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 Luther Martin's first letter against the Notes on Virginia (newspaper attack, 1797)
Thomas Jefferson's attested relationship to Luther Martin's first letter against the Notes on Virginia (newspaper attack, 1797).
Thomas Jefferson is attested as having read this work by Luther Martin.
Evidence ledger
- First-person reading testimony (Explicit first-person perusal of the first of Luther Martin's published attack letters on the Cresap/Logan passage of the Notes on Virginia, with a declared refusal to read the rest. Author and occasion in-passage; proposed as a new Work (a printed newspaper polemic).). Self-report reliability discount 0.8: Adversarial perusal, explicitly claimed ('after the perusal of the first letter had shown me what was to be the style of those subsequent, I have avoided reading a single one') - the candid avoidance of the sequels bounds the claim precisely; glancing engagement discount.