The Road to Monticello

by Hayes, Kevin J. ;

  The siege of Virginia that occurred in January and the ongoing threat to the state over the next several months prevented Jefferson from completing the questionnaire to his personal satisfaction. There were some queries—those pertaining to commerce, for example—he deliberately avoided in hopes that Joseph Jones could find someone else to answer them, but there was no one more qualified than Jefferson to undertake the task as a whole. Writing Marbois the first week of March to apologize for the delay, he explained that he would soon have the leisure to complete his notes on Virginia. He did not elaborate what he meant, but he was obviously anticipating the end of his second term as governor and his return home to his family and his books. Looking forward to his retirement from office, Jefferson foresaw his notes on Virginia as an ideal project to complete from the comfort of Monticello.

  He had not counted on the war removing him from Monticello or the riding accident that would confine him to Poplar Forest for several weeks. Still, he devoted much energy to Notes on the State of Virginia that summer. He could not give his full attention to the project because a more pressing task required his attention. Since his political enemies in the state legislature had accused him of misconduct during his tenure as governor, he had to spend part of that summer preparing a response to the charges, which he would deliver at the next legislative session in December. He expertly answered the charges and ably exonerated himself from wrongdoing, but the accusations wounded him deeply. After the incident, he told James Monroe how he felt about the matter. Jefferson’s frankness shows how close the two were becoming: “I had been suspected and suspended in the eyes of the world without the least hint then or afterwards made public which might restrain them from supposing I stood arraigned for treasons of the heart and not mere weaknesses of the head. And I felt that these injuries, for such they have been since acknowledged, had inflicted a wound on my spirit which will only be cured by the all-healing grave.”4

  In early August, he finally returned to Monticello, where he continued working on his notes for Marbois and used his voluminous source materials to double check what he had written so far. Save for a handful of additional details he had yet to find, the manuscript for Marbois was nearing completion. Some pertinent documents he needed were located among the state holdings in Richmond; George Wythe had much additional information in his library. By the third week of December, Jefferson completed a satisfactory draft, had the manuscript copied, and sent one copy to Marbois with a letter apologizing for the delay.

  He need not have been apologetic. Though Marbois had distributed his queries to representatives from every state, only a few answered them at all, and none answered them as fully as Jefferson. Marbois graciously thanked him for all his work: “I cannot express to you how grateful I am for the trouble you have taken to draft detailed responses to the questions I had taken the liberty of addressing to you. The Philosophy which has inspired them, the understanding they give me of one of the most important states of the union and the circumstances in which you have taken the trouble to write about them, created the most valuable work that I could take from this country.”5

  No copies of Jefferson’s initial set of answers to the queries survive. Almost as soon as he put Marbois’s copy in the mail, he began tinkering with his own, revising and expanding its contents, which he would continue over the next few years. Seeking to make the work as authoritative as possible, he elicited the help of others, including family friend Thomas Walker. To encourage Walker’s input, Jefferson had made a partial manuscript of the work, mainly the section pertaining to natural history, and sent it to him, asking Walker to read the manuscript and note what facts or observations needed to be corrected, expanded, or deleted.

  Before he left Virginia in October 1783, Jefferson made a fair copy of the manuscript of Notes on the State of Virginia, which he took with him to Philadelphia that month. When he went to Annapolis in November to serve in Congress, he still had the heavily revised manuscript with him. G. K. Van Hogendorp, a young traveler Jefferson befriended, had a good look at it there. In a subsequent letter to Van Hogendorp, Jefferson reminded him of “the numerous insertions I had made in them from time to time, when I could find a moment for turning to them from other occupations.”6 This description provides a good indication of what the manuscript looked like after nearly two years of revision.

  The surviving manuscript of Notes on the State of Virginia confirms Jefferson’s description. He made many changes to it by inscribing brief passages between the lines. Lengthier revisions he wrote on slips of paper, which he pasted atop canceled passages they replaced. He further expanded his text by composing additional passages on separate slips of paper, which he pasted tab-like to the edges of individual pages. These manuscript tabs must be unfolded to read the manuscript properly.7

  After significantly expanding his text, Jefferson realized his work had become more than merely answers to a set of queries. It was emerging as a work of considerable importance. He had given the Marquis de Chastellux a copy of the same version he sent Marbois, but after spending two years elaborating his text, he felt like disowning the earlier version. He wrote Chastellux, warning him away from what he had originally given him: “I must caution you to distrust information from my answers to Monsr. de Marbois’ queries. I have lately had a little leisure to revise them. I found some things should be omitted many corrected, and more supplied and enlarged. They are swelled nearly to treble bulk.”8 These comments reveal the extent of Jefferson’s revisions. He had expanded the manuscript to such an extent that it had grown to three times the size of the version he had originally completed for Marbois.

  Despite the length of the expanded version, Notes on the State of Virginia is structured much as the original version was structured: as a set of responses to a set of queries. Each chapter addresses a specific query, though Jefferson’s answers often extend far beyond the scope of each query. The structure effectively masks the amount of thought Jefferson put into its organization. In the preface to the London edition, he assumed a nonchalant pose by characterizing the work as merely a set of answers to a list of questions: “The following Notes were written in Virginia in the year 1781, and somewhat corrected and enlarged in the winter of 1782, in answer to Queries proposed to the Author, by a Foreigner of Distinction, then residing among us.”9

  Jefferson’s statement reinforces what the book’s structure implies, that the queries being answered are the same ones Marbois had asked, but that is not the case. The organization of Marbois’s original questionnaire differs significantly from the organization of Notes on the State of Virginia. As he composed his work, Jefferson greatly revised Marbois’s original questionnaire, collapsing multiple queries into single ones in some cases and expanding single ones into multiple queries in others.

  The first query in Marbois’s list asks about colonial charters, the second about the current state constitution, and the third about state boundaries. Recognizing that the object of the third query made for a better opening, Jefferson combined Marbois’s first two queries into one, and shifted them to the middle of his book. Removing these two from the top of the list, he let himself start his work with what had been the subject of Marbois’s third query: boundaries.

  “Virginia is bounded on the East by the Atlantic” begins Jefferson’s answer to the first query in Notes on the State of Virginia. Though not one of the most auspicious openings in the history of American literature, this sentence assumes importance by establishing both the physical boundaries that circumscribe the state of Virginia and the parameters that define the book. Jefferson thus created a parallel between the geographical space of Virginia and the textual space of his book. Making the issue of boundaries his first subject, he revealed his personality as well. His desire to establish boundaries before proceeding any further reflects his personal need to exert control over his subject.

  By making the Atlantic Ocean his first boundary, Jefferson distinguishes the New World from the Old and, in so
doing, emphasizes its uniqueness. After precisely delineating the remaining boundaries, he computes the total area of Virginia. To illustrate its size, he indulges in a little jingoistic breast-beating. By his calculations, Virginia is one-third larger than Great Britain and Ireland put together. Completing his answer to this query, he briefly lists the charters, grants, and other agreements that had created the present boundaries of the state.

  Marbois’s sixth query asks about Virginia geography. He expected a “notice of the Counties Cities Townships Villages Rivers Rivulets and how far they are navigable. Cascades Caverns Mountains Productions Trees Plants Fruits and other natural Riches.”10 Jefferson recognized that this single query demanded far more information than could be manageably contained within a single answer, so he split it into five separate queries. Virginia’s rivers, for instance, deserved a chapter of their own. Jefferson made it his second.

  The names of the first five rivers discussed in this chapter sound familiar to anyone familiar with Virginia geography: James, Chick-ahominy, Rivanna, York, Potomac. The chapter also mentions the Ohio River. Though Virginia had ceded all territory north of the Ohio to the United States, the land that now forms West Virginia and Kentucky still belonged to Virginia, so the inclusion of the Ohio among Virginia’s rivers is perfectly justifiable. Besides, few can quibble with Jefferson’s description of the Ohio River. Though he had never seen it himself, he synthesized the accounts of those who had into one grand pronouncement: “The Ohio is the most beautiful river on earth.” Developing the chapter, Jefferson named other rivers farther west. He included a long discussion of the Mississippi, the western boundary of Virginia, which he called “one of the principal channels of future commerce for the country.” But Jefferson did not stop there. Next, he mentioned the Missouri, a river that could open “channels of extensive communication with the western and north-western country.” Before concluding the next paragraph, he was considering waterways that could reach as far as Sante Fe and Mexico City.11

  Over its course, Jefferson’s second chapter becomes the antithesis of his first. After establishing his boundaries in the initial chapter, he breaks them in the following one to expand the reach of Virginia across North America to the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. Describing Virginia, Jefferson not only recalled its past; he also anticipated its future. In the beginning, all of North America was Virginia. Such had been the gist of Virginia histories from Captain John Smith to William Stith. Lamenting territory lost to other colonies was already a commonplace of Virginia historiography. In the historical account that prefaced the History of the Dividing Line, William Byrd showed how New York had once been part of Virginia and lamented the loss: “Another Limb lopt off from Virginia was New York, which the Dutch seized very unfairly, on pretence of having Purchased it from Captain Hudson, the first Discoverer.”12

  Notes on the State of Virginia perpetuates this discursive tradition. But Jefferson went further than previous Virginia historians. Instead of lamenting the loss, he sought to remedy it. His second chapter looks to the future as it foresees the exploration and expansion of the American West. Indeed, this chapter anticipates an important aspect of Jefferson’s presidential policy. Richard Price, for one, read Notes on the State of Virginia as proof of Jefferson’s qualifications to lead the country.13 Thanking him for the copy Jefferson gave him, Price mused, “How happy would the united States be were all of them under the direction of Such wisdom and liberality as yours?”

  Chapter 3 in Notes on the States of Virginia consists of a single sentence in answer to what had been the thirteenth query in Marbois’s list. Supplying a “notice of the best sea-ports of the state, and how big are the vessels they can receive,” Jefferson observed, “Having no ports but our rivers and creeks, this Query has been answered under the preceding one.”14 Why did Jefferson bother to include this one-sentence chapter at all? Since he had combined some of Marbois’s other queries together, he could have easily subsumed this tiny one with the previous query and omitted this chapter altogether.

  The chapter represents a literary experiment on Jefferson’s part. It may have been inspired by Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws, which contained many one-sentence chapters.15 Alternatively, he may have had a more belletristic source. Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, which he alluded to elsewhere in Notes on the State of Virginia, set a precedent for the short chapter. The thirteenth chapter of the second book of Tristram Shandy, for example, is only three lines long, and it continues a dialogue that had been taking place in the preceding chapter. Jefferson’s chapter functions similarly: taking the prefatory query and its one-sentence answer together, this chapter presents a dialogue that continues topics discussed in the previous chapter.

  This one-sentence chapter contributes another literary quality to Notes on the State of Virginia: it enhances the work’s verisimilitude by suggesting that its author is dutifully answering each of the questions he has been asked, one by one, even when he has virtually nothing new to say. The nonchalance Jefferson assumes with this third query is a literary pose that masks the deliberate artistry underlying the structure and content of this work.

  Given the time and effort Jefferson spent revising Notes on the State of Virginia, he could have restructured the work, removing the queries and revising its contents into distinct sections and chapters, but he did not. He retained the query-and-answer organization to let the work resemble a private manuscript communication. Even as he revised and expanded his text, he did not necessarily envision it as a published work. Rather, he planned to have manuscript copies made for a handful of friends who would appreciate it. When its length became too great to keep having manuscript copies made, he still hesitated to publish it. Instead, he bankrolled the printing costs himself and gave copies to friends with explicit instructions to keep the work from anyone else who might try to reproduce it.

  Jefferson’s reluctance to publish Notes on the State of Virginia helps explain why he retained its structure as a set of answers to a questionnaire. Throughout its composition, he refused to reorganize his work into a more conventional form. He did not want it to seem like something written for public consumption. This impulse also helps explain Jefferson’s title. Charles Thomson, who read Notes on the State of Virginia after Jefferson had expanded it significantly yet before he had completed his revisions, encouraged him to change the title: “I submit it to your consideration whether you do not owe it to your reputation to publish your work under a more dignified title. In the state in which I saw it I consider it a most excellent Natural history not merely of Virginia but of No. America and possibly equal if not superior to that of any Country yet published.”16 In other words, the finest natural history of North America deserved to be called something else besides Notes. Jefferson continued tinkering with his manuscript after receiving Thomson’s suggestion, but he refused to change the title.

  Even in the printed form of the first edition, Notes on the State of Virginia retains the aura of a privately circulated manuscript. In terms of its physical appearance, the highly unusual title page distinguishes Jefferson’s book from a published work. The title appears at the tip top. The table of contents appears beneath it, complete with chapter and page numbers. A horizontal rule follows the last item in the table of contents. Unlike a typical eighteenth-century book, neither the publisher nor the place of publication is mentioned on the title page. All that appears below the horizontal rule is a date in Roman numerals.

  The date Jefferson chose for his work may be the oddest aspect. The printing of this edition began in 1784 and was completed in 1785. Instead of mentioning either of these years on the title page, Jefferson dated the work earlier. The manuscript of the title page, which Jefferson wrote after the printer, Philippe-Denys Pierres, had set the rest of the book in type, contains the date of 1782–1783.17 In other words, Jefferson dated it from the time he expanded Notes on the State of Virginia into something close to its final version. To Jefferson, a date of composition w
as more pertinent than a date of publication. As far as he was concerned, a date of publication was irrelevant because he did not conceive this private printing a published work at all. He ultimately struck out the year 1783. The first edition of Notes on the State of Virginia is dated 1782. This revision reinforces the nonchalant pose Jefferson assumed as he described the book. Admitting that its composition spanned multiple years would reveal that it was a carefully wrought literary work, an aspect of the work he hesitated to admit.

  Charles Thomson, from Life, 1781—1782, by Charles Willson Peale. (Independence National Historical Park)

  Comments Jefferson made to recipients of presentation copies reinforce his commitment to keep the work private. Shipping a copy of Notes to James Madison, he said that he was intending to “send over a very few copies to particular friends in confidence and burn the rest.” He continued, “Do not view me as an author, and attached to what he has written. I am neither. They were at first intended only for Marbois. When I had enlarged them, I thought first of giving copies to three or four friends.” Jefferson went so far as to deny that Notes made any contribution to literature whatsoever. Mentioning the work to Charles Thomson shortly after it had been printed, Jefferson told him, “In literature nothing new: for I do not consider as having added any thing to that feild my own Notes of which I have had a few copies printed.”18

  Those men privileged enough to receive copies of the privately printed edition respected its author’s wishes about keeping the work from the public eye, but some of them found it odd that Jefferson wished to deny the reading public the pleasure and edification the work offered. Louis Guillaume Otto, for one, thanked him for his presentation copy of Notes on the State of Virginia but observed, “According to your desire I shall be very careful not to trust your work to any person, who might make an improper use of it, and tho’ I conceive that the public would be very much gratified with the interesting particulars contained in it, Your Excellency’s determination on this point is a Law, which I shall never attempt to infringe.”19