The Chevalier de Chastellux visits Jefferson at Monticello, 1782

"Let me describe to you a man, not yet forty, tall, and with a mild and pleasing countenance, but whose mind and understanding are ample substitutes for every exterior grace. An American, who without ever having quitted his own country, is at once a musician, skilled in drawing, a geometrician, an astronomer, a natural philosopher, legislator, and statesmen. A senator of America, who sat for two years in that famous Congress which brought about the revolution; and which is never mentioned without respect, though unhappily not without regret: a governor of Virginia, who filled this difficult station during the invasions of Arnold, of Phillips, and of Cornwallis; a philosopher, in voluntary retirement from the world, and public business, because he loves the world, inasmuch only as he could flatter himself with being useful to mankind; and the minds of his countrymen are not yet in a condition either to bear the light, or to suffer contradiction. A mild and amiable wife, charming children, of whose education he himself takes charge, the house to embellish, great provisions to improve, and the arts and sciences to cultivate; these are what remain to Mr. Jefferson, after having played a principal character on the theater of the New World, and which he preferred to the honorable commission of Minister Plenipotentiary in Europe."

6.18.1781: Monroe to Jefferson

Monroe to TJ, Fredericksburg:  “I hope…that neither yourself nor Mrs. Jefferson have sustaind injury from these obtrusions of the enemy. In former I advis’d you I would not stay at home in the present state of the country and should be happy to bear some post in her defence. For that purpose I sate out to join the Marquis’s army to act in any line either himself or Council would employ me in."