The description for this book, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 21: Index, Vols. 1-20, will be forthcoming.

The description for this book, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 21: Index, Vols. 1-20, will be forthcoming.

The description for this book, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 21: Index, Vols. 1-20, will be forthcoming.

V. 36. 1 December 1801 to 3 March 1802.

V. 36. 1 December 1801 to 3 March 1802.

A definitive new volume of the retirement papers of Thomas Jefferson The 533 documents in this volume include revealing material on Jefferson's health. He is limited to a liquid diet for weeks due to an abscess under his jaw. Although daily horseback rides take him "3. or 4. to 8. or 10. miles without fatigue," he cannot walk "further than my garden." He has lost only one tooth due to age and is glad not to need "teeth of porcelain." Due to debility, Jefferson's only serious occupation is the effort to open the University of Virginia. Francis W. Gilmer travels to Great Britain to recruit professors and buy "a library and apparatus." Jefferson is determined to hire only faculty of "the first grade of science." The Rotunda is still unfinished but fit for use "until funds may occur to compleat it." Jefferson predicts that a plan to send freed African Americans to Africa will fail. He observes that "barbarism" is in decline and "will in time I trust disappear from the earth." To another correspondent he defends "the principles which have guided my public life," but adds that, when altered circumstances make changes of principle beneficial, "then let such changes take place, and the means yield to the end."

Among the Second Series of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, this volume has the most detailed coverage of his day-to-day life. These disciplined records of personal expenditures, and of various other daily observations, furnish valuable information about prices and availability of commodities of the period and provide abundant evidence of Jefferson's devotion to a systematic way of living and of his insatiable curiosity. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.