Positive reconstruction · reader-scoped, not an inferred-absence lacuna
This reconstruction covers the readable fraction of Thomas Jefferson's formation -- attested reading and writing only, not the whole of a life.
Thomas Jefferson and Speech to the legislature (1816)
Thomas Jefferson's attested relationship to Speech to the legislature (1816).
Thomas Jefferson is attested as having read this work by Governor Plumer.
Evidence ledger
- First-person reading testimony (Explicit first-person repeated-reading claim: 'the copy... of your late speech to the legislature of your State, which I have read a second time with great pleasure, as I had before done in the public papers.' The work is a printed gubernatorial speech; author identified as the addressee (Governor Plumer), title descriptive from the passage; no catalogue match, proposed as a new Work.). Self-report reliability discount 0.75: Flattery-context discount (thanking the author for his own speech and praising it as 'replete with sound principles'); strengthened by REPEATED reading in two formats ('read a second time with great pleasure, as I had before done in the public papers') - re-reading is costly and specific.