His wife, Martha, died on September 6 from complications of a difficult pregnancy, leaving Jefferson virtually paralyzed with grief for almost two months. Jefferson continued to revise Notes during the spring, summer, and early autumn of 1782. Marbois did not receive Jefferson’s responses until April 1782, and wrote of his “inexpressible pleasure” for “the candor and frankness on those subjects which politicians of narrow vision call secrets of State”-reflecting among other factors Jefferson’s detailed descriptions of Virginia’s waterways and deficient defenses, and meticulous tabular account of the state’s militia strength by county. Thomson readily agreed and later offered extensive comments on the manuscript, which Jefferson incorporated as an appendix to the printed edition. Jefferson had already contemplated wider dissemination of the work, suggesting to the secretary of Congress, Charles Thomson, on December 20 that portions of it might be submitted to the American Philosophical Society. In seclusion with his family at his Poplar Forest plantation and having suffered the humiliation of a legislative investigation of his conduct as governor, Jefferson returned to his study of Virginia, transmitting it to Marbois on December 20. Jefferson resigned the governorship on June 1 and three days later fled Monticello to avoid capture by the British. The pressure of events, including a second British invasion of Virginia and the death of his daughter Lucy Elizabeth, delayed Jefferson’s responses. Virtual Tour of Poplar Forest On March 4, 1781, Jefferson informed Marbois that he had undertaken the task of answering “some of” his queries, noting that his “present occupations disable me from completing” them. The book contains Jefferson’s most powerful indictments of slavery it is also a foundational text of racism. As the most detailed and influential portrait of any state or region of the United States for generations, Notes ensured that Virginia would be a primary focus of future studies of the American republic.

It established Jefferson’s international reputation as a serious scientist, a man of letters, and the principal spokesman for his “country,” whether Virginia or the United States his discursive text, ranging over the entire continent, implicitly blurred the distinction between the two. It profoundly influenced European understanding of the United States, as well as American views of Virginia. Notes on the State of Virginia wrested the interpretation of the young American nation from European critics and intellectuals and offered an eloquent indigenous voice. Both a French translation, published in 1786, and the widely circulated London edition of 1787 incorporated important structural changes and a detailed map. Notes was first published in Paris in 1785 in an edition of 200. The book is divided into twenty-three chapters, largely taken from the diplomat’s queries, though Jefferson reordered and renumbered them. Jefferson originally composed the work in 1781 in answer to queries posed by a French diplomat, and then revised and expanded it into a description and defense of the young United States as interpreted through a Virginia lens.

Many consider it the most important American book written before 1800. Notes on the State of Virginia, by Thomas Jefferson, is at once a compendium of information about the state and a sweeping commentary on natural history, society, politics, education, religion, slavery, liberty, and law.

Robert knotes