University of Virginia Library

Princeton's Jefferson and Ours

But if Jefferson himself was not discovered in Charlottesville
in 1943, our long-time project for dealing with the editorial challenge
he presents was discovered in that year by new and powerful
friends elsewhere, who have assumed responsibility for its execution
on a scale which promises to exceed our brightest hopes. I
refer of course to the Princeton Jefferson publication mentioned
later in this report. And it is a presumption on my part to use the
plural form of the possessive pronoun in reference to the ten
years of editorial preparation at the University of Virginia which
preceded the inception of the Princeton project in 1943. For it was
a one-man task, to which the rest of us made largely mechanical
contributions, though it had the full support of the University's
Librarian, who always gave it as much assistance as the Library's
circumstances permitted.

I shall incur the certain indignation of my colleague, John
Cook Wyllie, in mentioning as his the far-seeing plan and laborious
task which was brought so nearly to completion before his departure
from our staff to join the British Army in northeast Africa in 1941.
For Mr. Wyllie's feeling for anonymity goes somewhat beyond
the anonymity of the normal librarian as an assistant to research.
I shall incur no censure, however, from Julian P. Boyd. To us he
has given ample evidence of his gratitude for assistance to his work—
suggesting that his daring and enterprise do not preclude the humility
of the great scholar. He is not to blame if others, carried away

by natural enthusiasm for the magnitude of his project and the
character of its planning, have incorrectly ascribed to him credit
for being the first to see the need for surveying and re-editing
Jefferson's writings, or the first to take effective action towards that
end.

Mr. Wyllie's self-imposed task was a survey of all existing
Jefferson texts in print or in manuscript in their hundreds of
well known and obscure locations. This union catalogue (or "Checklist")
now contains 77,000 chronologically arranged cards listing
some 50,000 manuscripts. Viewing it as a sine qua non in the further
search for Jefferson papers, and a basic tool for the hoped-for
bicentennial Congressional edition of Jefferson's writings, the Library
of Congress proposed in 1941 to publish and distribute our
Checklist under a joint imprint. The intervention of Pearl Harbor
made it my unpleasant duty to veto this generous proposal. (Our
entire staff, including finally my stenographer and me, promptly
entered the armed forces, making it impracticable to prepare the
enormous list for the printer.) I hope I may be excused, therefore,
for making this allusion to Mr. Wyllie's personal project. For the
Checklist did not "just happen." It had a purpose, and there was
no accident in the fact that the Historian of the Bicenntial Commission
found ready here for the extensive use that he made of it
then and later a nearly-completed survey which revealed astounding
statistics about the unpublished condition of Jefferson's writings
and has served ever since as a basic tool in Jefferson scholarship.

In emphasizing the usefulness of Mr. Wyllie's project, I detract
not a whit from the brilliant work now going forward at Princeton.
For there we are having revealed to us the wonderful potentialities
in the teamwork of an able group of scholars working in close
cooperation with a university press of the first order of talent,
equipment, and courage. Many of us at the University of Virginia
regret that we do not have a university press, such as Princeton's,
but no one at this University, as far as I know, regrets what has
developed since 1943 to make possible the full publication of Jefferson's
papers, towards which so much effort was expended here in
the preceding years.

Let Virginians and alumni remember that a university publishing
house, capable of committing itself to a million-dollar venture
over a period of years, is not always to be had for the asking.

The recent Development Fund campaign demonstrated that. When
our Librarian offered to Princeton in 1943 our full cooperation, he
spoke for all our staff. We have initiated Madison and Monroe
checklists, which grow very slowly at present. If we are successful in
carrying them to a point beyond which a library staff cannot go,
we shall be very happy indeed if another university and another
university press should step forward to complete the work. And if
our friends do not hear a great deal more about Princeton's
Jefferson in forthcoming years, we of this Library shall be much
disappointed.

Founder's Day at the University in 1948 turned out to be the
most satisfying Jeffersonian occasion of recent years. Following Julian
Boyd's notable address (published later as "Thomas Jefferson's
Empire of Liberty," Virginia Quarterly Review, vol. XXIV, No. 4,
Oct. 1948, pp. 538-54) a group of friends of the library met in the
McGregor Room for a simple ceremony in which Dumas Malone
presented to President Darden the first volume of his Jefferson and
His Time. This initial volume, Jefferson the Virginian, first fruit of
a great many years of planning and preparation, is dedicated to this
University, where some of the research was done, and where vicarious
pride is commensurate with Mr. Malone's accomplishment. It
was a satisfaction to acquire afterward the manuscript of the book
and the texts of the remarks made at the presentation.