Thomas Jefferson (2025) s01e01 Episode Script

1
- We hold these truths
to be self-evident,
that all men
are created equal.
- Jefferson wrote the
Declaration of Independence.
[dramatic music]
- That they are endowed
by their creator
with certain
unalienable rights.
- That's so powerful
that it keeps reconstructing
the country down the line.
- That among these
are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
♪
- Jefferson is the
very icon of democracy.
♪
- Over two centuries later,
people are quoting
what Thomas Jefferson wrote
in that room.
♪
That's power.
♪
- Jefferson also
served as a diplomat.
He was the third president.
♪
- He was interested
in religion
and the separation
of church and state.
- He loves luxury, food, wine.
But this is why he gets
accusations of hypocrisy.
♪
When it comes for his romantic
ideals of liberty and freedom,
they are authentic,
but they are at great odds
with how he lives his life.
- Jefferson owned close
to 700 people in his lifetime.
♪
- And there's Sally Hemings.
♪
- An enslaved woman--
she was involved
with Thomas Jefferson sexually
at a very young age.
♪
- And so, we have to reckon
the apostle
of liberty, Jefferson,
with the Jefferson
whose legacy makes us
uncomfortable.
♪
- We worry
that if Jefferson was impure,
then our ideals are impure.
We worry that
if Jefferson was wrong,
our nation is wrong.
♪
- But if the founding fathers
are the standard
by which we judge leadership,
then we need to understand
who they really were,
the good and the bad.
♪
- Self-righteousness
in retrospect is easy,
also cheap.
The moral utility of history
is not to look down
on the past condescendingly
or look up at it adoringly but
to try to look it in the eye.
♪
If we want to understand
who we've been
and who we are
and who we want to be,
it begins
with an honest conversation
about Thomas Jefferson.
- All that stuff
that really infuriates you
is inextricably entangled,
even worse, it is the same
stuff as the good stuff!
♪
- We have to teach him
as a full story.
♪
We have to teach
the duality of his legacy
in ways that would help us
envision a better future.
♪
- In 1743,
the United States
does not exist.
For more than 100 years,
settlers have forged
new ways of life
in 13 separate colonies
under British rule.
♪
Colonists trade and farm
in service of the crown
♪
As they navigate
the challenges of living
in uncharted terrain.
♪
- Jefferson's born in 1743.
He was born into a world
that would be completely
unrecognizable to us.
♪
There are these
13 British colonies.
But the rest of the continent,
it's Indigenous.
- There are cities--
Boston, Charleston,
Philadelphia, New York.
But the vast majority
of Americans
are living in more rural,
agrarian communities.
It is a farming-based society.
All of the colonies only
has two million people.
♪
- These 13 British colonies
don't interact that much
with each other.
They're all oriented
back across the water
towards Britain.
It's a bit like all the buses
run into the center of town.
They don't run from
neighborhood to neighborhood.
Well, all the buses
are running to London.
♪
- By the 18th century,
when Jefferson comes along,
Virginia is
a tobacco-growing province.
♪
- Tobacco is very lucrative.
And so, of these
13 British colonies,
the largest, most populous,
wealthiest is Virginia.
♪
- There are great families,
particularly in Virginia,
and these families are famous,
and they have land,
and they have power.
And even Washington
is not considered from a first
family of Virginia,
but Jefferson is.
♪
- Thomas Jefferson is born
at Shadwell plantation
on April 13, 1743
to Peter and Jane Jefferson
♪
Two of
the most prominent names
in the most prominent
British colony.
♪
- His father was surveyor
and a plantation owner.
- Surveying
in colonial Virginia
meant access to land,
which meant potential income
as that land was developed.
And Peter Jefferson
holds almost
the highest government office
that anyone in Virginia
can hold.
He's well connected
in terms of business,
in terms
of social affiliations,
and he marries into one
of the most powerful families
in Virginia--
the Randolph family--
a household of wealth,
of privilege.
♪
- Thomas Jefferson
spends his childhood
exploring the vast grounds
of the Shadwell plantation.
He develops a great love for
literature, music, and nature.
- He liked to be outside.
He talked romantically about
his best friend, Dabney Carr.
They would hike on the hills
around Shadwell,
sit under trees.
They had a deal with each other
that whoever died first
would bury the other one
under their favorite oak tree
on what becomes
Monticello Mountain.
- Jefferson almost never talks
about his feelings.
There's something cool,
even cold, about Jefferson.
You can't really get
that close to him.
♪
But friendship was a very
important thing to Jefferson
throughout his life.
♪
- He is clearly
extremely smart.
♪
He gets a great
education growing up.
He reads everything.
He can read or write a number
of different languages.
He can speak French fluently.
♪
- They ordered the finest
clothing from England.
He played the violin.
It was a very genteel
kind of situation for him.
♪
- Shadwell, it is a house
that is set up
to enable this elite family
to perform in the way
that an elite family performs.
♪
The Jeffersons had
a dining room
that could seat 20 people
for dinner.
So there's potential
there for entertaining.
♪
- As the oldest son,
Thomas carries
a lot of responsibility
in the Jefferson household.
Despite his shy nature,
he is often thrust
into conversations
about philosophy and politics
with his father's
influential friends.
♪
- But Shadwell is also
the plantation
that housed the largest number
of enslaved African Americans
in colonial Albemarle County.
♪
The white people on
the plantation are outnumbered
by about six to one
by enslaved African Americans.
♪
- His first memory is of being
held by a slave on horseback
on a pillow.
- Each of the Jefferson
children,
one brother and six sisters,
were assigned at birth
an enslaved person
who was their same sex
and roughly their same age
who was going to live
with them their entire lives,
which means
in the Jefferson household,
two-year-olds own
other two-year-olds.
♪
A man named Jupiter Evans is
born in 1743,
the same year
as Thomas Jefferson.
And Jupiter's mother,
Sal, was the wet nurse
to the Jefferson children.
So they have this
intimate relationship
from the moment they're born,
and they grow up together.
♪
All of the things that come
along with figuring out
who you are as a person
are wrapped up
in learning to be either
the master of enslaved people
or someone who serves them.
♪
- He had all of the things
that would have given him
an advantage
during that time period.
♪
He was literally the person
who was the master,
and that's the term
they would have used.
I know we use "enslaver" now.
But I think this conveys
his sense of himself,
the master of people,
of human beings.
♪
- And so there you get
the seeds of the contradictions
of Thomas Jefferson.
♪
He is a wealthy populist.
He becomes passionate
about freedom,
but slavery, it's what
he's always known.
- Jefferson is raised
in a society
built on enslaved labor.
However, he will spend
the next decade of his life
constructing radical views
about liberty
and stoking
the flames of revolution.
♪
- Growing up, Thomas Jefferson
is taught
by the finest tutors
in Virginia.
But despite the experts
at his disposal,
there is no greater
influence on young Thomas
than his father, Peter.
♪
- There is a story
that when Thomas Jefferson
was a young boy,
three enslaved individuals
at Shadwell plantation
were instructed to go out
and pull down a wooden shed.
And try as they might,
they were unable to do that.
And Peter Jefferson,
in this somewhat mythical idea
of the great Sansom,
single-handedly
pulls the shed down and away.
♪
- He tells his grandchildren
that his father
would go off for weeks
in the back woods
and fend off wild animals.
♪
So Peter Jefferson is
painted by Jefferson
as this great explorer
that has superhuman
or hyper-masculine strength.
♪
- I believe that
Thomas Jefferson's admiration
for his father was amplified
because Jefferson only knew his
father for a very short time.
♪
He passes away
when Thomas Jefferson
is only 14 years old.
♪
- It's a momentous
event in his life.
♪
- Many years later, of the
death of his father, he says,
"The whole care
and direction of myself
"was thrown on myself entirely
"without relative or friend
qualified to advise
or guide me."
♪
- Jefferson inherits
his father's estate
at the age of 14.
♪
- For the next two years,
Jefferson works
with his father's executors
on the farm ledgers
and becomes the patriarch
to his mother,
sisters, and younger brother.
♪
But at 16, he persuades
the executors
to grant him a look at life
beyond the hills of Shadwell.
♪
- So, in the winter of 1760,
young Thomas Jefferson,
only 16 years old,
travels 120 miles to the east
to Williamsburg.
♪
He enrolls in the College
of William & Mary.
- William & Mary is
the second-oldest institution
of higher education
in the colonies.
Harvard was first.
♪
And Jefferson's friends say
that he was hard to tear
from his studies.
♪
But he does take part
in the social landscape
of Williamsburg.
♪
- There was drink.
[laughs] There were dances
with music and conversations
about books,
taverns and pubs
and libraries.
♪
- Williamsburg is a cultural
mecca for him in these years.
♪
He has access to some
of the most well connected
and brightest minds
available in the colonies.
♪
- Williamsburg was also
the colonial capital.
You have professors
and lawyers
and judges and legislators
who were cultured people.
And for a young man of great
appetite and great ambition,
it was exactly
the right place to be.
- And in Williamsburg,
Jefferson has the good fortune
to fall under the tutelage
of Dr. William Small.
There's the man.
- Though Jefferson is quiet
and rarely speaks up
in classroom debates,
his eloquent writing
catches Small's attention.
♪
- Jefferson writes
of William Small
that he had gentlemanly
and correct manners,
an enlarged and liberal mind,
and a happy talent
of communication.
"Perhaps more than any other,
he fixed my destinies."
♪
- William Small is a proponent
of the Enlightenment.
♪
- The Enlightenment is
an intellectual movement
that took hold in Europe
in the late 17th century.
Scientists and philosophers
spread ideas about freedom,
equality, and the pursuit
of knowledge
through reason and logic
instead of religion.
♪
- William Small teaches him
how to make observations
and make hypotheses
about the world.
- William Small is the one
who introduces Jefferson
to the writings of John Locke
and Francis Bacon
and Isaac Newton.
These are people whose
writings shaped cultures
and shaped world empires.
And Jefferson gets
not only a reverence
for the Enlightenment
and for a kind of rationalistic
approach to the world,
but he also gets a taste
of their style.
The people that he reads
when he's a very young man
really change the course
of everything in his life.
If he has a Holy Trinity,
it's not Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost.
It's Locke, Newton, Bacon.
♪
The Enlightenment
is his gospel.
♪
- William Small
gave him those tools
for thinking about the place
of man in society.
And because he impressed
his professor so much
and also because
of his family connections,
he is invited
to attend dinners
at the governor's palace
with William Small,
Governor Francis Fauquier,
and George Wythe,
who will later be
Jefferson's mentor in law.
And Jefferson
described these dinners
as a little piece of paradise.
A small table of people
sharing good food and big ideas
is happiness to him.
♪
- The room was warmed
with one fireplace crackling
through the evening, with the
table set by candlelight.
- Wine is flowing.
They're eating oysters
and ham
and some of the best foods
available in Virginia.
- They ate French cuisine
and French wine.
Remember, everything had
to come through England.
So to be able to sample
an elegant bottle of Bordeaux
was quite the privilege
and opportunity.
♪
- 20 years old, he's a kid,
whose abilities
have been recognized
by these older men
who bring him
into their world.
And he talks about that kind
of school of sociability
that he went through.
And this will serve him
very well decades later.
♪
- And over dinner,
people debated freedom
and enlightenment thinkers
and American identity.
♪
- Everybody's talking
about liberty and freedom.
But one doesn't discuss
Jefferson
if one doesn't have
an appetite
for a certain level of irony.
Let's not forget, of course,
enslaved people will be
in the room serving them.
♪
- White Virginians start
questioning and debating
freedom as it
applied to tyranny.
But the economy
and the culture
has been created
around slavery.
It is a society rife
with contradictions,
and Jefferson
embodies all of that.
♪
- In 1769, Jefferson's
political life
begins when he is elected
to the Virginia House
of Burgesses.
♪
He is just 26.
♪
- The House of Burgesses
is the state legislature
of the time.
Being elected to the
House of Burgesses has as much
a sense of obligation
as opportunity to it.
It's what you did if you owned
land and you were of society.
♪
- It's almost an entitlement
that Jefferson and his friends
are going to step
into these roles.
♪
It's like, if you
are wealthy today,
you're on the boards
of museums
and of arts organizations.
That's how you have
political and social power.
♪
- The Virginia of this period
was being reshaped
in many ways.
♪
The Seven Years' War,
the French and Indian War
had ended, but British
troops were staying.
♪
Royal authority,
which had ceded the power
to pursue land titles,
had taken that power back.
♪
And the kinds of men that
Jefferson would have been with
would have been affected
by that.
And so there's
an entire redefinition,
an entire reordering
of what it meant to be
a colonist
in exactly the years that
Jefferson is in Williamsburg.
♪
- And Jefferson
distinguishes himself
in the House of Burgesses
by being a radical,
rejecting the idea
of British authority
and passionately railing
against the British Empire,
because to Jefferson,
given the distance
of the Atlantic Ocean,
the distance of the king,
inevitably, at this point,
the British Crown seems
incredibly out of touch
in the colonies.
And the sentimental
attachments that some
of the older generation had
begin to wipe away.
♪
You start to get that
resentment start to itch,
start to eat in those debates.
♪
- He was experiencing
the debates
as they unfolded,
beginning to be devoted to the ideal
of liberty in that argument.
But he wasn't
a leading indicator
of revolutionary sentiment
until a little bit later.
- He's enormously
intellectually confident,
very passionate, but insecure
when it comes to actually
speaking in public.
He is a weak speaker.
He is shy.
He is soft-spoken.
Some people say
he has a nasal voice.
♪
- He'd been quiet,
but Jefferson made it clear
that he believed in progress.
He's very much interested
in Enlightenment values
and thinking that he could
bring those to Virginia.
He is motivated by the desire
to want to shape his society.
♪
In a part
of Jefferson's biography,
he even mentions that when he
was in the House of Burgesses,
he and another member
wanted to have a plan
of emancipation.
♪
- In his autobiography,
which he wrote 52 years later,
Jefferson states that in 1769,
he and his cousin
proposed a bill that would
shift control of emancipation
from the general court over
to slave owners themselves.
But he says
the House of Burgesses
kills the bill immediately.
♪
- He says once he saw
how people responded
to plans for emancipation,
basically shut them down
he left it alone.
- The weird thing is,
there is no other evidence
other than Jefferson
saying this,
that such a bill
was ever proposed.
♪
- The records
of the House of Burgesses
don't reflect this.
Now, it could be that the
records are simply incomplete.
Having said that,
other historians
have made a pretty strong case
that this didn't happen
and that he's making it up
in his autobiography.
♪
So then we have
to ask ourselves,
why is he saying this
when he's compiling
his autobiography
50 years later?
When we think
about autobiographies,
people are constructing
a version of their past.
And he wants to create
a narrative to show
that both he
and the United States
were troubled by slavery
and sought to do
something about slavery
as a problem
from the very beginning
♪
True or not.
♪
- While the truth
of these statements
will never be known,
it is clear that young
Jefferson embraces his role
in the House of Burgesses.
As he learns to navigate
the politics
of Virginia government,
he takes on the social aspects
of the job as well.
- When the House of Burgesses
is in session,
the city of Williamsburg
becomes a social event.
[indistinct chatter]
- It's the beginning
of his engagement with
and entrée to that kind of
world of urban sophistication,
which he claimed
throughout his life to disdain,
but he actually liked.
- The balls
around political programs
are part of how elite
Virginians reinforce
their bonds with each other.
♪
But when Jefferson is young,
he is anxious.
♪
And he's just uncomfortable
around women.
- We are able to read
in letters of his early loves
and, in particular,
one Rebecca Burwell.
♪
She evidently has quite
a number of suitors.
Jefferson thinks,
quite proudly,
that he's prominent
in that lineup.
♪
So Thomas Jefferson decides
that it is time
that he will formally propose.
- Remember, it was
a different kind of world.
They didn't date in the way
we think of dating people.
If you are involved
with people,
at some point you expected to
be married to them.
♪
- He stayed up
the entire night composing
and memorizing this proposal.
The next evening, he would find
himself in a holiday soiree
and dance.
♪
On the floor
with his fair Rebecca,
he begins his proposal.
♪
And he says
the words fall out
in a great disarray.
♪
He can remember one or two
sentences that he memorized.
And then, suddenly, not only
had everyone left the floor,
but so had his fair Rebecca.
♪
And he said, the day never
saw a more miserable creature
when the sun rose
that next morning.
♪
So, evidently, he blew it.
♪
- I mean, he's not good
with women,
at least in his early days.
I mean, he's awkward.
- But he's in his early 20s.
And I don't know how
many heterosexual men
in their early 20s are
necessarily smooth with women.
♪
- Slowly, Jefferson
becomes more comfortable
in the ways of romance,
just in time
to meet a young woman
from a wealthier family
than his own.
Now at 27 years old,
Jefferson believes the future
he yearns for is possible.
[dramatic music]
- By 1770, Thomas Jefferson
has established himself
as a respected lawmaker
in the Virginia
House of Burgesses.
♪
He has also begun
to clear land
and develop his own estate
on Monticello Mountain,
about five miles
from the Shadwell plantation
where he grew up.
His plans for Monticello
are grand.
And Jefferson is eager
for someone to share it with.
♪
But at 27 years old,
he has gained a reputation
as a consummate bachelor,
having spent most of his 20s
pursuing unavailable women,
including the daughter
of a powerful colleague.
- John Wayles,
an English immigrant,
who has done very
well for himself
and amassed quite an acreage.
- He's a planter and a lawyer
and a slave trader.
- Jefferson was a lawyer,
and John Wayles was a lawyer.
There's references to him
going to John Wayles's home.
So it was from their
business associations
that Jefferson met Martha.
♪
- Martha Wayles is the eldest
of the four daughters.
She's sought after by many
a male in Williamsburg.
But in 1766, Jefferson
loses out
to a man
named Bathurst Skelton.
- Great names
in the 18th century.
♪
- But Skelton dies in 1768.
And in 1770, Jefferson
takes a second shot.
♪
Martha Wayles-Skelton
was a very attractive widow
because she was young
and she was wealthy.
[hoofbeats, train bell ringing]
♪
- Jefferson is riding down
the Duke of Gloucester Street
in Williamsburg when he
hears the melody of a spinet
coming out of a parlor window.
[spinet music playing]
Jefferson runs up
onto the porch,
and there through the window,
he sees the form
of the Widow Skelton
seated at the spinet.
♪
Well, he quickly goes
to his horse satchel
and gets his miniature violin.
♪
Jefferson knocks on the door.
[knock at door]
And the Widow Skelton
and he have a musicale
for, oh, maybe an hour or so.
♪
And it's clear that she
has accepted his courtship.
♪
- And then they're
playing this duet,
and another suitor
comes to the house
and hears them playing,
and then just turns
and leaves.
- And he says, we're too late.
Jefferson's gotten
here before us.
♪
- On January 1, 1772
♪
Jefferson and Martha Wayles-Skelton
marry on her father's farm in
Charles City County, Virginia.
After the celebration,
they head to Jefferson's
burgeoning plantation.
♪
- They start out
for Monticello,
which would be about
maybe a four-day ride
in regular weather.
Well, within a day or two,
they're caught in a snowstorm.
♪
This is the largest
blizzard yet recorded
in Virginia history.
They have to abandon
the carriage,
make the rest of the way
on horseback.
♪
- But then, eventually,
through the snow,
they come to that cottage,
which is just
one small building
that has a kitchen
and just a single chamber
above stairs
on the oldest part
of Monticello.
♪
- It's near midnight.
He brings his bride over the
threshold of his hermitage.
♪
He goes to make a fire.
Mrs. Jefferson busies herself
among some of the books
he has on the shelves.
♪
They say she discovers
a bottle of wine.
♪
And that is where they begin
their family.
♪
- For the first year
of Jefferson
and Martha's marriage,
the couple lives quietly
in the modest honeymoon
cottage
at the top
of Monticello Mountain
as work continues
on the rest of the property.
They welcome a daughter,
and Jefferson practices law,
specializing in land cases.
♪
- And then her father,
John Wayles, died.
♪
- When John Wayles dies,
Jefferson inherits
about 11,000 acres
and 135 people--
enslaved people, including
the Hemings family.
♪
- Like many planters,
John Wayles has two families.
He has children by his
recognized wife, who died,
but he also has family
by a woman he enslaved,
Betty Hemings.
♪
Unfortunately, this is not
unusual in colonial Virginia.
♪
- When Betty Hemings arrives
at Monticello in 1774,
she brings her 12 children
with her,
6 of whom are thought
to be fathered by John Wayles.
♪
- Jefferson never says,
I know that these
are John Wayles's kids,
but his treatment
of them indicates
that they are a group apart
from other enslaved people.
♪
Many women
whose fathers or brothers
had children
with enslaved women,
were very hostile towards them
and would sell them.
Martha does the opposite.
She installs the Hemingses
in the household
as favored servants.
♪
The men are the ones
who get to travel
and hire out their own time
and keep their money.
They're not supposed
to do that.
That was actually against the
law during that time period.
The women did not go
to the fields.
They cooked.
They sewed.
They did the kinds of things
that white farming
women would do.
♪
- Betty Hemings is an
older woman by that point.
She's given
almost private quarters.
And she's given the role
at her house
of running the preschool.
♪
Critta Hemings
works as a nursemaid
to Jefferson's daughters.
James Hemings does joinery
and makes furniture,
including some pieces
that are in the house today.
And the other Hemings
had access to skills,
training for skills,
and some degree of autonomy
within the plantation system
that sets them apart.
♪
- They're allowed to do things
that other people
aren't allowed to do,
But they're still enslaved.
♪
- Jefferson comes across
as a very benevolent person.
In his writing, he recognizes
slavery as a moral failing.
He thinks this is something
that will ultimately tear
apart the Union,
that is a threat to democracy.
He understands that.
But, also, he's complicit.
He's a slaveholder.
♪
- As Jefferson continues
to expand his family and home
in Virginia,
the British
continue their fight
to defend their empire
against France,
the Netherlands, and Spain.
- Britain is involved in
conflict around the world.
And as a consequence of that,
Britain has
a substantial public debt
that has to be paid.
And it looks to the colonies
for revenue.
♪
- For years,
Parliament has been taxing
the American colonies
and using the proceeds
to fund military campaigns
around the world.
One of
the most egregious taxes
is the Stamp Act of 1765--
a direct tax
on all printed materials,
from newspapers
to playing cards.
The Stamp Act was the fourth
in a series of taxes
that infuriated the settlers,
particularly Virginia's elite.
In the years
following these taxes,
resentment amongst
the colonists grows.
♪
- We have to ask ourselves,
why do these Virginia elites,
why do wealthy people like
Jefferson and Washington
become revolutionaries?
We expect the poor
and the desperate
to take up arms
and become revolutionaries.
Why do they do it?
♪
They do it because they
believe that their authority
is threatened by this British
assertion of sovereignty
over them.
And so, the issue
very quickly moves
from one of raising revenue
to one of political power
and autonomy.
And Virginians,
especially elite Virginians
like Jefferson,
highly value their autonomy
and their power.
♪
- The Stamp Act
would constitute an assault
on the fundamental
liberties of these people
because American Patriots
in the 1760s
worried about recognizing
their equal standing
within the British Empire.
♪
- The Sons of Liberty start as
a particular group in Boston
in response to the Stamp Act.
And then in the late 1760s,
early 1770s,
the phrase Sons of Liberty
will spread
through the colonies.
It's almost like a brand
or a hashtag, right?
[laughs]
- Throughout the late 1760s
and early 1770s,
tension between Britain
and the colonies
continues to escalate
and eventually erupts
into violence.
- And then in 1773,
to protest taxes on tea
♪
The Sons of Liberty board
a group of merchant vessels
one night in Boston Harbor,
seize the tea,
and dump it into the harbor
because the tea cannot be taxed
if it is not loaded onto shore.
But as soon as the tea
is offloaded,
then the colony is responsible
for the taxes.
- The Boston Tea Party
is an eruption
of a long-slumbering
resentment.
It basically says, taxation
without representation.
We're being treated
as a society
that is being taken from
and being given little.
- The white men who
participated in the Tea Party
dressed as Native Americans
that night
to be dramatic
and to draw attention,
to say, okay, maybe
we are different.
Maybe we are not
British subjects.
Maybe there's
a new American citizen here
that is no longer a subject.
♪
- Then in 1774, to punish
Boston,
British Parliament passes
a series of laws
known in the colonies
as the Intolerable Acts.
These acts greatly curtail
the independent governance
of Massachusetts
and stoke further resentment.
- Then the colonies begin
to write to each other,
saying,
we are being treated unfairly.
In what ways are you
being treated unfairly?
And are we going to band
together to stand as one?
Are we going to accept this
as a single event,
or are we going to see this
as a long train of abuses?
♪
- Jefferson becomes
a powerful colonial voice,
speaking out against Britain.
In 1774, he writes,
"We do declare that these,
their natural
and legal rights,
"have in frequent instances
been invaded by the Parliament
"of Great Britain,
"that all such assumptions of
unlawful power are dangerous
"to the rights of the
British Empire in general
and should be considered
as its common cause."
♪
What had been small bursts
of discontent
began to take root
as the seeds of revolution.
♪
- As a response to the
so-called Intolerable Acts
of 1774
♪
The 13 colonies
that previously had little in
common and little interaction
begin banding together
against British oppression.
♪
And Jefferson
continues to write,
railing against British tyranny.
♪
- In Virginia,
the House of Burgesses
have received letters
from their colleagues
in Massachusetts
explaining what happened.
So the high-ranking members
propose a day
of fasting and prayer.
And Jefferson
and the Burgesses
vote to support Massachusetts.
♪
They go up the street
to the Raleigh Tavern
and assemble and pass
their agreement
to have this day
of fasting and prayer
to demonstrate
a gentle form of protest.
It's a public statement of
solidarity with Massachusetts.
♪
- On the 1st of June,
they are going to go
to their churches,
and they're going to pray
for the people
in Massachusetts.
They're going to show
their allegiance in that mark.
♪
- It's basically saying,
hey, we need to sacrifice.
We need to make
a political statement
by fasting and praying.
♪
- They are deciding upon a
day of religious observation.
♪
But that can only be decided
upon by the royal governor,
because the royal governor is
not only the representative
of the Crown, he is the
colonial representative
of the Church of England.
When he learns
that the Burgesses gathered
in the Raleigh Tavern,
they've decided to do this
amongst themselves,
well, it's his prerogative
to dissolve
the House of Burgesses
at his will.
♪
So there you have Jefferson
and an elected body
now officially
in a state of rebellion.
- It's political activism.
Jefferson's not just writing
letters anymore.
♪
- As discontent escalates,
so does the British response.
♪
- British troops are marching
in New York.
They're mustering
threateningly in other places.
The public gunpowder stores
are seized
in Massachusetts and Virginia.
The gunpowder
is supposed to be there
so that if the royal governor
calls up the militia
to fight a war
against Native Americans
or a slave uprising,
there is ammunition
for public protection.
♪
But the royal governor
seizes the powder,
takes it to a ship
waiting offshore.
♪
And so the royal governor
is saying,
I am not going to protect you
anymore.
♪
You are the enemy now.
♪
- And so, in 1774,
there you have Thomas Jefferson
in that group
of former Burgesses
gathered in the Raleigh Tavern.
♪
They're standing there
arguing, debating,
and bickering
and trying to decide
are we really going
to forget ourselves
as Virginians
and a sovereign colony
and light the spark
of revolution?
♪
Absolutely.
♪
- Still to come
on "Thomas Jefferson"
♪
- Now the hard work begins.
♪
They need to win the war.
♪
- Thomas Jefferson is
voted in as the governor
when the war is making its
way more directly to Virginia.
♪
The British dragoons
seek the capture
of the governor of Virginia.
- It's a chess match.
Jefferson is the prize.
- And then
Sally Hemings becomes
the maid for his daughters.
♪
- Jefferson's in his 40s.
His wife has died.
It's clear that Sally
and Jefferson
begin a sexual relationship.
♪
- Historians were
hostile to the story.
They said, this is impossible.
Jefferson would never do
anything like this.
- But if you look at who is
at Monticello at the time
that Sally Hemings conceives
all of her children,
it's Thomas Jefferson.
♪
- In 1801, Thomas Jefferson
is the first president
to be inaugurated
in Washington, D.C.
At the same moment, Napoleon's
decided to sell Louisiana
to the United States.
The Louisiana Purchase is
the biggest accomplishment
of Jefferson's presidency.
- Jefferson's words, arguably,
are the most powerful words
ever originally rendered
in English.
♪
- The Declaration
of Independence
is an address
to a candid world.
It signals that the rebellious
colonists
are not going to reconcile
with Britain.
We're here.
We are
the United States of America.
And we're not going anywhere.
♪