The Thomas Jefferson Papers

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Series 7: Miscellaneous Bound Volumes

  • Volume 1
    Household Accounts and Notes of Virginia Court Legal Cases
  • Volume 2
    Weather Record, 1776-1818
  • Volume 3
    Historical Notes on Virginia
  • Volume 4
    A Manual of Parliamentary Practice (Washington, 1801)
  • Volume 5
    "Notes on Salkeld's Reports," "An act further to amend the judicial system of the United States," and "An act to punish certain offences against the United States"
  • Volume 6
    List of the Post-Offices in the United States (Washington, 1803)
  • Volume 7
    Jefferson's Second Library
  • Volume 8
    Jefferson's inscribed flyleaves from Cicero's De Re Publica (Boston, 1823)
  • Volume 9
    The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (Washington, 1904)

VOLUME 1 - The Household Account Books of Anne Cary Randolph and Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson; Thomas Jefferson's Record of Cases Tried in Virginia Courts, 1768-1769.
Description of Contents

VOLUME 2 - Weather Record, 1776-1818
Thomas Jefferson's meteorological observations in Philadelphia and at Monticello and Poplar Forest; also notes on scientific experiments and on plants grown on his estate, and his description of the September 17, 1811, solar eclipse.

VOLUME 3 - Historical Notes on Virginia
Jefferson made these Historical Notes on Virginia in 1781 while gathering material for his responses to queries about Virginia from François Henri Barbé-Marbois, secretary of the French legation in Philadelphia, which he later (1785) published under the title Notes on the State of Virginia.

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VOLUME 4 - A Manual of Parliamentary Practice
As vice president of the United States from 1797 to 1801, Thomas Jefferson had the duty of presiding over the United States Senate. With the assistance of John James Beckley, clerk of the House of Representatives, he compiled a notebook or pocketbook of rules and precedents of parliamentary practice. Jefferson originally planned to leave a manuscript copy with the Senate for the use of his successors and solicited comments on it from knowledgeable friends, such as George Wythe and Edmund Pendleton. However, before leaving office as vice president, Jefferson decided to have the manual printed by his friend Samuel H. Smith. Smith published the first of many editions of A Manual of Parliamentary Practice for the Use of the Senate of the United States in Washington City in 1801. In an 1809 letter to John W. Campbell, Jefferson wrote that he did not include the Manual of Parliamentary Practice in his writings "because it was a mere compilation, into which nothing entered of my own, but the arrangement, and a few observations necessary to explain that and some of the cases." William S. Howell has edited a scholarly edition of Jefferson's parliamentary writings, which was published in 1988 by Princeton University Press as part of the second series of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. A revised edition of the Manual is still in use today, though in the House of Representatives rather than in the Senate.

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VOLUME 5 - Notes on Salkeld's Reports and handwritten drafts of two bills
William Salkeld (1515-1671) was an English legal writer and serjeant-at-law, known for his diligent work as a reporter of legal cases. His Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Court of King's Bench, 1689-1712 (1717-18) became a standard authority for precedents at the King's Bench. Salkeld was also one of the author-translators of Creswell Levinz's Reports of Cases in the King's Bench, 1660-1697 (1722). Like most law students in eighteenth-century Britain and its colonies, Jefferson took notes from Salkeld's Reports on the King's Bench cases, looking for precedents and practices that he would find useful in his own case work. Also included in this volume are drafts of two bills in an unknown handwriting, "An act further to amend the judicial system of the United States" and "An act to punish certain offences against the United States."

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VOLUME 6 - List of the Post-Offices in the United States (Washington, 1803)
A book of the locations of post offices existing in 1803, with distances from Washington and annotations by Jefferson.

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VOLUME 7 - Jefferson's Second Library
A catalog of the personal library that Jefferson accumulated after the sale of his first library to Congress. This second library was offered for sale at public auction on February 27, 1829.

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VOLUME 8 - Inscribed Cicero
Jefferson's inscribed flyleaves from an edition of Cicero's De Re Publica published in Boston in 1823. The inscriptions are to Thomas Jefferson Smith, son of Samuel Harrison Smith, an old friend and political ally. The inscriptions include a poem and "A Decalogue of Canons for observation in practical life."

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VOLUME 9 - The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.
This facsimile reproduction of Jefferson's original compilation (now in the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution) was published in Washington in 1904. Jefferson used excerpts from the New Testaments in four languages to create a compilation of what he considered to be Jesus' most authentic actions and teachings. He probably prepared the "Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth" in 1820.

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