s Draft. The remarkable thing under the circumstances is not that Jefferson’s advanced ideas were rejected but that, at the last moment, the Convention was willing even to consider his constitution. The fact that use was made of considerable part of it is a tribute to its excellence and to the influence of its author.
The notes to the Virginia Constitution (Document VII) identify those parts of the Constitution that are here, for the first time, identified as certainly or probably Jefferson’s. All the texts in this sequence are reproduced with literal fidelity. Square brackets in printed texts are, unless otherwise noted, in the MSS.