The Ciceronian Society and the Maibach Fund are thrilled to present the inaugural Herbert J. Storing Book Prize to Cara Rogers Stevens for her book, Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery, (Univ. Press of Kansas, 2024).

Cara Rogers Stevens is an Associate Professor of History at Ashland University, where she also co-directs the Ashbrook Scholar Program. She has a master’s degree in history from the University of Texas at Dallas and a Ph.D. from Rice University. Her research, which focuses on race, slavery, and freedom in the Jeffersonian Age, has been published by the Journal of Southern History and American Political Thought, and she has also written for the Journal of the Early Republic and Law & Liberty. She won the American Political Science Association’s award for Best Article in American Political Thought in 2022.
The University Press of Kansas offers the following description of Cara’s award-winning book:
In this groundbreaking work, Cara Rogers Stevens examines the fascinating life of Thomas Jefferson’s book, Notes on the State of Virginia, from its innocuous composition in the early 1780s to its use as a political weapon by both pro- and antislavery forces in the early nineteenth century. Initially written as a brief statistical introduction to Virginia for French readers, Jefferson’s book evolved to become his comprehensive statement on almost all facets of the state’s natural and political realms. As part of an antislavery education strategy, Jefferson also decided to include a treatise on the nature of racial difference, as well as a manifesto on the corrupting power of slavery in a republic and a plan for emancipation and colonization. In consequence, his book—for better or worse—defined the boundaries of future debates over the place of African-descended people in American society
Although historians have rightly criticized Jefferson for his racism and failure to free his own slaves, his antislavery intentions for the Notes have received only cursory notice, partly because the original manuscript was not available for detailed examination until recently.
By analyzing Jefferson’s complex revision process, Thomas Jefferson and the Fight against Slavery traces the evolution of Jefferson’s views on race and slavery as he considered how best to persuade younger slaveholders to embrace emancipation. Rogers Stevens then moves beyond Jefferson to examine contemporary responses to the Notes from white and black intellectuals and politicians, concluding with an attempt by Jefferson’s grandson to implement elements of the Notes’s emancipation plan during Virginia’s 1831–1832 slavery debates.”
The Herbert J. Storing Book Prize will be presented over dinner on the evening of Thursday, March 13, 2025 at the Hotel Madison in Harrisonburg, VA. Those registered for the 2025 Ciceronian Society conference are invited to attend, where we’ll hear from Dr. Rogers-Stevens about her work.
Click here to learn more about Herbert J. Storing and the book prize.
Please join us in celebrating Dr. Cara Rogers Stevens for her exceptional scholarship.
2025 Herbert J. Storing Prize Finalists
- Glorious Lessons by Richard Brookhiser
- Making the Presidency by Lindsey M. Chervinsky
- Religion and Republic by Miles Smith
- Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery by Cara Rogers Stevens