Thomas Jefferson (2025) s01e03 Episode Script

1
- Previously on
"Thomas Jefferson"
[dramatic music]
- Jefferson writes
a letter called
"A Summary View of the Rights
of British America."
- It's an outlay of everything
that the British government
and everything the king,
George III,
has kind of done wrong.
- The British imposed
a series of taxes
that causes people
on both sides of the Atlantic
to reevaluate
that relationship
and think about who's
in charge.
♪
- At the Second
Continental Congress,
all the great leading lights
of the colonies are convening.
- John Hancock appoints
a committee of five men
to draft a declaration
of American independence.
- The glamorous work
is giving the speeches.
The hard work is
being delegated
to this younger Virginian
who wields a great pen
and is known for that.
And so Jefferson gets
drafted to be the draftsman.
- What sets Jefferson apart
is the capacity
and the gift of articulation.
Nobody wrote better.
He mobilized
the English language
and sent it into battle.
And in this case,
it was the battle for an ethos
and an aspiration of liberty.
- But as Jefferson
is talking about,
"All men are created equal,"
he's there with his wife's
enslaved half-brother.
- The fact
that the core contradiction
of the idea that all men
are created equal,
and Jefferson being
a slave owner,
and that original sin
being baked in that cake
gnaws at us still.
But it ultimately
doesn't reduce its power.
- Because signing
the Declaration was signing
your own death warrant.
♪
They were subjects
of King George III.
And now they were rebels.
- Now the hard work begins.
They need to win the war.
♪
♪
- As the celebrations
of independence quiet
in the summer of 1776
♪
Reality sets in
for a new nation at war.
- The story of the Revolution
is immensely more
complicated than
Declaration of Independence,
joyous new nation.
Debt, foreign relations,
relationships between the states, defense,
all of these things
were still unfolding.
- In the summer of 1776,
just as Congress votes
in favor of independence
and adopts this declaration,
a 30,000-man expeditionary
force arrives in New York
to suppress this rebellion.
♪
It's the largest expeditionary
force the British had ever
sent abroad to that point.
It's a massive army by the
standards of the 18th century.
♪
- At that point, Americans
are a ragtag conglomeration
of colonial militias.
♪
How can we possibly accomplish
this in the face of one
of the mightiest armies
upon the globe?
♪
- The British capture
New York pretty easily.
They rout the Continental Army
at Brooklyn,
and then they end up
chasing Washington
and the Continental Army
up into Westchester
and then southwest
across New Jersey.
♪
There's a great deal
of uncertainty
in the summer of 1776.
♪
- Because you've
got to remember,
a significant portion
of the citizenry
doesn't want independence
from Britain.
So you've got British loyalists
who aren't on board.
And they're your friends
and your neighbors,
and they're
actively cooperating
with the redcoats,
who are coming
to reassert their primacy.
- The sentiment at the time
was a very profound
and intense mixture
of exultation and fear.
- But while soldiers
are fighting and dying,
Jefferson doesn't partake
in the military, notably.
He tries to serve his state,
his attempted newfound nation
in other ways.
♪
- Jefferson's leadership
during the war
was in a more
civilian capacity.
♪
- The states have
to redraft their laws.
They can't use
their old colonial charters.
They have to start
from scratch.
♪
Virginia is closest
to Jefferson's heart.
It's a place
of great importance
in this new
republican experiment.
Jefferson knew himself
and knew his strengths,
and so Jefferson comes back
from Philadelphia
to help redraft the laws
of Virginia.
Jefferson says,
this lawmaking is as important
as the war of Independence.
And when Washington's
at Valley Forge,
he might not be
thinking the same thing.
But he said,
this is the real work
because otherwise,
it doesn't matter.
♪
And so he sets about reforming
and revolutionizing Virginia.
♪
Prior to independence,
Virginia had a state church.
It was the Anglican church.
It wasn't very well attended,
necessarily,
but it was state supported
in the sense
that people's taxes
went to support
this religious establishment.
And it was his strong belief,
and he became really skeptical
in matters of religion,
that there shouldn't
be state-supported religion.
♪
- Jefferson was not
a conventional Christian
in any way.
He did not believe in the
divinity of Jesus of Nazareth.
He did not believe
in the Trinity.
He called those kinds
of theological arguments
"monkish superstition."
♪
- And so very early on,
Jefferson is interested
in the separation
of church and state,
because he thought, along
with Enlightenment thinkers,
the church had had too much
of an influence in Europe.
♪
- You know, as Englishmen,
they believed
in dieu et mon droit,
"God is my right,"
the motto of the royal family.
♪
- But Jefferson understands,
because he reads history,
that whenever religion and
the government get together,
it's bad.
It's bad for the people.
It's bad for the government.
It's also, by the way,
bad for the religion.
♪
- He writes that there should
be a wall of separation
between church and state.
Now, that wall
is doing two things.
Just as there shouldn't be
undue influence of religion
on the state,
there should not be
undue influence by the state
interfering with religion.
- In 1777, Jefferson drafts
the Virginia Statute
for Religious Freedom,
a statement about both freedom
of conscience
and the principle
of separation
of church and state.
Though it will
not be written into law
for another seven years,
the statute is the basis
for what will become one
of the defining tenets
of the American government,
the First Amendment.
- He says, this is what makes
us better than Europeans.
We're not forced
to pay taxes to support
a religious establishment.
And Jefferson's very,
very proud of this.
Virginia,
as he sees it, is first
in disestablishing religion.
- The separation
of church and state
is a key indicator
of freedom for him,
but it is a rebellion
against orthodoxy.
And an orthodoxy has a general
tendency to impose itself
upon individual freedom
and especially freedom
of conscience, so you see
Jefferson waving the banner
of individual freedom
of conscience
against any imposition by
larger forces or orthodoxies.
- And this is a really
important and powerful step,
and a big part of what
the country we know today
is supposedly about.
♪
- Jefferson's closest partner
in authoring the statute
for Separation
of Church and State
is newcomer to the Virginia
legislature, James Madison.
♪
- Madison is
the junior partner.
He's small.
He's brilliant.
He's a writer.
He's who Jefferson is
in closest contact with.
And Jefferson drafts Madison
into his camp over time.
♪
- Friendship was a very
important thing to Jefferson.
And Jefferson
and Madison were friends.
His political allies were not
just instrumental connections.
These were his people.
- Between 1777 and 1778,
Jefferson and Madison
draft over a hundred bills
that go on to shape Virginian
and then federal laws.
♪
But while Jefferson
toils over statutes,
the war begins to move south.
- In the north,
the British focused
on occupying major cities,
Boston,
and New York,
and Philadelphia.
As the war moves south,
the British strategy changes.
The southern war
is guerrilla war.
It's a much more chaotic war.
♪
- And then, in 1779,
Thomas Jefferson
is voted in as the second
elected governor
of the New Commonwealth
of Virginia.
This is during the time
when the war is raging all
throughout the colonies
and is making its way
more directly to Virginia.
- And at this point, thanks
to the "Summary View
of the Rights
of British America,"
he's an important political
figure in Virginia.
But Jefferson's
governorship is one
of the most controversial
periods of his life,
and certainly
of his public life.
- And now,
Jefferson the enlightened,
naive young lawyer,
philosopher, would-be statesman
has a reality check.
- Jefferson's sharpest weapon
has always been his intellect.
♪
Now he's thrust into a place
he'd never imagined he'd be,
the front lines of war.
♪
[dramatic music]
- In the summer of 1779,
as Jefferson settles
into his role as governor,
the war begins to move south,
and the threat of violence
looms over Virginia.
♪
- The British had
been waging war
for five years at this point.
They're angry.
This war has been very
unpleasant for the British.
It hasn't gone very well.
- It's one thing
to go into a country
and try to depose
a set of rulers.
It's another thing
to try to occupy
a large swath of territory.
♪
Armies take.
They need food,
they need shelter, space.
They generate hostility
to their presence.
♪
The British Army just couldn't
manage the process of being
an occupying force against
what was a much weaker power,
but had the home
field advantage.
♪
- So it's been a nasty,
intractable insurgency
in many respects.
And they've kind of
taken off the gloves.
♪
- But as Jefferson bears
the weight on his shoulders
for the responsibility
of protecting and defending
the Commonwealth of Virginia,
Jefferson and others just
do not believe that the enemy
is going to have
any effect on Virginia.
He says the war
is happening up north.
♪
And he says Virginian farmers
need to return to business.
They need to return
to farming and the sustenance
of their families.
- However, at the end of 1779
and the beginning of 1780,
British ships have been seen
off the coast of Virginia.
♪
And he's slow
in reacting to that.
♪
- That year of 1779 to 1780,
Jefferson finally
begins to worry
about keeping the capital
in Williamsburg
because the enemy could
sail up the James River
and lay siege.
♪
So they moved
the capital that spring
to much better defended ground
on the heights of Richmond.
♪
But then they receive
information and knowledge
that the enemy is sailing up
the James River to Richmond.
- His letters during this time
are calls for help.
♪
He's trying to conscript
people back to his side.
He's saying,
we're being attacked.
- We shall omit nothing
in our power for the support
of the troops,
but I must appraise you
that our means of supply
are not at present
what they have been,
so that they
may perhaps suffer,
though they shall not
if we can prevent it.
♪
- But Washington doesn't have
that many troops to spare
and doesn't quite say,
well, you're on your own,
but that's kind of
the implication.
- And then on January 1, 1781,
1,600 British troops,
including an elite green coat
division under Benedict Arnold
known as Dragoons,
storm Richmond and wreak havoc
on the new capital city.
- There are constant
British attacks,
a very fateful one
of which is led by the traitor
Benedict Arnold.
- When the British come,
an enslaved man says
within ten minutes
there wasn't a white man
to be seen in town.
♪
Everybody else had
scattered to the four winds.
♪
- Jefferson is struggling
to govern a society
that is falling apart
around him.
- When British forces arrive,
the Virginia troops
don't stand a chance.
- The invasion of Virginia is
an existential moment for him.
You have the most powerful army
in the world
in your neighborhood.
And from a quarry
as significant
as Thomas Jefferson,
there would be
immense personal insecurity
about falling
into the hands of the British.
- And then Jefferson
himself is almost
captured by Arnold's forces.
♪
- The British officers said,
where is Governor Jefferson?
We are here
with these silver handcuffs
to take
Governor Jefferson prisoner.
♪
- But he escapes.
And the government
has to flee Richmond.
They go to Charlottesville.
♪
Virginia's a mess.
♪
- Just over a week after
fleeing from Williamsburg
to Richmond,
Virginia officials are forced
to set up a new capital
in Charlottesville,
only 4 miles
from Jefferson's home.
For safety,
Jefferson takes the highest
ranking members of the
Virginia House of Delegates
in at Monticello.
He is living there
with his wife,
his nine-year-old daughter,
Martha,
and his three-year-old
daughter, Maria.
- Jefferson,
during this entire period,
is wondering whether,
first and foremost,
we can still conduct
our government
out west in Virginia,
but what is going
to happen to my family, to me?
♪
All of this turmoil,
all of this upheaving
is naturally going to have
an effect on their family
♪
And have an effect
on a young Mrs. Jefferson,
who is constantly pregnant.
♪
We know that childbirth was
extremely difficult for her.
Over a period of ten years,
she gives birth
to six children.
♪
Martha is the eldest.
The second child,
a little girl, Jane,
does not live very long.
The third child
is a little boy,
Peter, named
for Jefferson's father,
doesn't survive
but a few days.
Their fourth child is Maria.
She does survive infancy.
In the winter of 1781,
his wife had just
suffered the death
of their fifth child
and would be pregnant
with their sixth child.
♪
- Meanwhile, the British
troops continue moving west,
closer to Monticello.
♪
- The British dragoons seek
the capture of as many members
of the Virginia
House of Delegates
in Charlottesville, where
they know they are in hiding.
But certainly, the one who has
the highest price on his head
is the governor of
the Commonwealth of Virginia.
♪
- It's a chess match.
The British want to capture
the governor of Virginia.
Jefferson is the prize.
♪
[dramatic music]
- As British troops march
west through Virginia,
the threat
against Jefferson grows.
With each passing day,
the British
get closer and closer
to the new capital
in Charlottesville
and his home, Monticello.
♪
- So in May of 1781, he sends
a letter to George Washington.
♪
It's another plea
to Washington for help.
- Jefferson writes
to Washington,
the whole force of the enemy
within this state
I think is about 7,000 men.
Your excellency will judge
from this state of things
and from what you know
of your own country
what it may probably suffer
during the present campaign.
- And the British continue to
attempt to capture Jefferson.
♪
- And then a man
named Jack Jouett,
who owns and operates
the tavern in Cuckoo, Virginia,
he overhears a number
of British dragoons
reveal themselves,
the more they consume,
of the orders
of British Lieutenant Colonel
Banastre Tarleton
to proceed westward
and seek the capture
of Governor Jefferson.
♪
- Jouett road
overnight 40 miles.
It's very much like
Paul Revere warning
that the British were going to
attack Lexington and Concord
five years before.
In fact,
it's a much longer ride.
And he arrives at Monticello
before the British do.
- And Jouett forewarns them,
saying, gentlemen,
they may be
but a few moments behind me.
♪
- According to the legend,
Jefferson gave him
a glass of Madeira,
thanked him for his efforts.
But Jefferson didn't
leave right away.
He put his family
in a carriage,
sending them on their way down
to land that Jefferson owned
down near Lynchburg, Virginia.
But he waited to leave.
♪
- Taking his time,
Jefferson proceeds
very calmly to bury the state
papers below the floorboards
of his dining room.
And then finally,
at the last moment,
Jefferson sets off
on horseback.
♪
And he rides to Montalto,
the taller mountain
just to the west
of Monticello.
- Enslaved people had shoed
the horse shoes on backwards,
so that way when the horse
is running down the mountain,
it looks like
Jefferson is actually
running up the mountain.
And it confuses the British.
- He rides up along
the side of the mountain.
And then he dismounts
from his horse
to look back at Monticello
through his spyglass.
♪
And there they are.
- When Jefferson
flees Monticello,
he leaves it in the hands
of his most trusted
enslaved family,
the Hemingses.
- They storm Monticello.
And Martin Hemings, who is
Elizabeth Hemings' eldest son,
greets them at the front door
and refuses
to allow them entry,
and refuses to tell them
where Jefferson is.
Of course, they were going to
kill him if they had done so.
♪
- The captain
of the British dragoons
takes from his side saddle
a pistol
♪
Says, "You will tell me where
Governor Jefferson is,
or I will inflict
a mortal wound."
♪
To which,
Hemings pulls his coat back,
replies, "Fire away."
♪
- But British troops
stormed past Hemings,
determined to find
the governor they assume
is still inside.
- Below Martin Hemings,
in a secret panel,
is an enslaved person who has
gathered up all the silver
and all of the valuables
in the home,
and was keeping them
beneath the secret space.
♪
So he can hear everything
that's happening.
And the story goes that it's
a couple of hours to a day
that this enslaved
man is below,
having kept all the valuables.
The Jefferson family tells the
story that that enslaved man
was such a loyal servant.
But read through the
African American perspective,
this man is keeping
himself safe, one.
And secondly, just in case
the British do actually end up
capturing Jefferson, say,
winning the Revolutionary War,
well, he has all
the silver in his hands.
♪
- After tearing
Monticello apart as they
search for Jefferson,
the British
realize they are too late.
- Captain McLeod says,
"Come on, boys,
"I understand Jefferson
has the best stocked
wine cellar
in all of Virginia."
They all help themselves.
♪
It happens to be
King George III's birthday,
June the 4th.
There might have been a toast.
They placed the wine bottles
in their satchels,
and they ride off.
♪
- Monticello is left intact.
But Jefferson,
whose second term as governor
ended two days prior,
is brutally criticized
for how he handled
the invasion.
♪
- The citizens of Virginia
think he's left his duty
at the moment of great peril.
♪
He's totally disgraced.
♪
- The House of Delegates
launches an inquiry
into his actions
as governor of Virginia
in organizing
the defense of the state.
It's a low point
of his public life.
Washington sends him
a very thoughtful
and measured and kind letter,
saying, you're a good friend,
and your service was great.
And he more or less says,
you're being
unfairly criticized.
But part of being
a man in Virginia,
a man of that elite class,
meant showing physical bravery
and showing tenacity.
This is an honor culture,
and it was a very
military culture.
It's a culture
that valued military service.
This is why
these men fight duels.
This is why Washington
is so admired in this period,
and Jefferson
admired Washington.
But Jefferson's skills
didn't lie in that area.
And so he's presented
as a coward.
- Jefferson leaves
his governorship
as a laughingstock.
The once-celebrated
revolutionary retreats back
to Monticello in disgrace.
♪
- By the fall of 1781,
the tides of war
begin to turn in favor
of the Americans,
as Spanish, Dutch,
and French forces
join the rebels in
their fight against Britain.
[dramatic music]
The war culminates
in Yorktown, Virginia.
British troops
under General Cornwallis
had set up a base at Yorktown.
♪
But on September 28, 1781,
Washington's troops
and his French allies
placed Cornwallis' base
under siege.
♪
After more than three weeks
of relentless battle,
the British surrender,
essentially ending
the Revolutionary War.
♪
- After the surrender
at Yorktown,
things are winding down.
The peril has passed
for the state.
♪
- Jefferson has
returned to Monticello.
His whole retreat
from Charlottesville
was looked on
with disdain by many
of his political opponents.
♪
- In December of 1781, he is
cleared by a board of inquiry
established by the House of Delegates,
but he never really feels
that he's off the hook.
♪
- I think what he learns
as a politician,
rooted in his wartime
service as governor,
is that circumstances
change very quickly,
and that it is
a foolhardy politician,
a foolhardy officeholder,
who stands
by a philosophical creed
in the face
of adverse circumstances.
- After this inquiry
clears him,
he believes
he's exiting public life.
He's still got a bit
of a cloud over him.
And he's disillusioned.
- Jefferson tells
the House of Delegates
that he has retired
from politics.
♪
He retreats back to Monticello
to continue building
his estate and to care
for his two young daughters
and pregnant wife.
♪
- The fact
that Jefferson and Martha
got pregnant again
and again suggests
a healthy physical
relationship.
- We have scraps
of evidence to suggest
that it was a very,
very close marriage,
seemingly a happy one.
Jefferson was often away.
But by comparison,
George Washington
leaves to go attend
the Continental Congress
in the spring of 1775
and doesn't come home again
for eight years.
The Second
Continental Congress,
Jefferson was
constantly going home,
to the point where people are
saying, hey, where are you?
And he constantly says,
"I want to be with my wife."
♪
- And even though she's
pregnant a significant amount
of that time,
she's highly competent
in running a household.
She understands how
to raise her daughters.
- Also, Martha seems
to be very patient
because they build the first
Monticello in January of 1772,
but he can't stop
tinkering with it.
It's constant work.
And it must have
been incredibly difficult
to establish a family
in a building site.
♪
- Jefferson loved
reworking this house.
He says,
"Pulling down and putting up
is one
of my greatest passions."
♪
He draws plan after plan,
working out what should
the sequence of rooms be,
where will his books be,
the size of his library?
He has a room
that's going to be a museum.
How will that fit
into the house?
♪
- Monticello was
a never-ending process.
He had to literally flatten
the top of the mountain
to build his house there.
- He loves this place.
He loves that mountain.
And he's seeking to impose
his vision and his will on it.
Now, when I say
he's doing it, of course,
he's not doing that labor.
♪
- It's stunningly beautiful.
But it's also very much
a Virginia house in the way
it accommodates slavery.
♪
- It's really designed to put
slavery almost out of view.
♪
- Jefferson is hiding
the work of food and hygiene,
of laundry, of firewood,
in little staircases
and lateral passageways.
- But we can actually
see children's imprints
in the bricks.
And that tells us
that these young hands
were put to work.
♪
- At Monticello,
you find yourself face to face
with Jefferson,
both what made him great
and also where he failed.
♪
- Monticello is a metaphor,
as a statement
that Jefferson
and the United States
is built on enslaved labor.
And this vision,
the story, can only be
this special and exquisite
if you can't see
what's happening underneath.
♪
[dramatic music]
- After the colonists
declare themselves free
from the tyranny
of British kings,
in the early 1780s,
many consider the rights
of the enslaved as well.
- In the mid-Atlantic,
in places like New York
and Pennsylvania,
you have the start
of movements against slavery.
And even in places
like Virginia,
there was a thought
that slavery would over time
diminish in importance.
- After the Revolution,
a number of slave owners
emancipate all of their slaves.
One of his own cousins,
Richard Randolph, did.
William Short did, a man
named William Ludwell Lee.
Jefferson knows many
of these people.
He's related to many
of these people.
Jefferson does not choose
to emancipate his slaves.
♪
- An enslaved man,
Israel Gillette Jefferson,
talks about when
he's within earshot
of a conversation
between Jefferson
and one of his good friends.
And his friend is basically
trying to convince Jefferson
that slavery needs
to be ended,
that the enslaved people
need to be freed.
♪
He hears Jefferson struggle,
saying, yeah,
I know slavery is bad,
but I don't think
we can end it.
♪
Imagine if you're
a young enslaved person
overhearing this conversation.
- You can't say
he was just a man of his time
because other people
at his time
free those enslaved people.
♪
- But Jefferson does not know
how to undo all the things
that he wants from his perfect
and idyllic house
on a mountain.
- Slavery is so essential to
his economic and social system
that even though
it's questioned,
it's very hard
to imagine extracting
oneself from that system.
♪
- After the war,
most of the founding fathers
continued to debate
the foundational principles
of the new union,
but Jefferson remains at home
with his family at Monticello.
♪
While there, he establishes
a correspondence
with Francois Barbé-Marbois,
the secretary
of the French delegation
in Philadelphia.
Marbois sends Jefferson a set
of questions in an attempt
to learn more
about the new country.
Jefferson's responses
to these queries
are eventually compiled
and published
in what will become
his first book,
entitled "Notes
on the State of Virginia."
- So the secretary
of the French delegation
asked Jefferson about
the landscape in Virginia,
the flora and the fauna
and what kind
of animals there are.
- And then he says,
tell us about how
Native Americans live.
Tell us about what slavery
means to how people live.
- The interesting thing
about Thomas Jefferson was
the way that he looked
at Native people and the way
that he looked
at African Americans
are really different.
♪
- "Notes on the State
of Virginia"
comes from Jefferson's view
of himself
as a kind of scientist,
but Jefferson always blurs
the line between what
he thinks of as observation
and what are truly
his opinions.
In the answer to the query
about Native Americans,
Jefferson starts out
with a bunch of charts.
♪
This is the name
of this group,
this is how many
of them there are,
and it goes
on and on like that,
until all of a sudden,
he's off into speculation
about, first,
Native American culture,
but then their intelligence.
- Native people of
the Old South, their farming,
from corn crops
and everything,
are quite impressive,
and probably better
than some white settlers
moving into the area.
And so they're almost
like the role models.
- He writes,
"Their execution are
"much stronger than with us
because they
"are more exercised.
"I believe the Indian then
to be in body
and mind
equal to the white man."
♪
- So he says, they're the equal
sort of humanly of us.
They just have not
been civilized.
- He claimed if they start
to speak English and live
like we do, at the cost
of their culture, of course,
they could become
the equal to whites.
- There's the idea of already
being partially civilized
because of what they do.
They won't have to be taught,
where African Americans have
to be taught because
they're pulled, clearly,
out of their natural world and
then brought to the Americas.
- But when he writes
about Black people
in "Noted on the State
of Virginia,"
he seems to traffic
in stereotypes.
- He goes on for pages
about race.
He clearly believes
that Black people
are genetically, biologically
inferior to white people.
And he says this.
♪
- I advance it
that the Blacks,
whether originally
a distinct race
or made distinct
by time and circumstances,
are inferior to the whites
in the endowments
both of body and mind.
♪
- He also says
they're essentially
intellectually useless.
- "Comparing them by their
faculties of memory, reason,
"and imagination,
it appears to me
"that in memory,
they are equal to the whites,
"in reason, much inferior,
"as I think one could
scarcely be found capable
"of tracing and comprehending
the investigations of Euclid,
"and that in imagination,
they are dull,
tasteless, and anomalous."
- Jefferson's surrounded
by enslaved people
who learned to read and write.
He's surrounded
by enslaved people who trained
for a decade or more
to be French chefs,
enslaved people
with great skill.
And yet he writes in the "Notes
on the State of Virginia"
that to free enslaved people
would be like
to free children,
that they wouldn't be able
to take care of themselves.
And yet, everything in his life
is provided by the labor
of enslaved people.
♪
- We don't do ourselves
or Jefferson any favors
by glossing that over.
We do need to see
that Jefferson's views
on racial ranking
and alleged inferiority
were part of a culture
of thought
that prevailed
in the United States
for another century.
- He did not believe
that Blacks and whites could
live together in harmony.
He says that we'll never
get over our prejudices.
They will never forgive us
for the things
that have been done.
♪
- "Deep rooted prejudices
entertained by the whites,
"10,000 recollections
by the Blacks of the injuries
"they have sustained
will probably never end
but in the extermination
of the one or the other race."
♪
- He had had the experience
with the Revolution of seeing
African American people join
the British forces to fight,
to fight
against the American colonists
for their own freedom.
And so
after the American Revolution
and the Revolutionary War,
he fears Black men.
♪
- People are quick
to hold on to the good words
that Jefferson wrote,
but they do not grapple
with the "Notes
on the State of Virginia.
It has been too easy
for people to say
Jefferson is a great success,
he did these things
for our nation,
he helped give us
this founding creed,
without grappling
with the duality of his legacy.
- Part of history is not
excusing people for what they
believed in real time,
but understanding
that if even the best people
of a given era,
the most articulate people,
if even they could be
so woefully wrong
about such elemental things,
what are we missing
in our own time?
♪
[dramatic music]
- In the spring of 1782,
Jefferson is living
a quiet and peaceful life
at Monticello.
♪
While he busies himself
with literature
and the ongoing construction
of his estate,
Martha gives birth to their
sixth child, Lucy Elizabeth.
♪
But their domestic bliss
will be short-lived.
♪
- After giving birth
to a daughter, Lucy,
Martha Jefferson has severe
postpartum health problems
throughout the summer of 1782.
♪
- Martha Jefferson
suffered greatly
during that childbirth.
Her ensuing illness
is heartbreaking.
Jefferson is at her bed
incessantly,
day in, day out,
doing everything
he possibly can
to engage her
to continue to live.
They both have enjoyed
reading to one and the other
throughout the years
from Laurence Sterne's
"Life And Opinions
of Tristram Shandy."
There is a moment
when Mrs. Jefferson tried
to write a passage from it.
- It's his wife's handwriting,
very, very faint.
It's hardly legible.
And then, in his very careful,
orderly script,
Thomas Jefferson picks up
where Martha left off.
♪
- Jefferson folded
that piece of paper.
He put it in an envelope that
included the locks of hair
of their deceased children.
- Then, on September 6, 1782,
at the age of 33,
Martha Jefferson dies.
♪
- There is the belief
that he promised his wife
before she breathed her last
that he would
never marry again.
♪
He has to be pulled away
from the bed.
- He has to be
physically lifted up.
♪
- The daughter, Martha,
is so overwhelmed.
She's only ten years old.
And we know her aunt,
Mrs. Jefferson's sister,
Elizabeth Eppes,
is right there.
And she instructs
her niece, Martha,
"Go look after your father.
There's nothing
you can do now."
You must go
and look after the living.
- He is grief stricken,
goes into, really,
a spiral of depression.
It was deep,
and it was long lasting.
♪
- Jefferson more or less shuts
down for weeks, or even months.
♪
It's clear that he
didn't know what to do,
and people around him
didn't know what to do
to help him in this grief.
♪
- His daughters
and friends actually despair
for his life at that point,
they're so worried.
♪
- They tried to get
Jefferson to ride out
into his native woods
and fields on horseback.
That's his greatest pleasure.
♪
And they continued
to lose him,
day in and day out.
The horse just meanders away
with hardly any attention
from him.
♪
It is clear
that she held a very,
very deep place in his heart
that he never forgot.
♪
- I mean, death is
a constant in his life.
He's lost a lot of children.
But this is a blow
which is very, very difficult
for him to recover from.
- Despite the criticism
he faced as governor,
Jefferson remains in high
standing among his friends
and colleagues.
Desperate to pull him out
of his depression,
they appeal to his affinity
for European luxury
and philosophy
and arrange for him to be sent
to France as a diplomat.
♪
- This is as much an attempt
to save their friend as it is
to try and serve the public.
- He thinks he has retired
from public service.
He's told his friends
that he has.
The world he envisioned
with Martha was shattered.
But somewhere, he has to be
part of creating a new world.
♪
- And so he goes to France.
He's a widower
with three young children.
And there will be dramatic
changes in his personal life
during his time in Paris.
- Jefferson's time in France
will redefine
his personal
and professional life.
He will thrive as a diplomat
and politician,
and develop a shocking
relationship
that will unexpectedly
transform not only
the next 40 years of his life,
but his enduring legacy today.
♪