Jefferson's formal "Autobiograph;" nor is it even mentioned by the several biographers of Jefferson whom I have consulted — with the one exception of Parton. Tucker's au thorised "Life of Jefferson" makes no men tion of the subject whatever. Jefferson writes his friend Everett, " I do not remem ber the occasion which led me to take up this subject, while a practitioner of the law. But I know I went into it with all the re search which a very copious law library en abled me to indulge, and I fear not for the accuracy of my quotations. The doc trine might be disproved by many other and different topics of reasoning, but having satisfied myself of the origin of the forgery, and found how, like a rolling snowball, it had gathered volume, I leave its further pursuit to those who need further proof, and, per haps, I have already gone farther than the feeble doubt you expressed might require." The simple allusion made by Parton to
this early investigation of the subject is in the story of Jefferson's student life.1 Parton refers to a lengthy abstract, numbered "873," which fills seven and a half octavo pages, bristling all over with references, old French and law Latin. It is evident that upon this abstract — so confidently referred to in his letter to Everett more than a half century later — was constructed the thesis under consideration. Sentences quoted by Parton. are identical with passages in the thesis; but the so-called abstract in several respects goes wide of the range of the argu ment as presented in the thesis. Interest ing as a study in and of itself, the circumstan ces under which this thesis was thought out and wrought out in the youth of our great commoner, and finally brought out in his old age, gives much of added interest to the study of the appendix in this first Virginia report. 'Parton's Life of Jefferson, p. 48.
