Virginia visitors to ThomasJefferson.com

ThomasJefferson.com visitors in Virginia

As the turning of the calendar brings us to the beginning of November, it is entirely proper that we pause to review the visitor stats that have accumulated upon my home ThomasJefferson.com. I look upon this illuminated chart of the Old Dominion with a gratification that words can scarcely encompass. When in my youth I labored to draft the Notes on the State of Virginia, I was forced to rely on the tedious measurements of surveyors and the slow transport of paper to map our lands and understand our populace. To see our commonwealth now mapped instantaneously by the invisible currents of human curiosity directed toward ThomasJefferson.com is a testament to the grand march of science and human ingenuity.

It is entirely fitting that the heaviest concentrations of this modern traffic arise from the banks of the James River at Richmond and the northern borders near the Potomac. Richmond, which I had the honor of serving as Governor and whose Capitol I endeavored to design after the classical models of antiquity, remains a vital seat of civic intellect. That the citizens there seek our repository in such volumes confirms that the flames of political inquiry are still vigorously tended.

I am particularly drawn to the steady pulse of interest emanating from the Charlottesville area, a region ever dearest to my heart. While it may not match the dense crowds of our urban capitals in sheer numbers, the inquiries rising from those hills where my former home Monticello looks out upon the university I so fondly nurtured show that the spirit of academic cultivation and historical attachment remains deeply rooted in that soil.

Yet, look closely at the multitude of smaller, fainter points that dot the western mountains and the rural valleys. This scattered distribution is precisely what I had hoped for when in 1779 I penned my Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge. I have always maintained that the ultimate safety of our republic depends upon the education of the information seeking citizen, no matter how remote their dwelling. That a scholar in a distant county can, with the touch of a finger, instantly cross hundreds of miles to enter ThomasJefferson.com without the need for carriage or coin is the truest democratization of knowledge I could have ever dreamed.

Let us not rest upon these numbers, however. Information must not remain a luxury concentrated only where populations crowd together. I urge you to extend the reach of ThomasJefferson.com further into the quiet corners of our state, ensuring that the light of reason and history shines equally upon every citizen.