![age of rebellion duty age of rebellion duty](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dIfxgSzW6yI/hqdefault.jpg)
It is now widely considered a classic, “one of America’s first permanent literary and intellectual landmarks.” The resulting publication, issued three years lateras Notes on the State of Virginia, proved the only book Jefferson would publish during his lifetime.
![age of rebellion duty age of rebellion duty](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/northwestordinance1787-131210115650-phpapp01/95/shays-rebellion-to-constitutional-convention-5-638.jpg)
By the time he returned to Monticello in August 1781, he was nearly finished drafting the manuscript. Yet, at Popular Forest, his beloved rural retreat nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, he found solace in the hours devoted to fulfilling Marbois’s request.
Age of rebellion duty series#
Faced with a long series of personal and political crises-including the death of his daughter, the prolonged illness of his wife, a nasty injury sustained in a fall from his horse, forced retreat first from the state capital in Richmond and then from his estate in Monticello, and accusations that he had engaged in dishonorable conduct during the period of British occupation-Jefferson endured some of the darkest days of his entire life. In 1780, when the secretary to the French minister in Philadelphia, François Marbois, circulated a detailed questionnaire regarding the political and natural history of Virginia, Jefferson seized the opportunity to organize his abundant notes. He would later reflect on his longstanding curiosity about the natural world by declaring that “Science is my passion, politics my duty.” Jefferson was an inveterate reader of scientific treatises, a zealous recorder of natural phenomena, and an eager correspondent with others who shared his enthusiasm. Less well known to his contemporaries was his keen interest in science. At the time the thirty-seven-year-old governor of Virginia and author of the Declaration of Independence already enjoyed a considerable reputation for accomplishment in the political sphere. The specific context of his engagement with this thorny issue was a manuscript that he began sometime in the summer or early autumn of 1780. Thomas Jefferson, 1784 Jefferson’s DilemmaĪt the height of the American Revolution, while the outcome of the rebellion against Great Britain remained uncertain, Thomas Jefferson grappled with the problem of fossils. Such is the economy of nature, that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct or her having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken.