About the Series
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This scholarly enterprise is sponsored by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and housed at the Foundation’s Jefferson Library under the auspices of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. Publication in 2004 of the first of an estimated twenty-four volumes in the Retirement Series was a milestone in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, the definitive edition of the papers of the author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States. The original project began in 1943 with the goal of printing, noting, or otherwise accounting for “everything legitimately Jeffersonian by reason of authorship or of relationship,” as Julian P. Boyd, the first editor, put it. Nearly fifty volumes, covering much of the earlier period of Jefferson’s life and including related topical materials, have been prepared in an ongoing effort located at Princeton University and published since 1950 by Princeton University Press. Highlights of the Retirement Series portion of the project include:
- The publication of twenty volumes (through 2024) containing just over 12,000 accurately transcribed and annotated documents. A new volume comes out every year, and the anticipated completion date for the project is 2028.
- Two-thirds of the documents written by Jefferson are being published for the first time, and the figure for letters he received is even higher.
- This work is already transforming Jefferson studies. The publication of each volume will inevitably inspire new and path-breaking scholarship.
- Two digital versions of the first volumes of the Retirement Series greatly aid the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s long-term goal of bringing Jefferson’s ideas to the widest possible national and international audience. A subscription edition released by the University of Virginia Press includes links from the index, while a freely accessible version with less robust searching tools has been issued in collaboration with the National Archives. New volumes are added on a regular basis, and both versions are part of a larger platform containing hundreds of thousands of documents from the American founding era.
The documents printed in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson reproduce original spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. Annotation accounts for the location of each known text, describes significant additions and deletions, gives the relationship between documents for which more than one text survives, explains obscure terms and events, and briefly identifies correspondents. A full index is also included at the end of each volume, and a cumulative index is available on this site
Jefferson Quotes & Family Letters is an online companion to the volumes of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series. The content presented as part of this collection includes full, searchable transcriptions of a rich body of correspondence to and between members of Jefferson’s immediate and extended family; Jefferson's various land patent records; documents on the founding and early years of the University of Virginia; material relating to Jefferson’s death; material relating to Jefferson's family and the American Civil War; and an extensive, searchable, and fully verified collection of quotes by and about Thomas Jefferson.
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On 6 March 1809, as Thomas Jefferson eagerly prepared to depart for the last time from Washington to Monticello, he exulted to John Armstrong that he was now writing “merely as a private individual, which I am now happily become. within two or three days I retire from scenes of difficulty, anxiety & of contending passions to the elysium of domestic affections & the irresponsible direction of my own affairs.” Safely ensconced at Monticello, in another of many similar variations on this theme Jefferson wrote Charles Willson Peale on 5 May that “I am totally occupied without doors, & enjoying a species of happiness I never before knew, that of doing whatever hits the humor of the moment without responsibility or injury to any one.”
Jefferson lived for seventeen years after leaving the presidency. He enjoyed generally good health and many happy hours with his family and friends, but due especially to steadily worsening and ultimately catastrophic financial troubles, this long retirement was not always the elysium he had anticipated. It was also far more productive than his initial anticipation of undirected pleasure might have foretold. Early in this period Jefferson was sued by Edward Livingston for his decision as president to seize the Batture Sainte Marie in New Orleans as public property, and Jefferson devoted a great deal of time and energy to researching and writing a lengthy brief defending his actions and otherwise preparing for the case, which was dismissed in 1811. These years also saw the composition of Jefferson’s memoirs and his sale to the nation of his library, among the largest owned by an individual in America at the time and certainly one of the most varied, a transfer that helped transform the Library of Congress from a legislative reference tool into a great scholarly institution. Jefferson’s major preoccupation was, however, a long and difficult but ultimately successful campaign to found the University of Virginia, which he regarded as one of his three greatest accomplishments. He devoted countless hours, not just to obtaining the necessary legislation and resources but also to recruiting the faculty, designing and supervising the construction of the buildings, choosing books for the library, and drafting the school’s curriculum and regulations.
Even more important than such individual achievements is the sheer breadth and depth of material represented in Jefferson's late correspondence. Freed from the direction of public affairs and able to risk somewhat less circumspection in expressing himself, Jefferson had the time, energy, and inclination to write on a dazzling variety of subjects, including agriculture, architecture, astronomy, biography, botany, education, gardening, geography, history, law, linguistics, philosophy, politics, religion, slavery, and states' rights. His retirement-era correspondence with John Adams and James Madison is rightly regarded as a priceless literary treasure, but his extensive exchanges with other writers are almost equally rich and not nearly as well known, such as his letters to and from Thomas Cooper, Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, Albert Gallatin, Louis H. Girardin, William Lambert, Robert Patterson, Charles Willson Peale, Horatio Gates Spafford, Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, and William Wirt.
Jefferson often complained about the demands unsolicited correspondence placed on him, and the quantity of paper that crossed his desk during his retirement is impressive. After he left office Congress conferred on him, as it had on his predecessors, the franking privilege on incoming as well as outgoing letters, which only increased the flow of letters from persons rich and poor, learned and unlettered, American and foreign, all seeking his views. He did not in fact reply to everyone, especially those who sought favors or charity, nor did he try to match the output of such frequent writers as Adams. Nonetheless, Jefferson maintained a vast correspondence. He was careful to retain file copies of his own epistles, using a polygraph or stylograph in most cases to make exact replicas.
Despite its subsequent dispersal, most of his own archive has survived, making Jefferson’s literary legacy for his last years surprisingly complete. After six decades of collecting reproductions of texts from hundreds of public institutions and generous private owners, the Editors now have access to at least one version of some thirteen thousand retirement-period documents of which Jefferson is either the author or recipient. Due to his careful practice of recording almost all of his incoming and outgoing correspondence in an epistolary register, it can be inferred that for the same period fewer than fifteen hundred letters that he wrote or received are missing. Thus, the Retirement Series will be able to work with at least one text of almost ninety percent of the total corpus of Jefferson documents written during this period. More incoming than outgoing letters are missing, raising the percentage for documents written by Jefferson even higher.
Despite its intrinsic interest, and although the survival rate for papers from the retirement period is high, most of the material in question has never been published. Less than a third of the extant documents authored by Jefferson have appeared in print in whole or in part. No one source even comes close to this figure, since what has been published hitherto is scattered across a wide range of books and articles, transcribed by varying rules and with doubtful accuracy, and generally having little if any annotation. For letters to Jefferson, the proportion is even lower, with more than four in five never having been published.
The publication in 2004 of the first volume of the Retirement Series inaugurated a new phase in the ongoing effort to produce the definitive edition of papers documenting the written legacy of Thomas Jefferson. The new series covers the period between his return to private life on 4 March 1809 and his death on 4 July 1826. In the “General View of the Work” in the first volume of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (pp. vii, xiv), Editor Julian P. Boyd stated in 1950 that the project’s goal was the presentation of “the writings and recorded actions of Thomas Jefferson as accurately and as completely as possible.” To achieve this end he proposed to print, note, or otherwise account for “everything legitimately Jeffersonian by reason of authorship or of relationship,” while excluding materials with “only a technical claim to being regarded as Jefferson documents.”
The project’s scope and ambition remain fundamentally unchanged. Subsequent shifts in thinking by historical editors have led to some modifications in practice, especially in transcription policy, but in most important particulars Boyd’s editorial method remains viable. The Editors continue to include incoming as well as outgoing letters; to collect and compare all known texts of documents and account for significant variations; to annotate so as to provide “a certain minimum basis of information essential to the understanding of each document,” with the emphasis on “minimum” and “essential” (p. xxxiv); and to use the same basic textual apparatus, descriptive symbols, design, and breakdown of annotation into a descriptive note, optional explanatory note, and numbered textual notes. The reader is directed to the “General View” for a discussion of the rationale behind this approach and to the “Statement of Textual Method” for details on the transcription policy used in the Retirement Series.
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series was made possible through the creative thinking and generosity of Princeton University, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc., and The Pew Charitable Trusts. Since 1943 the Papers of Thomas Jefferson have been edited at Princeton under the sponsorship of Princeton University, and the original plan was for all of the chronological volumes to be edited there. However, at a 1997 retreat of the trustees of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Monticello, Rebecca W. Rimel, the head of The Pew Charitable Trusts, became inspired by the vision of splitting off the retirement-period documents and creating a new team to edit them at Charlottesville under the aegis of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. This approach would enable work to proceed on two different periods of Jefferson’s life simultaneously and thereby double the production of volumes with no compromise of the high standards so important to this work. With crucial help from Dr. W. W. Abbot, a distinguished editor of George Washington’s papers who had long dreamed of bringing a Jefferson editing project to Monticello, a proposal was prepared and submitted to Princeton University, which agreed to turn over administrative and editorial responsibility for the retirement years to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, after obtaining assurances that the new arrangement would not jeopardize its own longstanding commitment to the completion of this enterprise or diminish its quality in any way. A board composed of members from Princeton and the Foundation and headed by Professor John M. Murrin was established to coordinate the work of the two projects, a task made much easier by the appointment in 1998 of Dr. Barbara B. Oberg as general editor of the Jefferson Papers at Princeton. Dr. Oberg’s unfailing cooperation, assistance, and friendly advice, especially during the initial copying and transfer from Princeton to Charlottesville of many thousands of document folders and bibliographic control files, has helped minimize the logistical problems associated with creating a new project of this magnitude.
Initially funded by a generous five-year grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts, work on the Retirement Series officially began with the appointment of J. Jefferson Looney as the editor and project director and his installation at the beginning of October 1999 in rented space at Peter Jefferson Place in Charlottesville. Since then, a talented and dedicated staff has been assembled, the necessary intellectual foundations have been laid, a search for additional Jefferson documents has been completed, new digital tools have been created, and the project has moved into permanent quarters on the third floor of the Foundation's new Jefferson Library at the International Center for Jefferson Studies near Monticello. The Editors eagerly embrace the weighty responsibility of presenting fully and accurately the documentary record associated with Thomas Jefferson's retirement years and thereby contributing to a truly comprehensive understanding of his significance, both in his own time and ours.
(This text was slightly adapted from Retirement Series, 1:vii-x).
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Published by Princeton University Press and copyrighted, ©, by Princeton University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher, except for reading and browsing via the World Wide Web. Users are not permitted to mount this file on any network servers.
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Statement of Textual Policy, Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series
From its inception The Papers of Thomas Jefferson has insisted on high standards of accuracy in rendering text, but modifications in textual policy and editorial apparatus have been implemented as different approaches have become accepted in the field or as a more faithful rendering has become technically feasible. Prior discussions of textual policy appeared in Vols. 1:xxix-xxxiv, 22:vii-xi, 24:vii-viii, and 30:xiii-xiv of the First Series.
The Retirement Series adheres to the more literal textual approach adopted in Volume 30 of the parent edition. Original spelling, capitalization, and punctuation is retained as written. Such idiosyncrasies as Jefferson’s failure to capitalize the beginnings of most of his sentences and abbreviations like “mr” are preserved, as are his preference of “it’s” to “its” and his characteristic spellings of “knolege,” “paiment” and “recieve.” Modern usage is adopted in cases where intent is impossible to determine, an issue that arises most often in the context of capitalization. Some so-called slips of the pen are corrected, but the original reading is recorded in a subjoined textual note. Jefferson and others sometimes signaled a change in thought within a paragraph with extra horizontal space, and this is rendered by a three-em space. Blanks left for words and not subsequently filled by the authors are represented by a space approximating the length of the blank. Gaps, doubtful readings of illegible or damaged text, and wording supplied from other versions or by editorial conjecture are bracketed and explained in the source note or in numbered textual notes. Foreign-language documents, the vast majority of which are in French during the retirement period, are transcribed in full as faithfully as possible, and followed by a full modern translation.
Two modifications from past practice bring this series still closer to the original manuscripts. Underscored text is presented as such rather than being converted to italics. Superscripts are also preserved rather than being lowered to the baseline. In most cases of superscripting, the punctuation that is below or next to the superscripted letters is dropped, since it is virtually impossible to determine what is a period or dash as opposed to a flourish under, over, or adjacent to superscripted letters.
Limits to the more literal method are still recognized, however, and readability and consistency with past volumes are prime considerations. In keeping with the basic design implemented in the first volume of the Papers, salutations and signatures continue to display in large and small capitals rather than upper- and lowercase letters. Expansion marks over abbreviations are silently omitted. With very rare exceptions, deleted text and information on which words were added during the process of composition is not displayed within the document transcription. Based on the Editors' judgment of their significance, such emendations are either described in numbered textual notes or ignored. Datelines for letters are consistently printed at the head of the text, with a comment in the descriptive note when they have been moved. Address information, endorsements, and dockets are quoted or described in the source note rather than reproduced in the document proper.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Published by Princeton University Press and copyrighted, ©, by Princeton University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher, except for reading and browsing via the World Wide Web. Users are not permitted to mount this file on any network servers.
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Dr. Francis D. Cogliano
Professor of American History
University of EdinburghDr. Charles T. Cullen
President and Librarian Emeritus
The Newberry LibraryDr. Andrew M. Davenport
Saunders Director
Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies
Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.Dr. Christa Dierksheide
Brockman Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation Professor of History
Department of History
University of VirginiaDr. Annette Gordon-Reed
Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History
Harvard Law School and Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Harvard UniversityDr. James Horn
President and Chief Officer
Jamestown Rediscovery FoundationDr. Jane Kamensky
President, Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.Dr. John P. Kaminski
Director, Center for the Study of the American Constitution
Department of History
University of WisconsinDr. Stanley N. Katz
Director, Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies
Woodrow Wilson School
Princeton UniversityDr. James P. McClure
General Editor, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson
Princeton UniversityDr. Peter Onuf
Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor Emeritus
Department of History
University of VirginiaDr. Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy
Professor of History
University of VirginiaDavid M. Seaman
Dean of Libraries and University Librarian
Syracuse UniversityDr. John C. A. Stagg
Department of History
University of VirginiaBrent Tarter
The Library of Virginia (Retired)Dr. Alan Taylor
Thomas Jefferson Foundation Chair, Professor of History
Department of History
University of VirginiaFormer Advisory Committee Members
* Deceased
W. W. Abbot*
Joyce Appleby*
Leslie Greene Bowman
Philander D. Chase
Theodore J. Crackel
Daniel P. Jordan*
Penelope J. Kaiserlian
John M. Murrin*
Barbara B. Oberg
Merrill D. Peterson*
Mark H. Saunders*
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“The material is a joy to read, for the ex-president remained incredibly active and took a keen interest in the world beyond his mountaintop home. . . . [T]his [is a] magnificent endeavor.”--Choice
“. . . . a landmark event . . . . endlessly fascinating . . . . Led by J. Jefferson Looney, the Retirement Papers project at Monticello is sustained by a talented staff." -- Andrew Burstein.
“The launch of THE PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON: RETIREMENT SERIES is a major event in American historical scholarship, and this splendid volume gets the series off to a magnificent start. The editorial methods are, as always, exacting; the scholarship is superb; and the contents of this volume already illuminate the beginning of Jefferson’s retirement and the ways in which he and the American people collaborated in devising the roles that an ex-President should play in American public life. Anyone who cares about Thomas Jefferson should study this volume and its successors with care.” --Richard B. Bernstein
“. . . . a monument for the ages.”--Steve Goddard’s History Wire
“If the first volume is any indication, the Retirement Series will sustain the high quality of scholarship Julian P. Boyd established more than a half century ago.” -- From The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson (2008) by Kevin J. Hayes.
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The Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University
Princeton University PressDigital Jefferson Archives
National Archives - Founders Online
Library of Congress - Jefferson Papers
The Massachusetts Historical Society - Thomas Jefferson Papers
Calendar of The Jefferson Papers of the University of Virginia
Other Documentary Projects and Editions
The Adams Papers
The Papers of James Madison
The Dolley Madison Project
The Papers of George Washington
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin
Repositories with Major Collections of Jefferson Manuscripts
Massachusetts Historical Society
Library of Congress
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of VirginiaMissouri History Museum
Huntington Library
Library of Virginia
The College of William & Mary
American Philosophical Society
Gilder Lehrman Collection
Professional Organizations
Association for Documentary Editing
Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR)
Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture -
The Retirement Series is creating the definitive edition of Thomas Jefferson’s letters and papers covering the period from 1809 to 1826 in both letterpress and digital form. Jefferson’s retirement is the least studied and yet one of the most fascinating periods of his life. During these years, spent primarily at Monticello, he founded the University of Virginia, and in selling his own unrivaled book collection, he began the transformation of the Library of Congress into a great cultural institution. But he also had time to ponder and distill his final word on the multiplicity of topics that interested him, with his extensive, thought-provoking exchanges with John Adams being only one of the richer examples. Highlights of the Retirement Series portion of the project include:
- The Retirement Series has published twenty volumes (through 2024), containing over 12,000 accurately transcribed and annotated documents. A new volume comes out every year, and the anticipated completion date for the project is 2028.
- Two-thirds of the documents written by Jefferson are being published for the first time, and the figure for letters he received is even higher.
- This work is already transforming Jefferson studies, and its completion will inevitably produce a surge of new and path-breaking scholarship.
- Two digital versions of the first volumes of the Retirement Series greatly aid the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s long-term goal of bringing Jefferson’s ideas to the widest possible national and international audience. A subscription edition released by the University of Virginia Press contains links from the index, while a freely accessible version with less robust searching tools has been issued in collaboration with the National Archives. New volumes are added on a regular basis, and both versions are part of a larger platform containing hundreds of thousands of documents from the American founding era.
Completing a reliable edition of the full corpus of documents from this period is a worthy goal for the Foundation in itself. However, the long-term goal of the Foundation is not just to complete its commitment to this section of the Papers, but also to broaden and perpetuate its stewardship of Jefferson’s written legacy.
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Lead Donors to The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello
The Retirement Series is sponsored by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc., of Charlottesville, Virginia, which owns and operates Monticello. The Retirement Series was created with a six-year founding grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts to the Foundation and to Princeton University, enabling Monticello to take over responsibility for the volumes associated with this period. Initial leadership gifts from the following donors helped launch the Retirement Series:
Richard Gilder
Mrs. Martin S. Davis
Thomas A. Saunders IIIGenerous gifts from the following donors have assured the continuation of the Retirement Series:
Janemarie D. and Donald A. King, Jr.
Alice Handy and Peter Stoudt
Harlan Crow
Mr. and Mrs. E. Charles Longley, Jr.Lead Donors to the Daniel P. Jordan Editorship of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello
The position of Editor of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello is named in honor of Dr. Daniel P. Jordan, who served as President of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and guided Monticello from 1985 to 2008. A challenge grant, generously provided by the Howard and Abby Milstein Foundation in 2017, made this recognition possible, with matching support from the following lead donors:
John and Renee Grisham
Roger and Susan Hertog
Mrs. Walter H. Helmerich III
Richard Gilder and Lois Chiles
J.F. and Peggy Bryan
Charles T. Cullen
Grady and Lori Durham
Brent and Lindsay Halsey
Janemarie D. and Donald A. King, Jr.
John L. Nau, IIIAdditional Support
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series and the Daniel P. Jordan Editorship of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello have also been aided by:
Henry F. Baldwin
David and Carolyn Beach
Phil and Shelley Belling
Leslie Greene Bowman
John and Diane Cooke
Mrs. Martin S. Davis
Jan Karon
J. Jefferson Looney
Paula and Rob Newcomb
Barbara Oberg
Packard Humanities Institute
Rebecca Rimel and The Pew Charitable Trusts
Joseph Rubinfine
Teresa N. Sanders
Susan Stein and Ken Abraham
The Sidney A. Swensrud Foundation
Ann and Peter Taylor
John Charles Thomas
Christopher J. Toomey
Jeff and Sue Walker
Anne Worrell -
Questions and corrections are always welcome. We are especially grateful for information on the whereabouts of newly discovered Jefferson documents.
Please feel free to contact us at:
Editorial Staff
Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series
Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.
Post Office Box 316
Charlottesville, Virginia 22902Email: tjpapers@monticello.org
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