46521Editorial Note: Notes and Documents Relating to the British Invasions in 1781 (Jefferson Papers)
The documents here gathered together, though covering a long span of time, are so gathered and given special annotation because of their close interrelationship and because the events they deal with had a profound effect both upon Jefferson’s reputation as governor and upon his own feelings. The events they record led directly to the legislative motion of 12 June 1781 to investigate...
46522Editorial Note: The Case of Mace Freeland (Jefferson Papers)
This case, along with others that came to him during 1782, reveals Jefferson as turning seriously to the practice of the law. Perhaps the fact that the case of Mace Freeland seemed to offer an opportunity to reinforce those “principles of moderation and justice which principally endear a republican government to it’s citizens” may have induced him to accept it. At any rate on 12 Feb. 1782,...
46523Editorial Note: Jefferson’s Contemplated Mission to Europe (Jefferson Papers)
The documents here grouped together have no special unity beyond the fact that all of them relate to Jefferson’s mission to France in 1783—a mission never carried out because provisional articles of peace between the United States and Great Britain had been signed at Paris on 30 Nov. 1782. They can, however, be advantageously presented as a group in order to show Jefferson’s activities during...
46524Editorial Note: Jefferson’s Proposed Revision of the Virginia Constitution (Jefferson Papers)
When Jefferson stopped off in Richmond in May on his way back to Monticello, his discussions with various political figures led him to the conclusion that a convention to revise the Virginia Constitution was imminent. No doubt remembering his experience in 1776 when his earlier draft of a fundamental law arrived almost too late, he lost no time in drafting a text for a new constitution. He...
46525Editorial Note: Documents Concerning the Residence of Congress (Jefferson Papers)
Except for Document iii in this series, all of the notes and memoranda pertaining to the embittered question of finding a permanent seat for Congress were printed by Ford, iii , 458–62, as if they proceeded entirely from Jefferson’s hand, and were assigned the conjectural date of 13 Apr. 1784 on the belief that they were drafted at the time of the renewed discussion of the question. But most...
46526Editorial Note: George Washington’s Resignation as Commander-in-Chief (Jefferson Papers)
Washington’s surrender of his commission at a formal audience granted by Congress was a symbolic event of the highest significance. The documents presented in the present series are evidence enough that Congress as well as the Commander-in-Chief fully appreciated the nature of the occasion. Nevertheless, though this event at Annapolis on 23 Dec. 1783 has not received the attention accorded...
46527Editorial Note: The Connecticut-Pennsylvania Territorial Dispute (Jefferson Papers)
The far-reaching dispute between Connecticut and Pennsylvania over their conflicting charter claims was one that Jefferson became acquainted with on first entering Congress in 1775 (see Vol. 1: 248). The reports that he drew up eight years later came at a climactic moment of the controversy. These reports and related documents printed in the present group require particular comment for several...
46528Editorial Note: Report on the Powers of the Committee of the States (Jefferson Papers)
In his Autobiography Jefferson gave the following account of the steps leading to the creation of a Committee of the States: “The remissness of Congress, and their permanent session, began to be a subject of uneasiness and even some of the legislatures had recommended to them intermissions, and periodical sessions. As the Confederation had made no provision for a visible head of the government...
46529Editorial Note: The Virginia Cession of Territory Northwest of the Ohio (Jefferson Papers)
With the acceptance by Congress of the Virginia cession on 1 Mch. 1784, the national domain came into existence. Jefferson, in what was for him a rare disclosure of his methods of guiding an important measure through a legislative body, recounted to Benjamin Harrison the last-minute maneuvers in Congress by which a single vote determined the outcome ( TJ to Harrison, 3 Mch. 1784 ). But this,...
46530Editorial Note: Plan for Government of the Western Territory (Jefferson Papers)
On 1 Mch. 1784, immediately after the acceptance of the Virginia Deed of Cession, Jefferson presented his report of a plan for the government of the territory embraced by the newly created national domain and by other territories that would be ceded. But this report, the foundation stone of American territorial policy which, as amended, became known to history as the Ordinance of 1784, had...