Jefferson loved his family; he loved Virginia; he loved his nascent nation. Raised in a tight-knit universe of kith and kin, accustomed to spending his hours reading in his father’s first-floor library, singing on the banks of the Rivanna with his sister Jane, and learning to supervise his lands at his mother’s side, he cherished his domestic worlds while being simultaneously drawn to politics. In the fall of 1776, he could not have both in France; he could in Virginia.
