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Scot French


NOTES ON THE FUTURE OF VIRGINIA
VISUALIZING A 40-YEAR CONVERSATION ON RACE AND SLAVERY IN THE CORRESPONDENCE OF
JEFFERSON AND SHORT

Volume: 1 (2018)
Published: 27 August 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31835/crdh.2018.15


ABSTRACT

Between 1785, when the first English-language edition of Notes on the State of
Virginia was published, and January 1826, less than six months before his death
at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson and his Virginia-born friend and “adoptive son,”
William Short, engaged in a remarkable conversation about the fate of blacks in
Virginia’s post-emancipation future. From their respective posts in Europe and
United States, they discussed issues of race, slavery, emancipation,
agricultural reform, and alternative labor systems based on European models
(villeinage, or serfdom, and metayage, or sharecropping). Both men observed the
condition of Europe’s white laboring poor while serving there as diplomats in
the 1780s; both recognized the dangers posed by slavery in the Haitian
Revolution of the 1790s and Gabriel’s Rebellion of 1800; and both expressed a
desire to experiment with new labor systems that could provide a way out of
slavery while preserving the agricultural basis of Virginian and American
society. Yet they differed pointedly on the racial destiny of African Americans
and the best path to a post-emancipation society in Virginia. Short directly
challenged Jefferson’s views on black inferiority and questioned his continuing
support for the colonization/expatriation/expopulation of blacks as the only
viable alternative to slavery.

Thomas Jefferson’s views on race and slavery are well known to historians of the
early American republic.1 In several oft-analyzed passages from Notes on the
State of Virginia (1785–87), Jefferson envisioned the transformation of Virginia
from a rigidly hierarchical slave society, dominated by a small but powerful
planter elite, to a post-emancipation herrenvolk democracy rooted in classical
republican values and embodied in the idealized figure of the white yeoman
farmer. Jefferson’s plan, drafted for consideration by the Virginia General
Assembly, called for the gradual replacement of black slave labor with white
free labor. As the state reduced its slave population through post-nati
emancipation and the removal of freed blacks to a far-off colony, “beyond the
reach of mixture,” ships would be sent to “other parts of the world for an equal
number of white inhabitants.” Jefferson anticipated practical, if not moral,
objections to his plan: “It will probably be asked, Why not retain and
incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expence [sic] of
supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave?” In
summoning this straw man, Jefferson sought not to open public debate but to
constrain options for Virginia’s post-emancipation future with a master’s
treatise on history, memory, race, and national identity. He wrote: “Deep rooted
prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks,
of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions
which nature has made… will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions
which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other
race.” Jefferson’s objection to race-mixing on “physical and moral” grounds
further buttressed his argument against the incorporation of emancipated slaves
as subjects or citizens.2

Jefferson held fast to these views from the first printing of Notes in 1785,
when he was 42, till his death in 1826 at age 83. Not even the private pleadings
and patient arguments of his close friend and confidant, Virginia-born William
Short, could persuade Jefferson to budge from the positions staked out in Notes.
3 A close reading of relevant Jefferson-Short letters, spanning four decades
(1787–1826) and two continents (Europe and North America), reveals Jefferson’s
stubborn adherence to, and reaffirmation of, his public positions on race,
slavery, emancipation, and colonization. Where others tried and failed, Short
tried and tried again. A letter-by-letter analysis of their correspondence, as
presented in the digital companion to this article, reveals the frustration
Short experienced in urging Jefferson to reconsider his views and the strategic
thinking behind Short’s ideological retreat from European-style abolition to a
more Jefferson-friendly plan of gradual reform and amelioration.

Jefferson’s public speculations on black inferiority and his insistence that
slaves, when freed, must “be removed beyond the reach of mixture” drew several
pointed challenges from his contemporaries. In 1791, the African-American
surveyor and astronomer Benjamin Banneker sent Jefferson a copy of an almanac he
had compiled, along with a letter protesting the continued oppression and
enslavement of the “African race.” He advised Jefferson and his compatriots to
“wean” themselves from their “narrow prejudices” toward African Americans and
to, “as Job proposed to his friends, ‘put your soul in their souls instead.”
Jefferson wrote Banneker a polite, if somewhat opaque, reply: “No body wishes
more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our
black brethren talents equal to those of other colors of men, & that the
appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their
existence both in Africa & America.”4 Yet, privately, as historian Winthrop
Jordan and others have observed, Jefferson “could not rid himself of the
suspicion that the Negro was naturally inferior.” Jefferson rejected evidence of
Negro “genius” as anecdotal or—worse—fabricated by friends of the race, and he
held fast to his insistence on the colonization of emancipated slaves and free
blacks as the only viable solution to the inextricably intertwined problems of
race and slavery in Virginia.5

Perhaps the most sustained critique of Jefferson’s views came from within his
own inner circle. Short—who was born to a prominent slaveholding family in Surry
County, Virginia, and was related to Jefferson by marriage—enjoyed many of the
same social privileges and political advantages as his mentor. Like Jefferson,
Short attended the College of William & Mary, where he studied moral philosophy
and became a founding member of the Society of Phi Beta Kappa. Like Jefferson,
Short studied law under George Wythe and joined the Virginia Bar. Like
Jefferson, Short served on Virginia’s Executive Council—a prestigious
appointment that might have served as a stepping-stone to higher office. Yet,
unlike Jefferson, Short chose a path that took him out of state and—for more
than two decades—out of country. In 1784, he sold his slaves, which he had
inherited from his father, left the Commonwealth of Virginia—never to settle
there again—and moved to Paris to serve as Jefferson’s private secretary. There
he embraced radical ideas on human freedom and equality and questioned the idea
of race at the foundation of America’s slave society.6

While in Paris, Short’s clerical duties included the preparation of Jefferson’s
Notes for their first authorized publication. “Suffice it to say,” writes
Short’s biographer, George Green Shackelford, “that William Short was
proof-reader and copy-boy for this undertaking.”7 It is clear, from their
correspondence during their joint European residency (1784–88), that Short
embraced Jefferson’s idea of replacing slave with free labor, but rejected
Jefferson’s insistence that blacks be removed “beyond the reach of mixture” as a
condition of their freedom. In a letter to Jefferson dated October 2, 1788,
Short reports on his investigation into the European agricultural labor system
of metairie (sharecropping) and comments on the prospects for transforming “our
slaves” into metayers on the French model.8 Likewise, in a letter dated October
28, 1788, Short reports that the Milanois system of sharecropping is “less
complicated in one respect than in France, and of course better for the genius
of the negroes.”9 Where Jefferson saw no viable future for blacks in Virginia,
Short envisioned a permanent place for them as sharecroppers and tenant farmers
in a post-emancipation economy.

When Jefferson returned to the United States in 1788, Short—to Jefferson’s
dismay—remained behind, preferring the cosmopolitan world of Paris to the
plantation slave society of Virginia.10 Throughout his long residency in Europe,
Short corresponded regularly with Jefferson about diplomatic appointments,
investment opportunities, and, most notably, Virginia’s future as a
post-emancipation society. In an extraordinarily pointed letter to Jefferson,
dated February 27, 1798, Short argued that “keeping 700,000 people & their
descendants in perpetual slavery” posed a far more intolerable threat to
humanity than “the mixture of the two colors.” Race-mixing, he maintained, was
inevitable, as natural as the cross-breeding of flowers and as capable of
producing awe-inspiring beauty as “the perfect mixture of the rose and the
lily.” Short offered a point-by-point rejoinder to Jefferson’s plan of post-nati
emancipation and colonization, as set forth in Notes. He noted the degrading and
dehumanizing conditions of slavery in America. He compared calls for the
expatriation of free blacks from America to the expulsion of the Moors from
Spain, and he pondered the devastating cost of expelling the nation’s
native-born “agriculturers.” Short cited the recently reported discovery of
advanced civilizations in the African interior as evidence of “the
perfectibility of the black race,” and he predicted the rise of “populous &
extensive nations of the black color, formed into powerful societies who will
par in every respect with whites under the same circumstances.” Short
acknowledged the depths of anti-black prejudice among white Americans, but saw
movement in law and society toward “the restoration of the rights of citizenship
of those blacks who inhabit the U.S.”11

Jefferson’s silence on the topic spoke volumes. Receiving no response to his
lengthy missive from Jefferson for nearly two years, Short wrote a follow-up
letter dated December 18, 1800: “I have never heard from you whether you recd. a
very long letter I wrote you some years ago of the date of Feb. 27. 98….It went
a good deal on a subject to which I think it of importance that our countrymen
should pay attention—that of slaves—I know none more deserving of their most
profound researches.”12 Jefferson eventually answered Short, but without ever
acknowledging the substance of the 1798 letter.

In The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, historian Annette
Gordon-Reed offers a brilliant close reading of Short’s 1798 letter—–and
Jefferson’s apparent reluctance to respond—–within the context of Jefferson’s
intimate sexual relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings. With the 1798
letter, Gordon-Reed speculates, Short sought to move Jefferson toward
recognition of African Americans—and not just the mixed-race Hemings family of
Monticello—as worthy of manumission and a path to citizenship. Jefferson, she
concludes, ignored the letter and “changed the subject” to avoid an extended
foray into matters both highly personal and politically explosive.13

Historiographically, Gordon-Reed provides the rationale for my longue duree
study of the Jefferson-Short correspondence by viewing Short’s February 1798
letter as part of an extended “conversation” that began with Short’s preparation
of Notes for publication. “Short knew the exact significance of his choice of
words [on race and race-mixing],” she writes, “for this was a direct challenge
to some of the best-known of Jefferson’s passages in Query 14 of the Notes.”14

Like Gordon-Reed, I view Notes as a critical reference point in a running
dialogue between Short and Jefferson on race, slavery, and Virginia’s
post-emancipation future. Where Gordon-Reed focuses on a single noteworthy and
seemingly isolated exchange, I expand the corpus to include nearly 75 letters
between Short and Jefferson spanning nearly four decades, 1787–1826.15 Where
Gordon-Reed advances her argument in narrative form, within the context of a
book-length study, I present mine using an open-access interactive visualization
platform—VisualEyes—that employs multiple “views” and invites readers to explore
selected “themes” and “threads” running through the correspondence.16 While this
dialogical approach cannot capture the fullness of Jefferson’s thought, or the
various positions he took in correspondence with others, it can illuminate the
rhetorical thrust and parry, across time and space, between Jefferson and one of
his closest friends and confidants.

Notes on the Future of Virginia: The Jefferson-Short Letters, 1787–1826, culls
Jefferson-Short letters from a range of published sources to create an online
essay/exhibit/interactive visualization that doubles as a scholar’s resource.17
It invites users to explore selected “themes” and “threads” running through
Jefferson and Short’s extended “conversation” and ruminate on the significance
of time and place and key events in framing their ideological positions and
worldviews. The site combines brief introductory essays, annotated excerpts, and
interactive visual displays to chart the shifting ideological positions and
rhetorical stances assumed by Jefferson and Short. It privileges user-driven
“exploration” in the Storyline View (figure 1) and author-driven
“interpretation” in the Discourse View (figure 2).



Figure 1. The StoryLine View invites users to follow topical threads running
through the curated collection of 75 Jefferson-Short letters, with contextual
framing throughout.

In the StoryLine view users can isolate topical threads—slave labor,
agriculture, sharecropping, serfdom, tenancy, manumission, colonization,
rebellion, and Short’s property at Indian Camp—for easy tracking in a timeline
format. Color-coded bands at the top provide framing context. When users click
on individual letters, a text box displays relevant data (author, date,
location), key excerpt in italics, analysis/summary of contents, links to a
scanned image of letter and full text transcription (if available), and relevant
excerpts with ellipses.



Figure 2. The Discourse View favors author-driven “argument” over user-driven
“exploration.” It features introductory essays and annotated excerpts from the
selected letters—organized chronologically, thematically, and geospatially

The Discourse View (figure 2) highlights the geospatial dimensions of the
conversation. Selected place names referenced within the Jefferson-Short letters
appear as “hot spots” on the stylized world map; textual annotations illuminate
the local-global dimensions of the discussion and provide geopolitical context.
The relative addresses of sender and receiver are displayed using icons (J for
Jefferson, S for Short) on a stylized world map, with editorial notes providing
context. These markers convey the physical distance between the two men and—at
times, as noted in particular letters—the intellectual and emotional distance
between them as well. A beta-version Position Tracker visualizes the
convergence/divergence of Jefferson’s and Short’s positions on key issues
(expatriation/forced removal) across time and space in sync with the threaded
display of letters.

The local-global dimensions of the Jefferson-Short discourse can be seen clearly
in a subset of 40 letters dealing with a property known as Indian Camp. In 1795,
hoping to entice Short to return from his diplomatic post in Europe and settle
among a close circle of friends (including James Monroe and James Madison) in
Piedmont Virginia, Jefferson arranged for Short’s purchase of the 1,334-acre
Indian Camp tract near his Monticello home. Two competing visions of Virginia’s
future—Jefferson’s desire to replace plantation slavery with small-scale,
sustainable, white tenant farming and Short’s abolitionist dream of transforming
slaves into free laborers—emerge from their correspondence on Indian Camp.
Writing from Paris in 1798, Short endorsed Jefferson’s plan to have Indian Camp
“tenanted out,” but expressed doubt that white tenant farmers would be willing
to do the work of slaves in a slave society. Instead he proposed that “some
person of fortune & well known” (a thinly veiled allusion to Jefferson) conduct
an experiment in free black tenant farming on a selected portion of land to
demonstrate the profitability of “converting” slaves into tenant farmers. “Let
all the minute calculations of detail be entered into & published in the
gazettes—Whatever may be the result of the first essays, time & repetition will
I think infallibly shew the advantage of free, above forced, labor.”18 
Jefferson disregarded Short’s suggestion and instead recruited white tenant
farmers to work the Indian Camp land—possibly with the assistance of rented
slaves—according to his strict rules of crop rotation. The property served, I
would argue, as a canvas on which the two men sketched their competing visions
of Virginia’s post-emancipation future.19

The visualizations provide a stereoscopic view of two prominent white,
native-born Virginians—bound by ties of family and social class—as they grappled
with the most pressing social, political, and economic issues of their day. Both
men observed firsthand the condition of Europe’s white laboring poor (serfs and
sharecroppers) and drew pointed comparisons to that of America’s enslaved
blacks; both recognized the mortal dangers posed by slavery in the Haitian
Revolution of the 1790s and Gabriel’s Rebellion of 1800; and both expressed a
desire to experiment with new labor systems that could provide a way out of
slavery while preserving the agricultural basis of Virginian and Southern
society.

Yet Jefferson and Short differed profoundly on the inevitability and
desirability of “race-mixing,” the capacity of black people for citizenship in
America, and the prospects for a peaceful transition to bi-racial democracy in
post-emancipation Virginia. Short directly challenged Jefferson’s views on black
inferiority and rejected Jefferson’s scheme of state-sponsored colonization as
the only viable alternative to slavery. An early advocate for black citizenship,
Short pushed Jefferson to consider the transformation of slaves into serfs
(villeins) or sharecroppers (metayers) as part of a larger societal transition,
following the European model, to a more advanced state of freedom and
civilization. That Jefferson ignored or rejected all such appeals from Short,
over the course of forty years, is significant. It confirms his almost routine
exposure to opposing views from within his inner circle and accentuates the
closed-mindedness that characterized his thinking on the subjects of race and
slavery.

Upon his return to America in 1810, Short settled in Philadelphia and steadily
retreated from his more radical views on race, emancipation, and black
citizenship. In a letter to Jefferson dated October 9, 1823, Short wrote: “I
must own that since my return & residence in America I have considered all such
efforts as mere visions. An insuperable difficulty must ever be found in this,
that every reform must depend precisely on those whose prejudices & whose
interests are the most opposed to, & would be the most likely to take the alarm
at any squinting towards a reform.” Where once Short endorsed the transformation
of slaves into citizens, Short now urged Jefferson to consider—and publicly
endorse—a plan for transforming Virginia’s slaves into serfs on the European
model. Such a plan would prevent the breakup and sale of families and, while
preserving elements of involuntary servitude, “modify and moderate the evil.”
Recalling Jefferson’s insistence, in Notes, on the removal of emancipated blacks
as a condition of their freedom, Short wrote: “I remember well that near half a
century ago you treated of this population, but then were in favor of the
expopulating system. If you should have now, like myself, become convinced of
the impracticability, or even of the inhumanity of this plan, would it not be
worth while to encourage the idea of changing the condition of these slaves into
that of serfs attached to the glebe?”20 Jefferson was unmoved. In a reply to
Short, written six months before his death, Jefferson conceded Short’s point
that converting slaves into serfs might improve their lot, but said he still
favored the “expatriation” of emancipated blacks to countries governed and
populated by people “of their own colour.” Jefferson declared this scheme
“entirely practicable” and “greatly preferable to the mixture of colour here.”21

Jefferson’s death on July 4, 1826, freed Short to ponder the what-ifs of their
long-distance correspondence. What if Jefferson had been more open-minded about
the various schemes that Short put forward as alternatives to slavery? What if
Jefferson had accepted the leadership role that Short and others had urged upon
him? In an 1829 letter to their mutual friend, John Hartwell Cocke, Short
lamented the dearth of any political movement toward antislavery reform in
Virginia. “I have long meditated on the best remedy for this evil of slavery in
Virginia & I have satisfied myself fully as to it—but wld never be able to
satisfy the owners & the Legislature of the State as to it. Mr. J., to whom I
had written on the subject a short time before his death, agreed that mine would
be the best remedy save one, wch. was his old one of shipping them off. You know
he did not easily renounce any idea which he had taken up in this way.”22

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bowman, Rebecca. “William Short.” The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia. Last
modified Sept. 29, 1997. Accessed July 30, 2018.
https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/william-short.

Cannon, H. Brevy. “Early Archaeology at Morven Taps into Little-Studied Veins of
History.” UVA Today, April 1, 2010.
https://news.virginia.edu/content/early-archaeology-morven-taps-little-studied-veins-history.

Cocke Family Papers. Special Collections, University of Virginia Library.

Finkelman, Paul. Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of
Jefferson. 2nd ed. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2001.

Ford, Paul Leicester, ed. The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes.
Federal Edition. American Memory, Library of Congress. Accessed May 29, 2018.

French, Scot. The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

French, Scot A., and Edward L. Ayers. “The Strange Career of Thomas Jefferson:
Race and Slavery in American Memory, 1943—1993.” In Jeffersonian Legacies,
edited by Peter S. Onuf, 418–456. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia,
1993.

French, Scot, and Bill Ferster. “Notes on the Future of Virginia: The
Jefferson-Short Letter, 1787–1826.” http://www.viseyes.org/show/?id=notes.xml.

George, Laura Voisin. “Surveying the Past: Virginia Archaeological Team Uncovers
Layers of Meaning in a Jeffersonian Map from the Huntington.” Huntington
Frontiers (Spring-Summer, 2010): 16–23.

Gordon-Reed, Annette. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. New York:
Norton & Co., 2008.

Jefferson Papers, Founders Online, National Archives.
https://founders.archives.gov/.

Jordan, Winthrop D. White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro,
1550–1812. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968.

Miller, John Chester. The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery.
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991.

Onuf, Peter S. “‘To Declare Them a Free and Independant People’: Race, Slavery,
and National Identity in Jefferson’s Thought.” Journal of the Early Republic 18,
no. 1 (1998): 1–46.

The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, edited by James P. McClure and
J. Jefferson Looney. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda
Series, 2008–2018. http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN.html

Peden, William, ed. Notes on the State of Virginia. By Thomas Jefferson. Chapel
Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the
University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Shackelford, George Green. Jefferson’s Adoptive Son: The Life of William Short,
1759–1848. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993.

Shackelford, George Green. “William Short, Thomas Jefferson’s Adoptive Son,
1759–1848.” PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1955.

Stanton, Lucia. “Those Who Labor for My Happiness”: Slavery at Thomas
Jefferson’s Monticello. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012.

Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1606 to 1827. Library of Congress.

Waldstreicher, David, ed. Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson
with Related Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002.

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NOTES

An early version of this paper was presented at the Robert H. Smith
International Center for Jefferson Studies, Charlottesville, Virginia, on May
17, 2011. The author would like to thank the moderator, Peter S. Onuf, and
fellow panelists Annette Gordon-Reed, Billy A. Wayson, Randall J. Winston, and
Nicholas P. Wood for their comments. A poster version, “Notes on the Future of
Virginia: An Experiment in Visualized Discourse Analysis,” was presented at the
American Historical Association annual meeting in Chicago on Jan. 7, 2012 (see
abstract). The author would also like to thank Bill Ferster, interactive
visualization specialist at the University of Virginia, for designing the user
interface for the web companion to this paper, “Notes on the Future of Virginia:
The Jefferson-Short Letter, 1787–1826.” Finally, thanks to Stewart Gamage and
the University of Virginia Foundation for supporting my research on William
Short and the Indian Camp property as part of a 2010–11 research appointment.

 1.  The literature on Jefferson, race, and slavery is voluminous. For
     book-length studies, see Miller, The Wolf by the Ears; Finkelman, Slavery
     and the Founders, and Stanton, “Those Who Labor for My Happiness.” For a
     discussion of Jefferson’s changing image in popular culture and
     scholarship, with particular attention to his views on race and slavery,
     see French and Ayers, “The Strange Career of Thomas Jefferson.” On
     Jefferson’s Notes as anti-slavery jeremiad and dark prophecy, see French,
     The Rebellious Slave, 7–21. On Jefferson’s post-nati emancipation and
     colonization scheme, see Onuf, “‘To Declare Them a Free and Independant
     People’,” 1–46. ↩

 2.  For quoted passages, see Query XIV, “Laws,” in Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on
     the State of Virginia (Philadelphia: Prichard & Hall, 1788), in Documenting
     the American South, http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/jefferson/menu.html.
     For more on the pamphlet’s publication history, see “Notes on the State of
     Virginia [Manuscript],” Massachusetts Historical Society,
     http://www.masshist.org/thomasjeffersonpapers/notes. For print editions
     with scholarly annotation, see Peden, Notes; and Waldstretcher, Notes. ↩

 3.  Jefferson’s relationship to Short is explored in Shackelford, Jefferson’s
     Adoptive Son. Shackelford’s book, a slightly revised version of his 1955
     dissertation, is a valuable source of biographical details, but makes no
     reference to the correspondence on race and slavery examined in this
     project. ↩

 4.  Benjamin Banneker and Thomas Jefferson, letters, 19 and 30 August 1791, in
     Waldstreicher, Notes, 208–213. Jefferson made similar professions of
     open-mindedness in exchanges with other Enlightenment-era contemporaries,
     such as the French abolitionist Henri Gregoire: “Be assured,” he wrote to
     Gregoire in 1809, “that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do,
     to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and
     expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to
     find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves.” Thomas
     Jefferson to Henri Gregoire, 25 February 1809, in Ford, The Works of Thomas
     Jefferson,
     http://memory.loc.gov/service/mss/mtj/mtj1/043/043_0836_0836.pdf. ↩

 5.  In an 1809 letter to Joel Barlow, written in confidence, Jefferson wrote
     that the Banneker possessed “a mind of very common stature indeed” and
     questioned whether Banneker had the “aid” of a white neighbor and friend,
     the Quaker abolitionist Ellicott, in creating his famous almanac. Jordan,
     White Over Black, 449–457. ↩

 6.  “Connected to Jefferson by marriage (Short was the nephew of Henry and
     Robert Skipwith, each of whom had married half-sisters of Martha
     Jefferson), Short may have attended Jefferson’s wedding in 1772. He visited
     Monticello several times before Martha Jefferson died in 1782, and he
     accompanied the Jefferson family to Poplar Forest in 1781 when the family
     escaped Tarleton’s troops.” Bowman, “William Short”; The term “adoptive
     son” is taken from Shackelford, Jefferson’s Adoptive Son. ↩

 7.  Shackelford, “William Short,” 171–172. ↩

 8.  William Short to Thomas Jefferson, 2 October 1788, Papers of Thomas
     Jefferson,
     http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN-01-13-02-0531. ↩

 9.  Short to Jefferson, 28 October, 1788, Papers of Thomas Jefferson,
     http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN-01-14-02-0036. ↩

 10. Short held diplomatic posts as Chargé d’Affaires in Paris (1789–1792) U.S.
     Minister at the Hague, Netherlands (1792–1793), and Joint
     Commissioner/Minister Resident in Madrid, Spain (1793–1795). In 1795,
     Jefferson sought to lure Short back to Virginia by purchasing Indian Camp,
     a 1,334-acre property near Monticello, on behalf of his friend and
     “adoptive son.” Short, however, saw the property as an investment only and
     declined to live there. When Short returned to the United States in 1810,
     he settled in Philadelphia and resided there for the rest of his long life.
     For full biographical details, see Shackelford, Jefferson’s Adoptive Son. ↩

 11. Short to Jefferson, 27 February 1798, Papers of Thomas Jefferson,
     http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN-01-30-02-0098. ↩

 12. Short to Jefferson, 18 December 1800, Papers of Thomas Jefferson,
     http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN-01-32-02-0096. ↩

 13. Short, Gordon-Reed notes, had lived and worked with Jefferson in Paris and
     witnessed his daily interactions with two members of the Hemings family,
     Sally and James. “Short had personally observed Jefferson living with two
     intelligent and attractive mixed-race African Americans working alongside
     with and being paid like free white workers—and the earth had continued to
     turn. Whatever he knew of [a sexual relationship between] Sally Hemings and
     Jefferson, Short had first-hand knowledge of Jefferson’s general affection
     for her family. Why could not Jefferson’s experiences be replicated all
     over the United States?” Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 536–539. ↩

 14. Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 537. ↩

 15. Only transcribed letters from scholarly editions of Jefferson papers were
     included; no effort was made to conduct original research in archival
     manuscripts for this beta version of the project. The bulk of the letters
     were accessible through the Library of Congress’s American Memory Project,
     the University of Virginia Press’s Rotunda Series, and the Swem Library at
     the College of William & Mary. A small subset of the featured letters
     appeared in bound print volumes only, most notably Princeton University’s
     The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series. ↩

 16. Future iterations of the project, currently in development, will update the
     project to a more robust, mobile-friendly, HTML5 version of VisualEyes
     http://viseyes.org/visualeyes and revamp the interpretive display to
     include (a) relevant documents from outside the Jefferson-Short corpus and
     (b) themed exhibits that explore the agency of marginalized groups (free
     blacks, slaves, women, tenant farmers, sharecroppers, etc.) referenced in
     the correspondence. ↩

 17. French and Ferster, “Notes on the Future of Virginia.” ↩

 18. Short to Jefferson, 27 February 1798, Papers of Thomas Jefferson,
     http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN-01-30-02-0098. ↩

 19. For a discussion of research on the white tenant farmers, see George,
     “Surveying the Past,” 16–23; Cannon, “Early Archaeology at Morven,”
     https://news.virginia.edu/content/early-archaeology-morven-taps-little-studied-veins-history. ↩

 20. Short to Jefferson, 9 October, 1823, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress,
     https://www.loc.gov/item/mtjbib024765/. ↩

 21. Jefferson to Short, 18 January 1826, Jefferson Papers, Founders Online,
     National Archives,
     http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-5842. ↩

 22. Short to John Hartwell Cocke, 8 January 1829, Cocke Family Papers,
     Accession #640, Box 58, Special Collections, University of Virginia
     Library. ↩

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AUTHOR

Scot French, Department of History, University of Central Florida,
Scot.French@ucf.edu, 0000-0002-1894-1058

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ISSN 2637-5923