University of Virginia Library

A. With Virginia as Subject and/or Virginians as Authors:

In his Notes on the State of Virginia Jefferson emphasizes the importance of the study of the past:

In many other places he emphasizes History's significance.[16] It is one of the major classifications for his library, as noted above. Under it he had subdivisions of Civil and Natural; under Civil, Civil Proper and Ecclesiastical; under Civil Proper, Ancient and Modern; under Modern, Foreign, British, and American. Under American History, Sowerby gives ninety-two items (not counting newspapers, which have an informal subclass of their own). Of these only fifteen, including a dozen books, two pamphlets, and a manuscript volume are strictly Virginiana. But this is more by far than he has on any other state, and among the books are John Smith's Generall Historie (1632), Keith's History of the British Plantations in America. . . Part I Containing the History of Virginia (1738), William Stith's The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia [1747], John Daly Burk's History of Virginia (1804, 1805), William Robertson's History of America, Books IX and X (1799), and Robert Beverley's Histoire de la Virginie (1707, the French edition), all today, with the exception of Robertson, valuable items. Along with them are several George Washington items, including the Journal (1754), Official Letters to the American Congress (1795), Marshall's Life (1804, 1805, 1807; Jefferson was an original subscriber), Weems' Life (1808), and Ramsay's Life (1807). In addition there are Henry Lee's Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department (1812) and interesting pamphlets by Edmund Jennings and Lewis Littlepage.

Before he died in 1826 Jefferson was able to replace some of these items which had gone to Congress. Again he had Keith's History (the same 1738 edition), Marshall's Washington, and several other Washington items including the Letters. He added the new Girardin supplement to John Daly Burk's History. William Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry (1817) and Lee's Memoirs of R. H. Lee (1825), along with a number of historical pamphlets incompletely identified in the 1829 sales list.

Under the second division of History, Natural, Jefferson included Physics, Natural History Proper, and Occupations of Men. Under Physics were Natural Philosophy, Agriculture, Chemistry, Surgery, and Medicine. Under the last five subheadings Jefferson seems not to have done much deliberate collecting, although his letters show considerable interest in most of the topics discussed. Most of the items which might be designated as Virginiana are so because their authors were Virginians. Medical theses and essays from Edinburgh to Philadelphia by James McClurg, Theodorick Bland, William Tazewell, William Stokes, and Thomas and James Ewell discuss a variety of topics from yellow fever to the human bile and "asphyxia." Then here is John Rouelle's Complete Treatise on the Mineral Waters of Virginia (1792). Other books and pamphlets on agriculture (in this case both subject and author were frequently Virginian) were probably closer to Jefferson's personal interests. Here one finds John A. Binns' Treatise on Practical Farming (1803), Jacquelin Ambler's Treatise on the Culture of Lucerne (1800?), G. W. P. Custis' Address . . . on the Importance of Encouraging Agriculture and Domestic Manufactures (1808), John Randolph's Treatise on Gardening (1793), and John Taylor's famous Arator (1813).

Under Natural History Proper appear other Virginians' books or pamphlets on surgery, the laws and property of matter, and The Noble and Useful Animal the Horse (Petersburg, 1811). Quite valuable among the botanical books is the Gronovius-Clayton Flora Virginica (1762), though it is not a first edition. And under the Technical Arts (i.e., "The Occupations of Men") there is Quesnay de Beaurepaire's interesting Memoire (1788) concerning the proposed Academy of the

Sciences and Fine Arts for Richmond. James Rumsey "of Berkeley County, Virginia's" Explanation of the Steam Engine (1788) and William Tatham's prospectus for a Dismal Swamp Canal (1808) indicate that all of Jefferson's contemporary fellow-citizens were not farmers, politicians, lawyers, or physicians.

In the years after 1814 Jefferson continued to receive medical treatises from the Ewells and replaced his editions of Binns, Randolph, Taylor, and Gronovius-Clayton. James Madison sent him his own Address on agriculture (probably that before the Agricultural Society of Albemarle). The letters show that in these last years Jefferson was more than ever the farmer.

Under his second major division of Philosophy Jefferson had the headings Moral and Mathematical. Under Moral were Ethics and Jurisprudence; under Jurisprudence, Religious, Municipal, and Œconomical. Under Municipal were Domestic and Foreign; under Domestic were Equity, Common Law, Law Merchant, and Law Ecclesiastical. Under Œconomical were Politics and Commerce. Virginians contributed something in each of these classes. Joshua Peel, from Bedford County, dedicated to Jefferson his Truth and Reason: or, A Fair Investigation of many of those things which keep them in the shade delivered in a course of Theological Lectures (1805). Quaker and Virginia-born Warner Mifflin contributed to the Ethics of Nature and Nations A Serious Expostulation with Members of the House of Representatives of the United States [1793]. Mason Locke Weems, David Rice, Barnaby Nixon, Richard Watson, and an anonymous Anglican clergyman sent him sermons, letters, and addresses dated from 1797 through 1806, all placed in the Religious classification.

Under the various Law classifications Jefferson listed a large number of Virginia items. What are perhaps the most valuable of them, the manuscript volumes, will be discussed later. But Jefferson was equally proud of his printed laws. In 1803 he wrote John Daly Burk that

Jefferson owned John Purvis' A Complete Collection of all the Laws of Virginia now in Force (c. 1684), A Collection of the Acts of

Assembly (1733), the Revisal of 1661/2-1748, the Acts of Assembly (1661/2-1678), the Chancellor's Collection of Acts and Ordinances (1783); an eight-volume "collection of all the printed laws of Virginia" which included Purvis, the Revisals of 1733, 1748, and 1768, the "Fugitive Sheets of printed laws" of 1734-1772, and 1775-1783, and the Revisals of 1783 and 1794. He possessed William Waller Hening's Statutes at Large (1809, 1810, 1812). Among other items are his copy as committeeman of the Report of the Committee of Revisors appointed by the General Assembly of Virginia . . . in [1776] (1784); Draughts of Such Bills, as Have Been Prepared by the Committee Appointed under the Act, Intituled. . . . (1792); Edmund Randolph's Abridgement of the Public Permanent Laws of Virginia (1796); A Collection of all Such Acts of the General Assembly of Virginia, of a Public and Permanent Nature, as are now in force (1803); William Beverley's Abridgement (1728), John Mercer's Exact Abridgement (1737) and another edition of the same (1759); two accounts of the Burr trial (1807, 1808); George Webb's The Office and Authority of a Justice of the Peace (1736); Hening's The New Virginia Justice (1795); George Hay's Essay on the Liberty of the Press (1803), Bushrod Washington's Reports (1798-1799); Daniel Call's Reports (1801); William Tatham's Report of a Case (1794), and Hening and Munford's Reports (1808, 1809). The Common Law section of Virginiana is rounded off with a copy of The Charter, Transfer, and Statutes, of the College of William and Mary (1758). And the whole Law section concludes with a James Madison pamphlet on neutral trade (1805), Jefferson's own Report of the Secretary of State, on the Privileges and Restrictions on the Commerce of the United States in Foreign Countries . . . 1793 (1806), and An Abridgement of the Laws in Force and Use in His Majesty's Plantations; (viz.) of Virginia. . . . (1704). To these may be added some of the things received from George Wythe, including Wythe's Decisions of Cases in Virginia, by the High Court of Chancery. . . . (1795) and a set of six pamphlet Reports (c. 1796?) of cases with annotations in Wythe's hand.

A number of these, notably Wythe's Chancery Decisions, Hening's New Virginia Justice, Washington's Reports, Mercer's Abridgement (1758), and a number of Acts of Assembly, Jefferson managed to duplicate after 1814. And according to the 1829 catalogue (see items 562-583) he added Revised Codes and Reports of the Session Acts of the 1814-1825 period, as well as Munford's General Index to the Virginia Law Authorities (1819).

Under the subdivision of Politics Jefferson sent to Congress his

largest number of printed items pertaining to Virginia. Of a little over thirteen hundred items from all nations, about one hundred are by Virginians, frequently on Virginia topics. In these books and pamphlets one may trace among other things the history of Democratic-Republican and Jeffersonian politics over a quarter of a century, from Jefferson's years in Paris to those of his retirement from public life. In this group are his own Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (an English-French edition of about 1786), A Summary View of the Rights of British America (a unique copy with manuscript notes by the author, c. 1774), An Appendix to the Notes on Virginia Relative to the Murder of Logan's Family [1800], the Speech of . . . delivered at his Instalment, March 4, 1801 [First Inaugural Address] (1801), A Test of the Religious Principles of Mr. Jefferson; Extracted (Verbatim) from His Writings (1800), Discorsi del Signore Tommaso Jefferson delli Stati Uniti di America fatti tradurre e pubblicare dall' Illustrissimo Signore Leandro Cathcart (Livorno, 1804), The Proceedings of the Government of the United States, in maintaining the Public Right to the Beach of the Missisipi, and adjacent to New-Orleans. . . . (1812, two copies), and Message from the President of the United States, Communicating Discoveries Made in Exploring the Missouri . . . by Captains Lewis and Clark . . . . (1806). And there is an interesting edition of Destutt de Tracy's Commentary and Review of Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws (Philadelphia, 1811) for which Jefferson wrote the Preface.

The first President is also well represented in George Washington to the People of the United States, Announcing his Retirement from Public Life (1800), A Message of the President of the United States to Congress relative to France and Great-Britain [1793], and Letters from George Washington to Several of His Friends . . . 1776 (c. 1795; Washington declared the 1778 edition of this spurious). And it is not remarkable that Jefferson's close friend James Madison is even better represented by The Federalist (1788; on the flyleaf Jefferson has identified the numbers by Madison); Letters of Helvidius: Written in Reply to Pacificus, on the President's Proclamation of Neutrality [1796], Political Observations (1795; Jefferson identifies this as Madison's), A Memoir, Containing an Examination of the British Doctrine, Which Subjects to Capture a Neutral Trade, Not Open in Time of Peace (1806), All Impressments Unlawful and Inadmissible (1806), Letters from the Secretary of State to Messrs. Monroe and Pinkney (1808), and Extract from a Letter from the Secretary of State to Mr. Monroe, Relative to the Impressments (1806). James Monroe naturally too is present: Some Observations on the Constitution &c. (1788;

Jefferson attributed this to Monroe), The Governor's Letter, of the 6th of December, 1802, to the Speaker of the House of Delegates of Virginia (1802), A View of the Conduct of the Executive in the Foreign Affairs of the United States, as Connected with the Mission to the French Republic during the Years 1794, 5, and 6 (1798), and Correspondence in Relation to the British Treaty of Peace (1808).

Many Virginia followers of Jefferson's party from its beginnings to the War of 1812, and a few anti-Jeffersonians, are represented among the political books and pamphlets. St. George Tucker's Dissertation on Slavery: with a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of It, in the State of Virginia (1796) and his Reflections on the Policy and Necessity of Encouraging the Commerce of the Citizens of the United States of America (1785) are significant essays by the William and Mary professor. Jefferson's Albemarle neighbor the Italian Philip Mazzei is represented by two essays, one in French and one in Italian (1788 and 1803); English James Currie, physician, and Scottish Patrick Colquhoun, economist, both of whom lived in Virginia for some years, by one treatise each (1793 and 1788 respectively). Included here are essays by prominent citizens such as Fulwar Skipwith (1806), Richard Henry Lee (1787), Arthur Lee (1774), Robert Carter Nicholas (1774), Carter Braxton (1776), William Tatham (1791), John Taylor (1794), Edmund Randolph (1795, 1796), John Page (1796), W.C. Nicholas (1799?), Benjamin Watkins Leigh (two in 1811), Richard Evers Lee (1800), John Daly Burk (1803), Philip Grymes (1803), William Branch Giles (1808), and John Thomson (1804). Other native Virginians whose reputations were acquired outside the state, men such as William Henry Harrison (1807) and Henry Clay (1813), are also represented.

There are two essays by Jefferson's eccentric neighbor the orator and schoolmaster James Ogilvie (1798, 1802), several pseudonymous essayists under names like Virginius and Oliver Fairplay who wrote for or against Jefferson, and several contributions to the Logan controversy. There are Virginia essays on systems of banking (1811), militia (1813), the Navy (1808), and the Burr Trial (1807). Here may be found the notorious James Thomson Callender's The Prospect before Us (1800).[17] Here is the only known copy of a 1769 edition of John Dickinson and Arthur Lee's The Farmer's and Monitor's Letters, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies. Altogether these items form

an amusing and entertaining as well as significant representation of early American politics.

Naturally it was difficult if not usually impossible to replace these so frequently topical books and pamphlets after 1814. But Jefferson did secure a new copy of Hay's essay on the liberty of the press and a new 1818 edition of The Federalist as well as an additional older one. Old friends sent him their current political writings, and this section of the 1829 catalogue lists a now valuable collection of essays and books by people such as John Taylor of Caroline, who sent Construction Construed, and Constitutions Vindicated (1820) and New Views of the Constitution of the United States (1823); Francis Gilmer, who contributed his Vindication of the Laws . . . against Usury from the Objections of Jeremy Bentham and the Edinburgh Reviewers (1820), and David B. Warden, whose book On the Origin, Nature, Progress and Influence of Consular Establishments (1813) must have interested the old statesman at Monticello a great deal. And he received in this period printed copies of series of State Papers covering the 1793-1820 period. Almost all these seem to have been gifts. There is little or no evidence of conscious collecting of this kind of Virginiana during these last dozen years.

The second principal subdivision of the classification Philosophy was Mathematical, and under Mathematical were included the various types of Mathematics, Physico-Mathematics, Astronomy, and Geography. Under Pure Mathematics and Astronomy one finds no Virginiana in the collection completed in 1814, and under Physico-Mathematics only Jefferson's own Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit, and of Coinage for the United States [c. 1785] and Report of the Secretary of State, on the Subject of Establishing a Uniformity in the Weights, Measures and Coins of the United States (1790). It is not until we come to Geography that there is Virginiana again. Here are a group of sixteenth and seventeenth-century books that might perhaps have been included with History earlier. A magnificent set of DeBry's The Great or American Voyages, Parts I to XI, in Latin (1590-1619); Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations (1589, the Richard Bland library copy); Edward Williams' Virginia: More especially the South part thereof, Richly and truly valued (1650); Robert Johnson's Nova Britannia (1609); and William Bullock's Virginia Impartially Examined (1649) are in themselves realizations of a book collector's dream. Here under Geography he also includes a rare tract by his friend William Tatham, Address to the Shareholders and Others Interested in the Canals of Virginia (1794), and the two-volume 1814 edition

of Lewis and Clark's History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark. Also he lists here a first edition of his Notes on the State of Virginia (Paris, 1785), Appendix to the Notes on Virginia (1800; there was another copy earlier in the Catalogue), and Message from the President of the United States, Transmitting a Roll of the Persons Having Office or Employment under the United States (1802).

Jefferson had a good collection under the third and final major classification, Fine Arts, but it is hardly strange that very little of it is Virginian in subject or author. What little there is hardly indicative of his aesthetic tastes, for most of the items were presentation copies from authors. Such is Thomas Northmore's Washington, or Liberty Restored: a Poem in Ten Books (1809). Dedicated to him was Judith Lomax's The Notes of an American Lyre (1813). Jefferson subscribed for twelve copies of this latter work, presumably out of friendship for the author's father Thomas Lomax. More interesting among the volumes of verse is St. George Tucker's (identified as author by Jefferson himself) The Probationary Odes of Jonathan Pindar, Esq. (1796). After 1814 he received one more volume of native poetry, Mrs. Alfred W. Elwes'[?] Potomac Muse (1825).

Under Logic in the Fine Arts division were Rhetoric and Oratory. Here one finds Jean François Coste's oration given at Williamsburg in 1782 in Latin (1783) and James Lyons' medical dissertation, in Latin, on the cholera (1785). Here also are a volume of eulogiums on Washington (probably 1802), an oration (1808) by Ferdinando Fairfax, Thomas E. Birch's anthology (containing an ode to Jefferson), The Virginian Orator: being a Variety of Original and Selected Poems, Orations and Dramatic Scenes; to improve the American Youth in the Ornamental and Useful Art of Eloquence and Gesture (1808), a copy of William Wirt's [and others'] volume of essays, The Rainbow, First Series (1804), and (all that was ever published of) James Lyon's National Magazine: or, A Political, Historical, Biographical, and Literary Repository, for June 1, 1799 (1799). Only one such item of Fine Arts-Virginiana does the 1814-1826 library contain, a copy of George Tucker's Essays on Various Subjects of Taste, Morals, and National Policy (1822), probably presented by the author in 1825 when he came to Charlottesville as first chairman of the faculty of the University of Virginia.