I don’t know how many ATR readers live in the DC area, but the Library of Congress currently has a very cool exhibit of Revolutionary-era documents, “Creating the United States,” which includes Jefferson’s “rough draft” of the Declaration of Independence, complete with handwritten edits from Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and members of the Continental Congress. However, the document goes off display tomorrow and will be replaced by a draft of George Mason’s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. I’m not entirely sure if that means it will still be on display tomorrow, or if today was the last day.

There’s also a “Jefferson’s Library” display–hundreds of the books Jefferson sold to Congress which ultimately formed the nucleus of the Library–that is well worth checking out.

This thought occurred to me too: Jefferson palled around with political radicals who had histories of using violence and was an elitist intellectual full of fancy book-learning! Ominous!