefferson also read and suggested revisions to drafts of Louis H. Girardin’s history of Virginia and William Wirt’s biography of Patrick Henry. Francis Adrian Van der Kemp and Jefferson exchanged a number of letters about the ex-president’s syllabus on the life and teachings of Jesus, a manuscript that Van der Kemp arranged to have anonymously published in England and that inspired him to outline his own proposed book on the subject.
Religion, indeed, is an important theme in Jefferson’s 1816 correspondence. After the ailing Charles Thomson circulated the mistaken idea that Jefferson had recently converted to Christianity, the former president was subjected to a new round of questions about his spiritual beliefs. He eventually asked Delaplaine to “say nothing of my religion. it is known to my god and myself alone. it’s evidence before the world is to be sought in my life. if that has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.”
The 584 documents in this volume cover the period from 19 January to 31 August 1817, during which Jefferson devoted much of his time and attention to efforts to transform his educational vision into reality. In May 1817 at its first official meeting, the Central College Board of Visitors authorized land purchases and the launch of a subscription campaign that would eventually raise more than $44,000. Jefferson solicited architectural advice for the college from his friends William Thornton and Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Thornton’s detailed response included a sketch for the central pavilion and his thoughts on the most effective academic organization, while Latrobe and Jefferson exchanged multiple letters on the subject. Late in August, Jefferson went so far as to write an anonymous letter in support of the endeavor, which Thomas Ritchie published in the Richmond Enquirer at his request. Jefferson also spent a great deal of time late in 1816 and early in 1817 preparing a legal brief for his chancery suit against the directors of the Rivanna Company. After years of disagreements and failed negotiations, Jefferson first composed and heavily revised a draft of a lengthy legal statement of his claim to the property rights in dispute. Later he copied the material out clean and added a series of supporting documents to bolster his argument. Although the complaint was submitted to the court in May 1817, the case was not settled until December 1819.
In March 1817 Jefferson’s friend James Monroe began his first term as United States president. During the summer Jefferson learned of the death of two European friends, Madame de Staël Holstein and Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours. He encouraged his friend Tadeusz Kosciuszko to leave Switzerland and relocate to or at least near Monticello, enjoining him to “close a life of liberty in a land of liberty. come and lay your bones with mine in the Cemetery of Monticello.” Jefferson continued to enjoy the companionship of his own family, and in August he and his granddaughters Ellen W. Randolph (Coolidge) and Cornelia J. Randolph set out on a visit to Poplar Forest that included a trip to Natural Bridge. He wrote to his “dearest daughter & friend” Martha Jefferson Randolph from Poplar Forest that “the sun, moon and stars move here so much like what they do at Monticello, and every thing else so much in the same order, not omitting even the floods of rain, that they afford nothing new for observation.”
Jefferson’s mail arrived from a wide variety of correspondents both domestic and international. Lynchburg resident Thomas Humphreys provided him with a detailed plan for emancipating American slaves and colonizing them in Africa, while Jean Mourer wrote from Switzerland questioning the institution of slavery in the United States. Francis Hall followed up a visit with Jefferson and his family earlier in the winter of 1816–17 by sending a laudatory poem entitled simply “To Monticello.” Richard Peters commented on the state of agriculture locally and nationally, provided his opinions on the study and writing of history, and remarked that at age seventy-three he generally enjoyed a “better State of Health, than falls to the Lot of old Bipeds.” Jefferson also received large numbers of books, pamphlets, and orations sent by eager authors and political allies. The items sent to him during the months covered in this volume included a novel by Horatio G. Spafford, a series of printed circulars from various committees of the New-York Historical Society, a map of Louisiana from William Darby, a publication prospectus for another map of that state from Maxfield Ludlow, and a work by Barbé Marbois on the conspiracy of Benedict Arnold. The young Bostonian George Ticknor was in Paris helping to orchestrate Jefferson’s book purchases abroad. At home, John Laval took over for the Philadelphia book merchant Nicolas G. Dufief when the latter left for Europe himself. Jefferson built a new business relationship with the bookseller Fernagus De Gelone, who operated shops in several locations, including New York and Philadelphia. In addition to replenishing his library, Jefferson restocked his wine cellar and pantry with the assistance of Stephen Cathalan in Marseille. Closer to home, he looked for a reliable supply of scuppernong wine from North Carolina and found his middleman in Hutchins G. Burton.
Correspondents continued to appeal to Jefferson’s reputation as an enthusiastic supporter of innovation. Richard Claiborne and James Clarke sent letters about their respective improvements in the design of steamboat paddles and measurement of travel by carriage, and Robert H. Saunders sought his advice on the proper placement of lightning rods. Jefferson provided his correspondent George Washington Jeffreys with a catalogue of books for a newly formed agricultural society. Having long thought that reliable weather data was a boon to scientists as well as farmers, Jefferson sent his recently retired friend James Madison a digested version of his weather memorandum book, drawing on Madison’s records as well as his own and covering the years since Jefferson left the presidency in 1809. Although Jefferson answered his voluminous correspondence selectively, he still chafed under the burden and remarked to William A. Burwell that “I have been obliged for many months past to rise from table & write from dinner to dark: insomuch that no office I ever was in has been so laborious as my supposed state of retirement at Monticello.”
The 580 documents in this volume cover the period from 1 September 1817 to 21 April 1818. Incoming mail included Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s staunch defense of his record as surveyor of public buildings. James W. Wallace sent impressions of a mammoth’s tooth. Francis Adrian Van der Kemp forwarded his views on God’s creation, which prompted Jefferson to remark in a postscript not sent to Van der Kemp that the divine gift of cognition existed “in animal bodies certainly, in Vegetables probably, in Minerals not impossibly.” Alden Partridge mailed altitude readings, while Amos Hamlin transmitted meteorological observations. James Smith argued for wider access to smallpox vaccine, and Lyman Spalding called for a national pharmacopoeia. The directors of the Rivanna Company completed their rebuttal of Jefferson’s 1817 bill of complaint. Hugh Steel reflected on the forces that caused the emergence of North America out of the great primeval ocean. In a satirical, pseudonymous poem, “Laban Stringfellow” wrote of a footrace that had supposedly taken place in Louisiana. Friends and family remained a central focus. Jefferson leased his Tufton and Lego plantations to his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph, had terra-cotta busts of himself and various family members made by the English artist William J. Coffee, and unknowingly ensured his eventual financial ruin by endorsing notes totaling $20,000 for Wilson Cary Nicholas on the strength of the latter’s optimistic assurance that Jefferson would “never suffer the slightest inconvenience.” Charges that his longtime friend Stephen Cathalan had indulged in an immoderate “passion for women” while consul at Marseille inspired Jefferson to wonder whether the American government really wanted to “add to it’s other cares that of making themselves guardians of the chastity of all their officers, at home and abroad.” The deaths of Caspar Wistar and Tadeusz Kosciuszko brought Jefferson sadness, calls for biographical information, and doubts whether he should act as the Polish patriot’s executor.
Jefferson retained a keen interest in American history and culture. He donated the remnants of his Indian vocabularies to the American Philosophical Society, persisted in his efforts to fill the textual gaps in William Byrd’s “History of the Dividing Line,” and continued to push for the publication of the manuscripts associated with the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He exchanged letters with Benjamin Waterhouse and Thomas Ritchie about the contention, attributed to Jefferson in William Wirt’s biography of Patrick Henry, that Henry had given “the first impulse to the ball of the revolution.” While encouraging both John Trumbull’s painting and Benjamin O. Tyler’s engraving of the Declaration of Independence, he modestly described himself as “but a fellow-laborer” at the Continental Congress and commented that the Declaration “would have been better expressed by many of it’s members.” Jefferson wrote for posthumous publication an extended introduction to the “Anas,” a corpus of political anecdotes he had scribbled down and official documents he had drawn up while serving as George Washington’s secretary of state. Here he highlighted the ideological fault lines of the early 1790s, castigated Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton for his monarchical leanings and reliance on corruption, discussed the creation of the Society of the Cincinnati and the First Bank of the United States, and elucidated the machinations that led to the federal government’s assumption of the states’ Revolutionary War debts and relocation of the nation’s capital from Philadelphia to the District of Columbia.
Education took up much of the ex-president’s time. Jefferson provided Nathaniel Burwell with his thoughts on female instruction and an extensive reading list. He drafted bills to establish elementary schools throughout Virginia and to set up a comprehensive system of public education, which was to include nine colleges and a state university. With regard to the nascent Central College, Jefferson requested advice and information from Thomas Cooper and strove to recruit him as its first professor. He attempted to gather subscriptions and donations to the school and speed the construction of its first pavilion, while keeping building costs low. Jefferson attended the structure’s Masonic cornerstone-laying ceremony early in October 1817, wrote the Board of Visitors’ exhaustive report to Governor James P. Preston on its plans and prospects, and endeavored to obtain a loan for the institution from a Richmond bank. Finally, Jefferson’s correspondence with Joseph C. Cabell provides a detailed account of the many education proposals working their way through the Virginia General Assembly at this time. He was greatly pleased by the passage on 21 February 1818, after many tribulations, of “An Act appropriating part of the revenue of the Literary Fund, and for other purposes.” This law mandated the appointment of a board of commissioners to meet at Rockfish Gap in August 1818 and pick the site of a new state university, draw up its curriculum, and determine the number of faculty needed. Jefferson’s selection to the board raised his hopes that he might help engineer the transformation of Central College into the new University of Virginia.
The 598 documents in this volume cover the period from 22 April 1818 to 31 January 1819, during which time Jefferson worked tirelessly to transform Central College into the University of Virginia. The Virginia General Assembly had enacted legislation in February 1818 that authorized commissioners to meet on 1 August at the tavern at Rockfish Gap to select the site of the new university. Jefferson spent months preparing for the meeting and laboring behind the scenes to ensure that his ideas about the university would be adopted. In his most important contribution, he drafted a report in advance of the gathering in which he laid out the rationale for locating the university at Central College and his vision for the organization of the university. After approval of the report at the Rockfish Gap meeting, with few significant changes to Jefferson’s draft, the choice of Central College as the site of the state university still had to pass the General Assembly. Largely thanks to intense lobbying efforts in Richmond by state senator Joseph C. Cabell, the University Bill, also written by Jefferson and naming Central College as the university, became law on 25 January 1819. With Central College’s transformation into the University of Virginia now assured, Jefferson focused on its future. He continued trying to bring Thomas Cooper to the faculty, and he wrote a long letter of recruitment to Nathaniel Bowditch, whose work in the fields of astronomy and mathematics Jefferson admired. Neither ultimately taught in Charlottesville. Still others had heard of Jefferson’s plans and wrote to offer their services as builders and instructors.
After the conclusion of the three-day meeting at Rockfish Gap, Jefferson traveled sixty miles to Warm Springs in an effort to improve his health. Initially planning a two-week stay, he extended it, explaining to his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph that “having no symptom to judge by at what time I may presume the seeds of my rheumatism eradicated, and desirous to prevent the necessity of ever coming here a 2d time, I believe I shall yeild to the general advice of a three weeks course.” He would come to regret his visit, however, for by the time of his departure Jefferson was plagued with what was probably a staphylococcus infection on his buttocks that made travel painful and put his health in danger for some months to come. Due to this debility he was unable to make his usual autumn trip to Poplar Forest. This extended absence led Jefferson to exchange detailed letters with his manager Joel Yancey regarding work on the farms, labor assignments, provisioning, and the health of the slaves at his Bedford County properties.
Friends and visitors continued to shape and impact Jefferson’s world. After working since 1816 to have the work translated and published, at long last he was able to inform Destutt de Tracy that his Treatise on Political Economy was in print. Historians asked Jefferson to share his memories of various members of the Revolutionary generation. At the request of Robert Walsh, he recounted anecdotes of Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Waterhouse sought Jefferson’s recollections of Samuel Adams, and William Tudor solicited information about James Otis. As usual, visitors frequented Monticello. Among them Salma Hale, a New Hampshire native, spent a day there in May 1818 and recorded his general impressions of Virginia as well as his thoughts on Jefferson and their topics of conversation, which included food, wine, and religion.
Jefferson continued to rebuild his library, ordering numerous titles from Lewis D. Belair, Mathew Carey & Son, and Fernagus De Gelone. His collection was further enriched by gifts of books, pamphlets, and essays from a wide range of correspondents. Mordecai M. Noah sent an oration he had delivered at the consecration of a synagogue in New York City, which caused Jefferson to remark that “your sect by it’s sufferings has furnished a remarkable proof of the universal spirit of religious intolerance, inherent in every sect, disclaimed by all while feeble, and practised by all when in power.” In thanking Charles J. Ingersoll for a pamphlet on Chinese culture and language, Jefferson wondered at the complexities of the language and speculated that the introduction of the “simpler alphabets of Europe” could enable the people of China to advance in science. Correspondents Robert Miller and Gabriel Crane attempted to interest Jefferson in their unique worldviews. Miller blended occult science and religion, while Crane sent his thoughts on the nature of light and claimed that “the Supreme” had directed him to request $5,000 from Jefferson to enable Crane to conduct further research. Multiple anonymous letters also arrived in these months, each trying to provoke Jefferson to action on some aspect of his personal religion or politics.
A notable loss occurred in Jefferson’s circle with the death of Abigail Adams. His words of condolence to John Adams in November 1818 included the “comfort” that “the term is not very distant at which we are to deposit, in the same cerement, our sorrows and suffering bodies, and to ascend in essence to an ecstatic meeting with the friends we have loved & lost and whom we shall still love and never lose again.”
The 637 documents printed in this volume cover the period from 1 February to 31 August 1819. Named to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors on 13 February, Jefferson continued to be preoccupied with numerous facets of the infant institution. He worked closely with the successive proctors Nelson Barksdale and Arthur S. Brockenbrough to hire and oversee builders, responded to unsolicited applications for professorships, often repeating the board’s decision that all the university’s funds were initially to be spent on construction rather than hiring a faculty, and orchestrated the establishment of a classical school in Charlottesville to prepare students for entry into the university when it should finally open.
In response to a letter from the Connecticut physician Vine Utley, Jefferson detailed his daily routine and eating habits. While observing that “I live so much like other people, that I might refer to ordinary life as the history of my own,” he went on to describe his principally vegetable diet, his consumption of alcohol, his nightly sleep of from five to eight hours, his bathing his feet each morning in cold water, and his daily horseback rides. Jefferson also shared his preference for reading and study over “the drudgery of letter writing,” and indeed during this period he continued to buy books from both domestic and foreign booksellers. His friends sought his advice on what to read, and early in July he composed and sent to two of them a catalogue of the best classical editions of works in Greek and Latin.
Others continued writing to Jefferson asking for information or sharing their own research. Francis W. Gilmer requested Jefferson’s recollections of the origins of a 1779 statute; Thomas McAuley inquired into Jefferson’s involvement with a fraternity at the College of William and Mary; and Napoleon B. Coleman solicited his opinions on numerous questions related to science, philosophy, and religion. Benjamin Vaughan penned his notes on climate change during a visit to Monticello; George Blackburn shared his views on higher education; and John Brazer and Nathaniel F. Moore both sent their publications on the proper pronunciation of the Greek language, a subject that Jefferson himself discussed at length in a letter to John Adams of 21 March.
Jefferson’s role in American history remained prominent in his correspondence. In June Adams advised Jefferson of claims in the newspapers that a formal declaration of independence had been made in 1775 in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Jefferson dismissed the document’s authenticity, reminding Adams that, had it been genuine, they most assuredly would have heard of it during their service in Philadelphia at the Continental Congress. The events and debates leading up to the declaration of American independence were also the subject of a detailed exchange with Samuel Adams Wells, grandson of the noted Massachusetts revolutionary Samuel Adams.
Jefferson experienced a number of worrying and painful events during this period. On 1 February 1819 his grandson-in-law Charles Bankhead and his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph came to blows in a public affray near the Albemarle County courthouse, eliciting great concern in the family both for the recovery of the stabbed Randolph and the safety of the volatile Bankhead’s wife Ann and their children. On 9 April the North Pavilion at Monticello caught fire, and Jefferson sustained a slight injury while attending to the blaze. For his ongoing lawsuit against the Rivanna Company, he compiled extensive notes and took depositions to send to his legal counsel in Staunton. During a visit to Poplar Forest in July, Jefferson had to deal with the damage caused to his house, particularly the window glass, by a recent hailstorm that also destroyed much of his crops. There he was also greatly alarmed by the serious illness of his longtime butler, the enslaved Burwell Colbert. His granddaughter Ellen W. Randolph (Coolidge) wrote to her mother on 28 July that “I never saw any body more uneasy than Grand papa,” which she regarded as evidence of “his extraordinary value for Burwell.”
Jefferson continued to fall behind in his payments to his creditors, and he suffered greatly from the effects of the economic panic of 1819. Drought only worsened the already-poor yield from his crops. The lack of sales and shortage of cash made both paying and collecting neighborhood debts difficult. His financial problems increased exponentially when Wilson Cary Nicholas, for whom Jefferson had endorsed two bank notes of $10,000 each, found himself unable to renew his credit in the banks. The impacts of this insolvency on Jefferson’s personal finances would endure well past his own death.
The 618 documents in this volume cover the period from 1 September 1819 to 31 May 1820. As the second decade of the nineteenth century came to a close, Jefferson, along with the rest of the nation, struggled to emerge from a widespread financial crisis and anxiously waited to see what impact Missouri’s impending statehood would have on the already-strained relations between the defenders and opponents of slavery.
The fall of 1819 for Jefferson was dominated by health and financial concerns. Jefferson wrote to his friend James Madison that he had suffered from a “colic.” Word of Jefferson’s debility soon spread, and newspapers reported that his condition was grave. With rest and medication, he improved and thought he owed it to Madison’s friendship “to free it from the uncertainty of floating rumors” by informing him of his recovery. Jefferson spent a great deal of time preparing for the possibility, soon to become a reality, that his endorsement of $20,000 in notes for Wilson Cary Nicholas might leave him owing that sum to the Second Bank of the United States. Seeking to keep most of his own property out of danger, Jefferson placed 956 acres of his Bedford lands in a trust for payment if Nicholas defaulted. A local drought caused poor crop yields and rivers too low to transport what little could be harvested, making economic rebound difficult for the region. Jefferson’s mills and canal on the Rivanna River continued to be important to his business life. After more than two years in legal limbo, his lawsuit against the Rivanna Company was settled in December 1819. From Jefferson’s perspective, Judge John Brown’s decision was a victory because it ruled that the company could not require Jefferson to make improvements to his canal. To determine the extent of the damages to Jefferson’s property, compensation due him, and the respective rights of Jefferson and the company to the water in the canal, Brown ordered the appointment of commissioners to settle these points. They never reported back to the court, and as far as Jefferson was concerned, the case was dropped.
Monticello and Poplar Forest both continued to be hubs of activity for Jefferson’s family, friends, and the enslaved community. The talented woodworker John Hemmings traveled from Monticello to Poplar Forest, where he completed extensive maintenance and construction tasks and kept Jefferson informed of his progress by beginning the most extensive correspondence that Jefferson ever conducted with one of his slaves. At Monticello, Jefferson received numerous visitors, including Major General Jacob Brown, whose aide-de-camp John A. Dix recorded his impressions of Jefferson and his home.
Jefferson saw a resurgence of correspondence on politics in the spring of 1820 as Congress debated the Missouri Compromise. Legislators sent Jefferson their accounts of the proceedings as well as speeches and circulars. The receipt of one such message from Representative John Holmes spurred Jefferson to write in a posthumously famous letter that the debate, “like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror,” and to state that with regard to slavery, Americans had “the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.” When not considering national affairs, Jefferson learned of state politics from friends as the General Assembly considered much-needed funding for the University of Virginia. Unable to secure an outright gift of public funds beyond an annual $15,000 appropriation, the allies of the university obtained passage of a February 1820 statute allowing the school to borrow up to $60,000. Jefferson led the Board of Visitors in immediately approaching the directors of the Literary Fund, headed by Jefferson’s son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph, the recently elected governor of Virginia, and began negotiating to borrow the funds needed to continue construction.
Opening this loan came at a fortuitous time, as Jefferson received a letter in February 1820 from a group of university workmen complaining that they had not been paid at all during seven months of labor. Serving as rector as well as a member of the two-man committee of superintendence, Jefferson also had to mediate arguments between builders over who would be assigned work on which structures. In this period Jefferson also had to give up his long-cherished goal of hiring Thomas Cooper as the university’s first professor. What began as a desire to defer Cooper’s arrival due to construction delays ended in a parting of ways when a Virginia religious periodical began to question Cooper’s orthodoxy and the Board of Visitors expressed its reluctance to court controversy.
The 571 documents in this volume cover the period from 1 June 1820 to 28 February 1821. During this time Jefferson continued to show concern over the question of Missouri statehood but observed that “the boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.” He argued that geographically limiting slavery would not relieve the country of that great evil but would instead lead to increased national division, while spreading the enslaved “over a larger surface adds to their happiness and renders their future emancipation more practicable.” Seeking to persuade the Virginia General Assembly to allocate further funds to the University of Virginia and thus enable it to open sooner, Jefferson invoked fears that young southern men who went north for their university education would be indoctrinated with northern values. The school’s delayed opening due to inadequate funding caused the Board of Visitors to cancel the contract that would have made Thomas Cooper its first professor, and Jefferson arranged for his own grandson Francis Eppes to study under Cooper at South Carolina College (later the University of South Carolina) in Columbia. Still hopeful that the University of Virginia would open during his lifetime, Jefferson called his work on the school “the Hobby of my old age” and envisioned an institution dedicated to seeking truth through “the illimitable freedom of the human mind.” When his fellow university visitor Joseph C. Cabell, whose lobbying for the institution as a state senator had been invaluable, announced his intention to retire from the legislature, Jefferson changed his mind by reminding the much-younger man that he would “die in the last ditch” for the university and that his colleagues ought to be similarly committed.
Jefferson also kept abreast of revolutionary movements in Europe and South America and approvingly observed to Lafayette that “the disease of liberty is catching.” At the same time, however, he believed that the United States should preserve its neutrality. Facing what he and other republicans believed to be dangerous encroachment by the federal judiciary on the constitutional rights of individual states, Jefferson recommended John Taylor of Caroline’s new work, Construction Construed, and Constitutions Vindicated, as required reading for all congressmen, particularly those from Virginia. Jefferson rejoiced to learn that Carlo Botta’s history of the American Revolution had been translated into English while agreeing with criticisms of the original work expressed by John Adams and John Jay to George Alexander Otis, its translator and himself a Jefferson correspondent. Jefferson also sent the American Philosophical Society a Nottoway-language vocabulary recently procured from a woman of that nation of Virginia Indians. Peter S. Du Ponceau then used the word list to compare Nottoway to Onondaga and Mohawk numerals and to Iroquois dialects, research he shared with Jefferson. Constantine S. Rafinesque presented his archaeological research on the Alligewi Indians in Kentucky in a series of published letters addressed to Jefferson.
Amidst continued economic depression and low prices obtained for his flour and tobacco, Jefferson struggled to pay his debts and satisfy increasing calls for payment by his creditors. Particularly painful was the debt he had incurred by acting as security for Wilson Cary Nicholas, who died in October 1820. To help aid his immediate financial situation, Jefferson accepted a $4,000 loan from his son-in-law John Wayles Eppes to be repaid two years later through a transfer of slaves. Early in 1821 Jefferson also turned over the management of his Monticello and Poplar Forest plantations to his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph, explaining that he found himself to be greatly “declining by age and ill health in the attention and energy necessary for business.”
Jefferson discussed religion with trusted correspondents. He wrote to William Short of the historical Jesus, whose morality he admired but whose miracles he doubted. Jefferson expounded on materialism and the soul as physical matter in letters to Cooper and Adams, and he shared his thoughts on Unitarianism with Timothy Pickering in his first correspondence since his presidency with that Federalist. Jefferson wrote to Maria Cosway of the experience of aging and the dwindling number of their old friends, likening himself to “a solitary trunk in a desolate field, from which all it’s former companions have disappeared.” One particular friend lost to a move abroad was José Corrêa da Serra, who paid one last visit in the summer of 1820 to Jefferson and his household at Monticello, remarking that it was “the family i am the most attached to in all America.”
The 612 documents in this volume cover the period from 1 March to 30 November 1821. Although Jefferson had repeatedly denied interest in penning an account of his life, during this time he finished writing one of the lengthiest documents of his retirement, notes that have historically, but somewhat misleadingly, been referred to as his autobiography. Beginning on 6 January 1821 and, working intermittently, until 29 July, Jefferson described his early involvement in the American revolutionary movement, his role in shaping and revising Virginia’s laws, and his experiences as a United States diplomat during the events leading up to the French Revolution, ending abruptly with his arrival in New York City in 1790 to begin work as the new nation’s first secretary of state. Despite indications that he intended to resume writing, he apparently never continued his narrative.
Jefferson displayed a reflective mood in letters as well. When James W. Wallace remarked that death had robbed him of his friends, Jefferson replied that “these are the unavoidable conditions of human life, and render it often doubtful whether existence has been given to us in kindness or in wrath. when I look back over the ranks of those with whom I have lived and loved, it is like looking over a field of battle. all fallen. nor do I feel it as a blessing to be reserved for this afflicting spectacle.” The outside world, also cognizant of Jefferson’s advancing age, was anxious to record his life and accomplishments. In March 1821, as Jefferson neared his seventy-eighth birthday, the Philadelphia artist Thomas Sully arrived at Monticello to paint his portrait for the United States Military Academy at West Point, which had commissioned the work for its library in order to honor the man during whose presidency the school had been founded in 1802.
Fiscal concerns and politics captured Jefferson’s attention. His finances were in disarray due to the bank loans he had endorsed for the bankrupt Wilson Cary Nicholas, as well as the overall downturn in profits that resulted from poor growing seasons and the financial panic of 1819. Seeking to secure his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph and Richmond agent Bernard Peyton from loss as endorsers for his own obligations, Jefferson deeded 795 acres near the town of Milton in trust to agents of the Farmers’ Bank of Virginia. In the political realm, Jefferson departed from his usual unwillingness to attract public notice and allowed his recommendation of John Taylor’s book, Construction Construed, to be printed in newspapers, thus insuring a wide circulation of a succinct statement of the ex-president’s views on the balance of state and federal powers. Summing up a related concern as the United States Supreme Court heard the controversial case of Cohens v. Virginia, Jefferson remarked to Spencer Roane that “The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. that body, like Gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, & unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulphing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.” He made another foray into national politics when George Ticknor, of Harvard University, asked him to help rally American universities and scholarly societies behind an effort to remove the federal tariff on imported books. Jefferson took the lead in recruiting southern colleges to the cause and penned the University of Virginia’s response, but to no avail. Regarding international affairs, Jefferson went from optimism to despair about the prospects for democratic revolution in Europe, particularly in Italy and the Iberian peninsula.
The correspondents and topics discussed in Jefferson’s papers continued to be varied. He received letters from friends in Europe, including Maria Cosway and Lafayette. Anonymous correspondents included “A Republican of 98,” who sought to enlist Jefferson’s support for DeWitt Clinton’s presidential aspirations, and an author who enclosed a printed description of an African American commemoration in Boston of the nation’s 1807 act to ban the importation of slaves. After a 27 February 1821 article in the Richmond Enquirer stated that the University of Virginia would probably open by the beginning of 1822, Jefferson saw an increase in letters from prospective students and their families requesting enrollment information, as well as from scholars seeking employment on the faculty. He generally replied that without further legislative support, the institution’s opening was far from imminent.
Construction at the university proceeded, thanks in large measure to the successful negotiation by its Board of Visitors of a $29,100 loan from Virginia’s Literary Fund to be used for “compleating the buildings, and making the necessary preparations for putting the said University into operation.” Late in November Jefferson justified the sizable construction costs attendant on “a scale and style of building believed to be proportioned to the respectability, the means & the wants of our country” by saying that “we owed to it to do, not what was to perish with ourselves, but what would remain, be respected and preserved thro’ other ages.”
The 627 documents in this volume cover the period between 1 December 1821 and 15 September 1822. During this time Jefferson turned seventy-nine years old, and though he wrote to John Adams that he “dreaded a doting old age,” he remained relatively healthy and attuned to current events. A wide variety of individuals and organizations continued to seek Jefferson’s advice and support. He received an anonymous letter and broadside from a Virginian advocating universal white male suffrage. When a new society “for the civilisation of the Indians” named him and the other former presidents its patrons, Jefferson declined the appointment, believing that permitting a private group to assume a federal responsibility would set a dangerous precedent. Several authors solicited his recommendations of their newly published works. Others asked for his insights on inventions of or improvements to stoves, lighthouses, telescopes, and navigable balloons. William Lambert sent two abstruse sets of astronomical calculations. Jefferson often excused himself from detailed responses, citing his advanced age and stiffened wrist. Indeed, he found the volume of unsolicited correspondence so burdensome that he allowed one of his complaints to Adams to be leaked to the press in hopes that strangers would stop deluging him with letters seeking replies.
Jefferson endured several disappointments. A joint effort by the University of Virginia and other institutions of higher learning to persuade Congress to remove a tariff on imported books failed, as did attempts to obtain enough funding from the state legislature to enable the University of Virginia to begin operations. News that a young family connection had led student protests at South Carolina College also caused concern. Nevertheless, Jefferson continued to encourage the educational aspirations of his correspondents, sending a suggested book list to students at Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, and to an older resident of Lynchburg, and recommending a course of law reading to his grandson Francis Eppes and future grandson-in-law Nicholas P. Trist.
Jefferson also remained plagued by financial debt. Though agricultural prices were slowly rising from the economic downturn of 1819–20 and production on his Poplar Forest plantation was improving, he struggled to meet the numerous demands he faced. Particularly worrisome was his involvement in the insolvency of the late Wilson Cary Nicholas, and Jefferson sought the legal assistance of both Virginia’s Spencer Roane and Kentucky’s Henry Clay in a suit that he hoped would clear this crushing obligation. The imminent departure for Kentucky of his longtime Monticello overseer, Edmund Bacon, added to Jefferson’s burdens, although his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph proved willing and able to assist him.
In the realm of government and politics, Jefferson found himself uncomfortably in the public eye. In anticipation of the election of 1824, newspapers reported in January 1822 that he had written in support of the presidential candidacy of the South Carolinian William Lowndes, and Jefferson felt compelled to insert an anonymous note in the Richmond Enquirer refuting the claim. A few months later Jefferson again turned to the Enquirer, this time with two letters under his own name, after the pseudonymous writer, “A Native of Virginia,” accused him in a Federalist newspaper in Baltimore of having knowingly accepted a double payment from the United States Treasury related to his service as minister to France. In the wake of newspapers reprinting his letter of 28 September 1820 to William Charles Jarvis, Jefferson received several unsolicited requests for his opinion on constitutional matters and judicial review, to which he did not reply. While avoiding discussing American politics, he still corresponded with close friends on political developments in Europe.
Jefferson looked forward to the visits of friends and described meetings with his fellow University of Virginia board members as opportunities “for feasting the mind.” Though he fled Monticello to avoid an onslaught of participants at an Episcopal convention in Charlottesville, he highly esteemed Frederick W. Hatch, the local minister of that denomination, to whom he offered monetary gifts and invitations to dine. Jefferson’s efforts to keep his own religious views private were undercut when his friend Benjamin Waterhouse published extracts from one of his letters on the subject in a Boston newspaper. One skeptic about biblical authenticity presumed that Jefferson was a kindred spirit and sent him an essay on theism at the end of 1821. Jefferson himself observed approvingly the growth of Unitarianism in the nation, writing confidently to Waterhouse that “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the US. who will not die an Unitarian.”
The 601 documents in this volume cover the period from 16 September 1822 to 30 June 1823. Jefferson’s daily life was complicated in November 1822 when a fall from the steps leading off of one of the terraces at Monticello left him with a broken left arm and an injured wrist. Within a few weeks of the accident he observed to his friend John Barnes that “for three days past I have begun to take my habitual exercise on horseback,” but in May 1823, during a ride “without a servant to attend him” and with his arm still in a sling, Jefferson tumbled into the Rivanna River when his horse became stuck in the muddy riverbed. While uninjured, he remarked that had he drowned, it might have been believed “that he had committed suicide,” presumably a wry comment on his insolvency. During this period Jefferson found temporary relief from his most pressing financial difficulty. Early in 1823 he succeeded in transferring from the Bank of the United States to the College of William and Mary the $20,000 debt he had incurred by cosigning notes for Wilson C. Nicholas. Jefferson’s grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph, a son-in-law and executor of Nicholas, assumed responsibility for the loan, which was never fully repaid.
Public awareness of the new University of Virginia was further enhanced with the publication of Peter Maverick’s engraving of the ground plan, which included the school’s architectural centerpiece, the Rotunda. Before Jefferson and the Board of Visitors approached the Virginia General Assembly for a final loan to complete that structure, the board requested an evaluation of the account books of the university and its predecessor, Central College. The resulting investigation, which showed that expenditures had been properly distributed and recorded, helped persuade the Virginia General Assembly to approve an additional $60,000 loan for the university in February 1823. Although construction continued, the opening date for the school remained uncertain. Nevertheless, educators reached out in search of employment. To bolster his claim for a post teaching languages, Thomas J. O’Flaherty sent a portfolio that included compositions in Greek, Latin, and French. Like others before him, he soon learned from Jefferson that his candidacy was “premature.”
Despite Jefferson’s complaints of age and difficulty writing, numerous unsolicited letters continued to arrive. Henry Roi, a Swiss-born clock- and watchmaker in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, sent a lengthy essay describing his vision for a new utopian community where “an abundance of the necessairys of life” would “prevent the mischiefs that need creats.” Jefferson also received letters from France and the Netherlands, and he learned of the death of Giovanni Fabbroni, an old acquaintance from Florence. He continued to correspond with John Adams, although in April 1823 Jefferson wrote but apparently did not send him a particularly revealing letter on the subject of religion.
Political and foreign affairs also occupied the thoughts of Jefferson and his correspondents at this time. France’s 1823 invasion of Spain in a successful effort to crush the revolutionary movement there and restore King Ferdinand VII to absolute power was discussed with James Monroe and William Short. The family at Monticello enjoyed a visit from the dashing José Antonio Miralla, with whom Jefferson talked about that revolutionary’s hopes for Cuban independence. On the domestic front Jefferson exchanged long letters with United States Supreme Court justice William Johnson in which both men commented on that tribunal’s history, composition, and jurisdiction. Other writers raised the issue of the approaching 1824 presidential contest, leading Jefferson to permit James O. Morse to publish a letter in which the ex-president emphasized his steadfast determination to “take no part in that election.” Jefferson similarly disappointed the hopes of Robert Mayo and William A. Bartow for a personal endorsement of their “library system of education,” but he subscribed to the newly formed Albemarle Library Society and helped prepare a list of books recommended for acquisition by that institution. His granddaughter Virginia J. Randolph (Trist) observed that the exclusion of novels from this catalogue was likely to disappoint the ladies of the county.
Jefferson’s family expanded in November 1822, when his grandson Francis Eppes married Mary Elizabeth Randolph. Jefferson turned over to the newlyweds the mansion he had designed at Poplar Forest in Bedford County and made his last visit there in May 1823. He was saddened to learn that his neighbor James Monroe did not plan to return to live in Albemarle County when his presidency ended, but Jefferson understood his friend’s desire to be closer to his family, noting that “the society of our children is the sovereign balm of life, and the older we grow the more we need it, to fill up the void made by the daily losses of the companions and friends of our youth.” Discussing his own health and outlook in the same letter to Monroe, Jefferson wrote and then canceled “but my race is near it’s term, and not nearer, I assure you, than I wish.”
The 575 documentents in this volume cover the period from 1 July 1823 to 31 March 1824. During this time Jefferson continued to be interested in events both foreign and domestic. The success of the Holy Alliance in crushing liberal political movements in Naples and Spain raised the prospect that it would soon turn its attention to the newly independent Spanish colonies in the New World. After close consultation with his predecessors Jefferson and James Madison, and with the initial support of the British government, James Monroe announced on 2 December 1823 what would later become known as the “Monroe Doctrine,” stating in a message to Congress that “the American Continents . . . are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European Power.” This policy did not, Jefferson thought, preclude the United States from doing so. In October 1823 he asked Monroe whether we wished “to acquire to our own Confederacy any one or more of the Spanish provinces?” He went on to “candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of states.” Greece’s attempt to secure its independence from the Ottoman Empire garnered Jefferson’s attention and sympathy as well, and led to a fascinating exchange of letters with the noted Greek scholar, physician, and political leader Adamantios Coray.
All the while, the upcoming presidential election of 1824 captivated the nation. Although Jefferson tried to stay out of it, various newspapers expressed their opinions about his preferences and attempted to make political hay whenever they caught wind of a possible visit to Monticello by one of the leading candidates. Jefferson worried that the Federalists who had recently joined the Republican ranks had not abandoned their former, to his mind wrongheaded, views. He also expressed concern that the process of amending the United States Constitution, because of the large number of small states, was too difficult, and he stated that he had “ever considered the constitutional mode of election” of president, which was to be decided, in the event of an indecisive outcome in the Electoral College, “ultimately by the legislature voting by states, as the most dangerous blot in our constitution.” Controversies over the origin and composition of the Declaration of Independence put forward by John Jay and Timothy Pickering led to lively exchanges between the three living ex-presidents, and Jefferson continued to look to the dispersion of slaves westward and the emigration of free Blacks from the United States to Haiti, where they might live under “a government of their colour,” as his preferred solutions to the blight of chattel slavery. Late in February 1824, the noted British political reformer John Cartwright sent Jefferson two of his works on the English constitution, along with a copy of a lengthy letter he had written to John Quincy Adams discussing, in a friendly manner, the things he thought might pose a threat to the perpetuation of liberty in the United States.
As before, the establishment and construction of the University of Virginia took up much of Jefferson’s time and energy. When Joseph C. Cabell proved unable to travel to Europe to hire the school’s first faculty, Jefferson and Madison decided to ask the attorney Francis W. Gilmer to undertake the task. Jefferson, Cabell, and their friends in the Virginia General Assembly labored long and hard in successful efforts to have the institution’s loans from the state’s Literary Fund turned into an outright grant, which they deemed of vital importance if the school was to open in a timely fashion, and, late in the 1823–24 legislative session, to obtain $50,000 in additional funding for the acquisition of books and scientific apparatus for the university. Jefferson was also intimately involved at this time in collecting information about how best to regulate and equip the institution, and in the ordering, transportation, and installation of the capitals for the pavilions and Rotunda.
Although incapacitated by a fever for three weeks during the summer of 1823, Jefferson still found time to design gymnasia for the University of Virginia, provide Cabell with a plan he had drawn up earlier for the construction of a new jail in Nelson County, and confer with Reverend Frederick W. Hatch about the building of Charlottesville’s first freestanding church. He wrote a letter to a namesake infant, Thomas Jefferson Grotjan, advising him to “Adore God. reverence and cherish your parents. love your neighbor as yourself; and your country more than life. be just. be true. murmur not at the ways of Providence, and the life into which you have entered will be the passage to one of eternal and ineffable bliss.” He described coffee to another correspondent as “the favorite beverage of the civilised world.” Lastly, Jefferson lamented the mid-September 1823 death of his son-in-law John Wayles Eppes, and he reassured John Adams that the publication of a collection of letters containing passages written by Adams critical of Jefferson would not impair their friendship.

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