If you would understand the Declaration of Independence and the man who penned it, you would do well to read Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. Instead of reading a secondary (or in many cases tertiary) source in attempting to comprehend the myriad forces that shaped the emerging U.S government, why not go to a primary text? Notes on the State of Virginia is such a text. There are many excellent texts that attempt to explain and interpret the enigmatic figure of Thomas Jefferson, but this text, written by the man himself, does more than them all to give insight into his character and motivation.

The writing of Notes on the State of Virginia was motivated by the French government’s efforts to amass pertinent information about the American states. Francois Marbois, a member of the French delegation to Philadelphia, circulated a questionnaire that found its way to then Governor Jefferson. Jefferson took the occasion of these queries to organize and enlarge his own extensive notes on the climate, geography, resources, and, most importantly, ideology of his home state. The result is a book length response to the French questionnaire. Jefferson undertakes to explain as much about his state as possible. His responses range from descriptions of the physical characteristics of the land to detailed analyses of the emerging political and legal thought that came to shape the Declaration of Independence and other charter texts of U.S. history.

In this text you will see the thinking that merges the classical thinking that was the basis of Jefferson’s own education and the radical, forward-looking thoughts that constituted the basis of the new American state.

This is a relatively easy read as well. Although much of the statistics are of little significance to many readers, combined with Jefferson’s extensive expositions about the law, religion, slavery and other issues pertinent to modern readers, they constitute an amazing insight into a dynamic and amazing period in our history.

I read this text in a class designed as a survey of Western thought. In conjunction with other classic texts ranging from Sapho to Virgil to Shakespeare and beyond, Jefferson’s only full-length book (the only one published during his lifetime anyway) served to add greatly to my understanding of what made America great and revolutionary. The great Western texts were Jefferson’s texts and so this exposition of his thought serves as something of a culmination of Western thought up to that point.

I was most impressed by the ease with which I could grasp this “primary” text. We sometimes think of primary sources as out of reach or too difficult to interpret for most of us, but that is not the case here. Most of us have sufficient experience with U.S history to understand nearly all the allusions that Jefferson makes. His text was written to explain American thought and culture to the French. Americans will have little trouble understanding him.

This is a must read for anyone trying to rearrange their understanding of Thomas Jefferson in light of the recent DNA “proof” that he fathered children by his slave, Sally Hemmings. What he writes here about slavery covers a lot of important ground on the issue. I think most of us will find his views both enlightened in many ways and incredibly bigoted. Either way, it makes for pretty gripping reading.



Some of the factual information in this opinion comes from William Peden’s excellent introduction to the 1982 edition of this text published by the University of North Carolina Press.



Recommended: Yes