Notes on the State of Virginia.

Description

Scarce First English Edition of Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, with a curious map of the contemporary American frontier.

A landmark map of the early American Republic, this is Thomas Jefferson’s map of Virginia and surrounding states and territories. It is most famous for the presence of the ephemeral state of Frankland / Franklin, which appeared in the 1787 first English edition of Notes on the State of Virginia.

Covering from Lake Erie to North Carolina, the map covers Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and portions of other states, as well as most of the western frontier of the newly established United States of America. Waterways and mountains are noted in remarkable detail, including in the far-flung portions of the frontier, which also include Native American groups and settlements, trading posts, towns, mineral resources, forts, and other features.

Kentucky (spelled ‘Kentuckey’) is interestingly displayed as if a separate state here, though it in fact was still a part of Virginia at the time. The royal decree establishing Virginia did not delineate a western boundary, an ambiguity that was the impetus for the Fry-Jefferson map (discussed below), but which also allowed Virginia to make expansive territorial claims (some other colonies/states similarly claimed territories in the new republic’s far West, such as Massachusetts’ Western Reserve in today’s northeast Ohio). In 1784, Congress set the state’s western boundary at the Ohio River, but the border south of the Ohio River were still uncertain. As governor of Virginia and afterwards, Jefferson successfully lobbied to have the border set at a line defined by a 1770 treaty between Britain and the Cherokees, extending beyond the Kanawha River (here as ‘Great Kanhaway’) to access mineral resources in the area and provide a buffer between American settlers and Native Americans.

Originally a single county of Virginia established in 1776, Kentucky was subdivided into three counties in 1780, with new counties being added successively afterwards. Momentum was clearly building towards statehood and the counties petitioned the Virginia General Assembly to separate and create a new state, but this was delayed by other events (such as the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, replacing the Articles of Confederation) until both Virginia (1789) and the U.S. Congress (1791) approved Kentucky’s statehood.

The map contains many other curious elements, such as those indicating the roughness of the new country’s terrain, the reason why most of its population continued to live near the Atlantic Coast. Aside from the imposing barrier of the Appalachian Mountains, these include a large ‘Buffalo Swamp’ in northern Pennsylvania, an even larger ‘Great Swamp’ in northeastern Pennsylvania, and a ‘Dismal Swamp’ spanning the border of Virginia and North Carolina.

Washington, D.C. is marked here in ink manuscript, near Georgetown (‘George T.’). While the location of the nation’s capital was not decided until 1790, in a compromise brokered by Jefferson along with James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, when Jefferson was creating this map there was already a lively debate on where to situate the nation’s capital (originally Philadelphia and then, temporarily, New York City). After the 1790 Compromise, additional debate took place over the inclusion of Alexandria, Virginia, which was indeed a part of the federal district until 1846.

The future state of Ohio is simply noted as ‘a new state,’ and in fact Jefferson, as chair of the Continental Congress’ 1784 Committee for the Western Territory, envisaged three states emerging here (with the proposed names of Washington, Saratoga, and Metropotamia). This map was prepared before the establishment of the Northwest Territory by Congress in the Northwest Ordinance of July 1787. But Jefferson was well-familiar with the region from his work on the aforementioned committee and other pursuits, and recognized the need to plan for the reality of increasing numbers of American frontier settlers pushing into new lands, including those nominally forbidden to them by existing treaties. In some examples of the map (such as that digitized by Yale’s Beinecke Library), a potential boundary between these new states is traced northwards from the meeting point of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers.

One particularly interesting feature in the land of ‘new states’ is the ‘proposed canal’ between the Cuyahoga River and the Big Beaver Creek in what became eastern Ohio. Jefferson and George Washington had considered the possibility of a canal between Lake Erie and the Ohio River as early as 1787, the year of this map’s production, so the question was fresh in Jefferson’s mind. But the practical and financial difficulties of a such a project delayed it for many years, and it ultimately followed a different route than that proposed here when constructed as the Ohio and Erie Canal, completed 1832.

The State of Frankland / Franklin

Perhaps the most interesting and certainly the most recognizable feature of this map is the inclusion (seemingly the first on any map) of the state of Frankland at bottom-left, in what is now eastern Tennessee. The idea for this state dates to the early 1780s, and the effort was led by prominent frontier settlers and Revolutionary War veterans Arthur Campbell and John Sevier. Though Campbell and Sevier disagreed on the exact boundaries of the proposed state, both represented a strong sentiment among frontier settlers that they had a distinct identity from those residing east of the Appalachian Mountains and would be better off managing their own affairs. An opportunity presented itself in 1784, when North Carolina ceded its territory west of the mountains, known then as the ‘Washington Territory,’ to Congress to pay off its Revolutionary War debts (previously, North Carolina, like Virginia, theoretically claimed land westwards all the way to the Mississippi River).

As Congress had neither the interest nor the means to govern the area, this arrangement left the ceded territory in a sort of administrative limbo, to the great annoyance of the frontiersmen who had several pressing issues to deal with, including potential conflicts with the nearby Cherokee. Therefore, initially three and eventually eight counties joined the self-declared state of Frankland, set up a capital at Jonesborough, and applied to Congress for admission to the Union. Campbell, initially the more active leader of the movement, imagined an expansive new state covering the entire American frontier, including portions of Virginia, future Kentucky, Georgia, and future Alabama. For his part, John Sevier, who had reservations about the whole enterprise though supporting it in principle, served as the first governor of the ‘state.’

Frankland immediately ran into problems, as the constitution that was drafted for the state failed to pass a referendum. Moreover, there was little enthusiasm for these actions, seen as frontier shenanigans, in the capitals of the extant states, which moved to legally bar any counties from seceding. Frontiersmen of the westernmost portion of Virginia (future Kentucky) were also uninterested, as they were already independently moving towards statehood, as discussed above. Nevertheless, when a delegation from Frankland petitioned Congress to join the Union in May 1785, they gained the support of seven states, short of the two-thirds needed for admission but still a surprisingly good showing. Desperate for additional support, the leaders of Frankland changed the territory’s name to ‘Franklin’ to gain the support of Benjamin Franklin, but this effort also failed. The state continued to operate independently for a time, effectively as a separate republic (as Vermont was at the time). Some courts and government offices were established and there was an intention to collect taxes at some future date, though neither a flag nor currency was ever adopted (frontiersmen being accustomed to bartering anyhow). The state did sign some treaties with neighboring Native American groups, mostly various branches of Cherokee.

In 1787, North Carolina tried to forcibly reincorporate the territory, sending troops under Col. John Tipton and re-establishing its own administration, though the Franklin courts and offices continued to exist alongside the North Carolina ones. In February 1788, matters came to a head when the North Carolina-appointed sheriff of Washington County seized several of Sevier’s slaves as compensation for taxes he owed to North Carolina, keeping the slaves at the home of Col. Tipton. Both Sevier and Tipton called in reinforcements and a brief skirmish ensued, resulting in three deaths and more injuries. Afterwards, Sevier, seemingly radicalized by the experience and concerned with continued fighting between frontiersmen and Cherokee, sought the help of Spain and even considered having the territory join the Spanish Empire. As a result, Sevier was arrested, but then forcibly freed by supporters who retreated to a rump holdout state of ‘Lesser Franklin.’ Finally, in February 1789, Sevier and his supporters surrendered to North Carolina authorities. North Carolina then returned the land to the federal government, when it became part of the Southwest Territory, and a comprehensive treaty was signed with the Cherokee. Some diehard supporters of Frankland/Franklin continued to defy outside authority for several years afterwards, but the issue was finally settled when Tennessee joined the Union in 1796, with Sevier serving as its first governor and Tipton as a signer of the state’s constitution, representing Washington County, epicenter of the hostilities of the late 1780s.

Production and Census

This map was prepared for Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, the only full-length book by Jefferson to be published during his lifetime. The map is likewise the only map published by Jefferson, though he produced many others for his private use. Better known for his political and scientific pursuits, Jefferson was no amateur cartographer. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a surveyor and was partly responsible for the important Fry-Jefferson map of Virginia produced in the early 1750s. Thomas Jefferson inherited his father’s surveying tools and knowledge, skills that were put to use on his own lands (including a survey for Monticello, which appears here near center) and in his legal practice in the years before the American Revolution, when he frequently handled land disputes. He briefly was the Surveyor of Albemarle County just prior to the revolution, but did not produce any surveys of his own while in this position.

While Jefferson was serving as the governor of Virginia in 1779, he was asked by the French official François Barbé-Marbois (who had married the daughter of the governor of Pennsylvania and later served as French Ambassador to the U.S.) to respond to a series of questions about Virginia (similar requests were made to the governors of all the states). Jefferson’s lengthy responses were then expanded further and others requested copies for their own edification, leading Jefferson to privately publish the Notes in Paris (where he was, by then, serving as the American ambassador) in 1785, sending a handful of copies across the Atlantic to his American compatriots (Madison, Adams, Monroe). Even greater interest in the work led to an attempted unauthorized French translation before Jefferson, with some reluctance, and some of his French associates proceeded with an authorized French translation and English edition, published in 1786 and 1787, respectively. Though he repeatedly insisted that his name not appear on it, this map was indeed compiled by Jefferson in Paris using what sources he could access, including a copy of the Fry-Jefferson map, with updated information (explained in a note below the title at top-right). Though not included in the earliest French printing, the map (first engraved by Guillaume Delahaye and printed in March 1787, after a mistake-ridden engraving by Samuel Neele was rejected by Jefferson) was including in later printings of the French edition and the first English edition.

The map is independently cataloged with thirteen institutions in the OCLC, while the first edition of the book in either English or French is somewhat more widely distributed. Its appearance on the private market presents a rare opportunity to own a critically important piece of early Americana, authored by one of the country’s most influential founders.