vital to remember what Jefferson did not know or do. He would not bear arms in the War for Independence. He criticized slavery repeatedly in his life but never did much to end it. Nor did he ever personally experience the American frontier, which is odd. Washington had traveled deeply into it, and Jefferson’s own father rode all over Virginia’s frontier, but Jefferson would never go beyond Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, just a day’s ride west of his home.94
