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...Laurence Sterne's comic masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, and stashed the token in his desk. Four years later, while serving in Paris as Minister to France, he fell in love with a married painter, Maria Cosway. The relationship didn't last, but before it ended, Jefferson wrote Cosway the longest letter of his life, a fanciful, romantic conversation between his "Heart" and his "Head...
Thomas Jefferson once called the letters of A person "the only full and genuine journal of his life." By that standard, Princeton University Press's exhaustive Papers of Thomas Jefferson, the 31st volume of which will be released this week, is one colossal diary. Begun in 1943 and scheduled to be completed by 2026--the bicentennial of Jefferson's death--the project includes more than 20,000 letters the prolific Virginian wrote in his lifetime as well as an abundance of correspondence he received. From the newest volume, edited by Princeton historian Barbara B. Oberg, we offer a sampler that...
Jefferson answered virtually every letter he received, including screeds from lunatics and pleas from strangers for money. In particular he could not resist a request for advice. When a young student wrote him seeking some suggested reading, Jefferson picked up a regular correspondence with the youth and even personally hunted bookshops for texts for him. The student, William Munford, turned out to be a scoundrel who would spread political gossip about Jefferson. But historians consider this letter from the then Vice President to Munford to be essential Jefferson: a statement of his fundamental optimism, his faith in the possibility...
...letter recieved to-day also from mr Richardson I learn the death of Jupiter. He has fallen a victim to an imprudent perseverance in journeying. I was extremely against his coming to Fredsbg with me ... but Jupiter was so much disturbed at this that I yielded. At the end of the second day's journey I saw how much he was worsted, & pressed him to wait at Hyde's a very excellent house till the horses should return & I got a promise of a servant from thence. But he would not hear of it. At Fredericksburg again I engaged...
...would be a gradually unfolding drama. As the campaign was just getting under way, Jefferson wrote to a Virginian in France, William Short, that Americans would acquiesce to the will of the majority. Jefferson probably exaggerated his confidence in that fact, in hopes that Short would show the letter around Europe and bolster the perception of the U.S. as a smoothly running republic. By February 1801, when he wrote to his son-in-law, the race had taken an unexpected twist. He had bested John Adams, but now Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, were tied with 73 electoral...