“2. Rivers”
The word “river” appears 170 times in Notes, more than any other noun. Indeed, rivers are central to Jefferson’s imperial view of Virginia. It is in this section that the state reclaims the expansiveness shorn from it in the recitation of limits in Query 1. If once all roads led to Rome, all rivers flow from Virginia. Jefferson follows the course of rivers no longer within Virginia’s borders, from Lake Michigan via the Mississippi to “the mines of Charcas, Zaccatecas & Potosi” and Mexico City. In Jefferson’s hands, nearly all of North America is in effect recast as Greater Virginia. For Jefferson, as for many of his fellow “countrymen,” the rivers are Virginia’s highways to the future, and connecting them with the great waterways of the West an essential part of its destiny. More immediately important as one of the functions of Notes, Jefferson is linking Virginia to the entire North American continent in the minds of his readers.
The word “river” appears 170 times in Notes, more than any other noun. Indeed, rivers are central to Jefferson’s imperial view of Virginia. It is in this section that the state reclaims the expansiveness shorn from it in the recitation of limits in Query 1. If once all roads led to Rome, all rivers flow from Virginia. Jefferson follows the course of rivers no longer within Virginia’s borders, from Lake Michigan via the Mississippi to “the mines of Charcas, Zaccatecas & Potosi” and Mexico City. In Jefferson’s hands, nearly all of North America is in effect recast as Greater Virginia. For Jefferson, as for many of his fellow “countrymen,” the rivers are Virginia’s highways to the future, and connecting them with the great waterways of the West an essential part of its destiny. More immediately important as one of the functions of Notes, Jefferson is linking Virginia to the entire North American continent in the minds of his readers.
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