EDITORIAL NOTE

“Take care of me when dead,” Thomas Jefferson famously asked James Madison in one of the last letters that passed between the two elder statesmen. Specifically, Jefferson mentioned two issues. First, he hoped that Madison would assume leadership of the nascent University of Virginia, expressing “comfort to leave that institution under your care.” Second, Jefferson stated that it would be “a great solace” to believe that Madison would be “engaged in vindicating to posterity the course we have pursued for preserving to them, in all their purity, the blessings of self-government” (Jefferson to JM, 17 Feb. 1826, PJM-RS description begins David B. Mattern et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison: Retirement Series (4 vols. to date; Charlottesville, Va., 2009–). description ends , 3:687–90).

Jefferson and Madison had been political allies and personal friends for fifty years, and as they supported each other in life, so Madison heeded Jefferson’s requests after he died at Monticello on 4 July 1826. The following October, Madison succeeded Jefferson as rector of the University of Virginia (Minutes of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia, 2 Oct. 1826). Concerning vindication of their political course, Madison—despite his professed aversion to doing so in his retirement—repeatedly engaged in public debates to defend Jefferson’s legacy against criticism and misappropriations of his name, most notably during the Nullification Crisis of the early 1830s (JM to Edward Everett, 10 Sept. 1830 [MHi: Everett Collection]; McCoy, Last of the Fathers, 139–48).

In addition to these efforts, Madison also played a role in publishing the first edition of Jefferson’s papers. Acknowledging Nicholas P. Trist’s letter announcing Jefferson’s death, Madison “indulge[d] a hope that the unforeseen event will not be permitted to impair any of the beneficial measures which were in progress” (JM to Trist, 6 July 1826). One of these measures likely was the preparation of Jefferson’s papers for publication to raise funds to cover his debts.

In fact, the pecuniary demands on Jefferson’s estate were so pressing that its executor, Jefferson’s grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph, planned the “immediate publication of a Memoir, partly biographical, partly political and miscellaneous […], the proceeds of which he hopes will be of critical use.” It was for this memoir that Madison wrote the preface printed here. Madison initially had high expectations for the success of this endeavor, especially if an American edition were joined by simultaneous publications in England and France. To that end, Madison turned for help to his and Jefferson’s old friend Lafayette (JM to Lafayette, Nov. 1826; JM to Trist, 24 Dec. 1827).

However, in late November 1826 Madison was dismayed to learn that contrary to his expectations “that the Printers would eagerly have met [ Jefferson’s] views,” Randolph had been unable to arrange for publication of his grandfather’s memoir (JM to Trist, 25 Nov. 1826). For Madison, who hoped to secure his wife’s financial future after his death by the sale of his own papers, this news had ominous implications (Ketcham, James Madison, 664).

With expectations for a quick publication of Jefferson’s memoir disappointed but a “balance of debt” still remaining on Jefferson’s estate, Madison put his hopes in an “enlarged plan of publication” by making “a more successful use of the manuscripts proper.” In February 1828, he reported to Lafayette that Randolph was selecting and transcribing documents and that a prospectus had been published in the Virginia Advocate to solicit subscriptions for an edition of Jefferson’s papers (JM to Lafayette, 20 Feb. 1828, and n. 2).

Randolph’s plans for the publication of Jefferson’s papers became more concrete in October 1828, when he signed a contract with the publishing house of Davis, Carr & Clark in Charlottesville, Virginia (Trist to JM, 25 Oct. 1828 [ViHi: Nicholas P. Trist Album Book]). Putting the finishing touches on the edition, Randolph asked Madison in early December 1828 whether he would be willing to amend the original preface he had written in the fall of 1826 (Randolph to JM, 7 Dec. 1828 [ViU: Madison Papers, Special Collections]). JM was happy to oblige and on 9 January 1829 sent Randolph a revised and extended version. In the accompanying letter, Madison, in consultation with Trist, also suggested that Randolph title the work “Memoir, Correspondence and miscellanies from the papers of Tho. Jefferson,” the title under which Randolph published the edition later the same month (JM to Randolph, 22 Dec. 1828 [owned by Carl Haverlin, New York, N.Y., 1959]; JM to Randolph, 9 Jan. 1829 [DLC]; Thomas Jefferson Randolph, ed., Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson [4 vols.; Charlottesville, Va., 1829]).

Madison had warned that the original preface “was limited to the Memorial” and that he had “not a sufficient knowledge” of the added materials “to make any particular reference to them” (JM to Randolph, 22 Dec. 1828). He therefore urged Randolph to undertake “the necessary changes” “to make the preface fit” the new material “added to the Memoire” (JM to Randolph, 9 Jan. 1829 [DLC]).

Presumably under pressure to get the manuscript to the printer, Randolph did not do as Madison suggested. Accordingly, Madison’s preface to the four-volume first edition of Jefferson’s papers is quite uneven. His references to the memoir, which takes up about a third of the first volume, are very detailed. In contrast, only two paragraphs deal with the rest of the edition (Randolph, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, v–viii). Nonetheless, Madison’s preface to the first edition of Jefferson’s papers stands as another example of what historian Adrienne Koch has termed the Great Collaboration between the two men (Adrienne Koch, Jefferson and Madison: The Great Collaboration [New York, 1950]).