Notes on the State of Virginia

Notes on the State of Virginia is the only full-length book published by the American statesman and polymath Thomas Jefferson. Written in 1781 and revised extensively thereafter, the Notes originated from a series of 23 “queries” put to Jefferson by François Barbé-Marbois, the secretary to the French legation at the Continental Congress. The questions concerned various aspects of the landscape, climate, commerce, laws, institutions, and people of Virginia, the dimensions of which were considerably more extensive in the colonial period than today. In his answers, Jefferson not only provides a compendium of information about his native state (which he refers to throughout as a “country”) but also expounds many of his political, philosophical, social, and aesthetic beliefs.

The book is thus a key document of the thought of one of the most prominent of America’s Founding Fathers and has been called “one of America’s first permanent literary and intellectual landmarks” (W.W. Norton). Based on extensive memoranda that Jefferson compiled over many years, Notes on the State of Virginia captures a crucial moment during the Revolutionary War when the life of Virginia and the American colonies as a whole was held in the balance.

This guide refers to the 1954 edition of the Notes prepared by William Peden and published by W.W. Norton. This edition incorporates the many revisions and insertions Jefferson made in his manuscript throughout the rest of his life.

Summary

The first five queries (or chapters) address the topography of Virginia: its boundaries, rivers, sea ports, mountains, and cascades. Jefferson proceeds to discuss Virginia’s crops, products, and typical plants and animals (including an extensive catalog of birds) in the next group of queries.

After Query VII on the climate of Virginia, Jefferson moves on to topics relating more directly to the state’s people. He first details the number and distribution of its population in Query VIII, with particular reference to his beliefs about immigration. In Queries IX and X, he discusses Virginia’s militia and navy. In two different queries, Jefferson deals with the Indigenous Americans and certain tribes’ customs and traditions. Jefferson speculates as to these people’s origins in the continent of Asia millennia ago and defends their character from negative European depictions. He acknowledges destructive actions of the Anglo-American colonists against the Native peoples and advocates for a wider study and preservation of their languages. Also reacting against European belittlement of America, Jefferson defends American cultural accomplishments in Query VI.

Another segment of Virginia’s population, enslaved African Americans, receives Jefferson’s evaluation in Query XIV—and this query is among his most famously racist pieces of writing. Opposed to slavery on principle (although an enslaver himself), Jefferson praises African Americans for their kindness and loyalty but expresses a “suspicion” of a natural inequality between Black people and white people in “the faculties of reason and imagination” (243), and he details the many ways he believes Black people to be inferior. He remains open to the possibility that this suspicion will eventually be disproven and calls for more anthropological study to shed light on race.

Jefferson now discusses Virginia’s institutions. Queries XIII and XIV describe the state’s constitution and laws, respectively, including governmental and judicial structure. Queries XVII and XVIII address religion (including the question of religious freedom) and manners; in the latter query, Jefferson takes the opportunity to express his moral disapproval of slavery and his hope its eventual abolishment. There follows a query about education and infrastructure (“Colleges, Buildings and Roads”), in which Jefferson describes the instruction at the College of William and Mary, Virginia’s sole public university at that time.

The final queries address manufacturing, commerce, money, and standards of measurement, and the last query is devoted to an extensive catalog of historical records relating to Virginia.