Notes on the State of Virginia

Jefferson presents in a table the numbers of European settlers who came to Virginia in various years, from 1607 (the year the Jamestown settlement was established) to 1782. He shows that the population of the state has grown from just 100 people in 1607 to 567,614 at the time of writing.

The subject of Virginia’s population raises the question of immigration. Some voices in Jefferson’s day proposed increasing America’s population by importing as many immigrants as possible from other countries, but Jefferson asks whether this is in fact “good policy.” The plan assumes that simply multiplying numbers will produce a prosperous society, but Jefferson argues that societal cohesion depends on uniting people with similar beliefs and backgrounds. He believes bringing people raised under absolute monarchies into a country founded on democratic principles raises inherent problems and dangers since the immigrants will inevitably maintain some of their “Old World” ideas and customs. Therefore, instead of immediately importing masses of immigrants, Jefferson advises waiting 27 years for the population to increase.

On the other hand, Jefferson acknowledges that when it comes to agriculture, more laborers are always needed, and immigration would thus be welcome. He further emphasizes that people who want to immigrate should be allowed to do so but that the government should not encourage immigration as a general policy.

Jefferson ends the chapter by calling for legislation to end the importation of enslaved people, hoping that this will lead eventually to complete emancipation and an end of “this great political and moral evil” (87).

In this chapter, Jefferson shows his conviction that American society is based on certain well-defined values and beliefs. These include a belief in democracy, in social equality, and in success through merit, among others. Jefferson tended to favor a vision of American society as racially and politically homogenous—generally speaking, consisting of persons of Anglo-Saxon descent who shared the English political and legal heritage and were dedicated to an agrarian lifestyle. In other words, the ideal citizen would be a person with an affinity to Jefferson’s own background.

Although he believed that people should be free to immigrate to America, Jefferson did not favor a pluralistic society composed of widely disparate peoples—a society he imagines as “a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass” (85). For Jefferson, a fairly homogeneous, agrarian society would ensure that America’s founding values would survive. Thus, Jefferson distances himself somewhat from the “nation of immigrants” model of what the United States should be. Jefferson’s ultimate stance on immigration is cautious and prudent; rather than importing large numbers of immigrants, he advises waiting to see what happens, letting the population expand naturally.

Virginia’s history unfolded largely as Jefferson had prescribed: It was mainly the urban centers of the Northeast that received large numbers of immigrants in the 19th century and beyond, while Virginia remained the predominantly rural, agrarian, and Anglo-Saxon Protestant state it had been in Jefferson’s day.

It is notable that in this chapter on population Jefferson again brings up the subject of slavery. Enslaved people, indeed, accounted for a significant segment of Virginia’s population. This is one of three places in the book where Jefferson expresses his moral opposition to the institution of slavery and his desire to abolish it. However, as he will express in Query XIV, Jefferson rejected any notion of emancipated people assimilating into the white population; rather, he favored resettling them and equipping them form their own society. This may partly show again Jefferson’s preference for various peoples being separate and independent, forming homogeneous and internally coherent societies based on values or ancestry; the more unvarnished reality, however, is that it is partly based on his revulsion at the thought of Black men possibly having sexual relationships with white women and producing offspring, hence the deportation of the emancipated. In Query XIV, Jefferson explicitly cites such dreaded relationships as part of his rationale for the deportation.