Jefferson and the Virginians ― Democracy, Constitutions, and Empire

Peter Onuf’s Jefferson and the Virginians examines the ways that Jefferson and his fellow Virginians, George Washington, James Madison, and Patrick Henry, conceptualized their home state from a political and cultural perspective and understood its place and influence on the new nation. According to Onuf, Jefferson and his interlocutors were all great Virginia patriots, but none could say with any authority exactly what their beloved state or country was, or would or should become. As he explains, the break with Britain set the stage for ongoing controversy: over the identity of Virginians and Americans as a “people” or “peoples”; over Virginia’s boundaries and jurisdiction within the union; and over the constitution of government in Virginia and for the states collectively. Because Virginia was part of a larger American whole, efforts to define its corporate identity and promote its collective interests inevitably entailed broader questions about the character and constitution of the Confederation (i.e., the United States government under the Articles of Confederation) and federal union. Indeterminacy demanded definition, but definition promoted further controversy.

The conversations Onuf reconstructs in Jefferson and the Virginians offer a glimpse of how influential Virginians struggled to define Virginia—and America—in the context of Revolutionary upheaval. They also suggest why Thomas Jefferson’s identity as a “Virginian” obscures much more than it illuminates about his thought and career.