How to Use This Edition

Manuscript List

Clicking on “3 VOLUMES” in the navigation bar will open up digitized images of the six pages of Jefferson’s list. This is the list in Jefferson’s hand that the editors of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson in the 1980s concluded was the table of contents of his “3. volumes bound in Marble Paper.” Clicking on an individual page will bring up that image, on the left, and the transcription of each line on the right. The image can be greatly enlarged using the “plus sign” or zoom feature at the top. Clicking on an entry in the transcription will bring up some data about the document and the first part of the text, and clicking on the title of the document (in red) will bring up the document itself.

Database View

Clicking on “3 VOLUMES DATABASE” in the navigation bar will open up the virtual reconstruction of Jefferson’s “3. volumes” with supplementary information. The first view shows nine columns, left to right. They provide the following information:

-- Page and Entry: The page of the six-page manuscript list on which the entry appears, and the Entry Number. There is one main Entry Number corresponding to each entry in Jefferson’s list (e.g., 1.0, 2.0). Subordinate Entry Numbers (e.g., 12.1, 12.2) have been assigned by the editor to enclosures (e.g., Entry 12 and its three subordinate entries) or to the constituent parts of a main entry where Jefferson had indicated a number of subjects or documents (e.g., Entry 53 and its four subordinate entries).

-- Transcription: A literal rendering of the date Jefferson assigned to each main entry (if present) and his description of the document; the editor has not inferred that an entry without a date carries the date of the previous dated entry.

-- Title: The standardized heading and date for the document, as determined by the Jefferson Papers or another reliable source.

-- Date: The actual date of a document as determined by the Jefferson Papers or another reliable source, thereby either providing a date for an undated entry or confirming or correcting Jefferson’s date.

-- Notes: Any relevant information about the document the editor wishes to convey.

-- PTJ Citation: The citation to the document as published in the Jefferson Papers; if the cell is empty the Notes column usually provides an explanation or a citation to another source.

-- Anas: For Jefferson’s memorandums identified later as “Anas” entries (highlighted in light brown), the pages on which they are printed in the five published editions of Jefferson’s papers:

  • Ford: Paul Leicester Ford, ed., Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 10 vols. (1892), 1:154-339.
  • L&B: Andrew Adgate Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, eds., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 20 vols. (1903-1907), 1:263-492.
  • Randolph: Thomas Jefferson Randolph, ed., Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 4 vols. (1829), 4:443-523.
  • Sawvel: Franklin B. Sawvel, ed., The Complete Anas of Thomas Jefferson (1903).
  • Washington: H. A. (Henry Augustine) Washington, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 9 vols. (1853-1854), 9:87-21.

-- Founders Online Link: The permalink to the document in the Founders Online website (https://founders.archives.gov/, open access); if the cell is empty the Notes column usually provides an explanation. There will be more than one link if the document is included in more than one of the Founding Fathers editions.

-- Rotunda: The permalink to the document in the Rotunda website (http://www.upress.virginia.edu/rotunda, by subscription). There will be more than one link if the document is included in more than one of the Founding Fathers editions.

Virtually all the documents included on Jefferson’s list are present in one form or another among his papers in the Library of Congress. Assuming that the recipients’ copies of letters Jefferson wrote and the master copies of reports and opinions he submitted to the President or Congress now reside in other repositories, what Jefferson bound into his “3. volumes” were generally press copies, drafts, or file copies. Often a recipient’s copy was the source text for publication in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson; the source note will indicate if other versions of the document, such as a press copy (PrC), exist. The “3. volumes” also generally included the recipient’s copy of letters and other documents sent to Jefferson. There are several other categories of documents that call for some explanation:

-- The approximately seventy-five so-called “Anas” memorandums, which of course exist in only one copy, in Jefferson’s hand. These are highlighted in light brown in the database view.

-- About two dozen documents specifically mentioned by Jefferson in his list but that copies of which are not now present among his papers in the Library of Congress (Entries 12.2, 12.3, 227.1, 227.2, 227.3, 234.1, 330.1, 338.1, 412.1, and 455.1). A good example is Entry 227: “G.W. to Th:J. with lres of Mirbeck, Valtravers & Walker.” Washington’s cover letter by itself is singularly uninformative: “The Letters from Mr. de Mirbeck and Mr. Vall-travers to the P—— and from the Proprietors of the Federal City to Mr. Walker, he wishes Mr. Jefferson to read and consider, that answers to, or proper notice of them, may result from it.” There does not seem to be a reason why Jefferson would have included this cover letter in his compilation without the three letters Washington enclosed, and his wording “with lrs” of the three men strongly suggests that they were indeed included in the “3. volumes.” The editor therefore made subordinate entries for the three enclosures but can offer no explanation as to why they are not to be found among the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.

-- Several documents that are not explicitly mentioned in Jefferson’s list and were probably not included in the “3. volumes” because they are not now among Jefferson’s papers (Entries 110.1, 110.2, 110.3, 110.4, 113.1, 113.2, and 244.1). A good example is Entry 110, a brief letter from George Washington to Jefferson of 28 July 1791 enclosing four letters from Gouverneur Morris to the President. Again, the cover letter by itself is of little significance, compared to Morris’s meaty letters from London and Paris. But Jefferson’s entry reads “do. [G.W. to Th:J.]” without mentioning the Morris letters enclosed, which are now among the Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, suggesting that Jefferson returned them after he had perused them and explaining their absence from Jefferson’s papers (and likely from the “3. volumes”). The editor has nonetheless created subordinate entries for the four Morris letters to enable users to consult the complete record.

-- Numerous documents that have not been identified, or if identified, not found. These Entries (highlighted in blue in the database view) are 26, 36, 58, 64, 86, 96, 106, 122, 241-242, 274-276, 339, 438, 480, 592, and 627.

-- Six documents (five that were most likely “Anas” memorandums, judging by Jefferson’s description, and one that is more ambiguous) that Jefferson may have removed in 1818 during his “calm revisal” of the “3. volumes.” These are Entries 274, 275, 276, 278, and 337.

            Most of the document transcriptions appearing on this website are from the volumes of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson; other transcriptions are from The Papers of George Washington or another definitive edition. The transcriptions follow the editorial policies of the editions and volumes in which they were originally published. Source notes (sometimes in shortened form) and textual annotation have been retained, but explanatory annotation has usually been removed. (Users of this website can follow the Founders Online or Rotunda permalinks to access transcriptions with full annotation, and in the case of documents that are represented by more than one permalink, users can compare the transcriptions and annotation of the same document provided by editors of the different projects.) For a few documents, which were either not published in the original volumes or were subordinated to annotation, new transcriptions appear here and the comment "New transcription" appears in the Notes field; those transcriptions follow current procedures of the Jefferson Papers. (For an overview of changes to the Jefferson edition’s editorial policies, see https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/about-us/editorial-method.)

Document View

Clicking on a red document title will bring the document up in document view. At the left there are several sections:

-- Details: This section presents all of the information found in the nine columns of the database view. Additional information includes Document Type (e.g., “Correspondence,” “Jefferson’s Notes” or Anas entries, “Report/Message to Congress”) and, as appropriate, the page numbers in the fifth volume of John Marshall’s Life of Washington on which the subject of the document is mentioned or discussed and links to any subordinate entries.

-- Subject Headings: Clicking on a subject will bring up a list of all documents in which the subject is mentioned.

-- People: Clicking on a name will bring up a list of all documents in which the person is mentioned.

How to Cite the Edition

Thomas Jefferson, “3. volumes bound in Marbled paper,” ed. John C. Van Horne (Princeton, 2018), https://jefferson3volumes.princeton.edu , accessed [date].