Thomas Jefferson (2025) s01e04 Episode Script

1
- Previously on
"Thomas Jefferson"
- In 1779, when the war
is making its way south,
Thomas Jefferson
is elected governor
of the new Commonwealth
of Virginia.
- It's a chess match.
British want to capture
the governor of Virginia.
Jefferson is the prize.
- And then Jefferson
has to flee.
The citizens of Virginia
think he's left his duty
at the moment of great peril.
- Which led him
to a lifetime of regret
about what he had left undone
in those governor years.
- So the revolution ends
after the Battle of Yorktown.
And he's disillusioned
and exits public life
to live with his family.
- But he can't just stay home.
Somewhere he has to be part
of creating a new world.
[dramatic music]
[exciting orchestral music]
- In September 1783,
Benjamin Franklin, John Adams,
and John Jay signed
the Treaty of Paris
in the city
for which it is named.
The agreement effectively
ends the Revolutionary War
and catapults the new
United States of America
onto the world stage.
But while his fellow
forefathers established
diplomatic ties overseas,
Thomas Jefferson
remains at Monticello,
mourning the tragic loss
of his wife.
- This is a blow which
is very, very difficult
for him to recover from,
but in an attempt
to save their friend,
his friends in Virginia,
particularly James Madison,
arrange for him to be posted
as a diplomat abroad.
♪
Paris is very attractive
to Jefferson in many respects
because, as somebody
who considers himself
an enlightened philosophe
and as somebody
who studied French
throughout his life,
France held a special place
in Jefferson's heart.
♪
- And so Jefferson goes
to get the French
to go all in to support
this upstart idea
of the United States
of America.
- Because France is also
important diplomatically.
Britain would like to separate
the United States from France,
and the French
are aware of this.
So it's an interesting
moment for him
to serve as a diplomat.
♪
He arrives at the court
of Louis XVI
and Marie Antoinette
at a point
when that court is the most
important court in Europe.
And it's characterized
by excesses and glamour.
But there's a great deal
of unease and discord
really brewing.
[dramatic music]
We're a few years off
from the French Revolution,
but the underlying causes
of that revolution,
the disparities of wealth,
are there.
- Paris is alive at this point
with revolutionary fervor.
When he gets to Paris,
we are on the cusp
of a world-changing event.
♪
- On July 5, 1784, Jefferson,
his oldest daughter, Martha,
and his enslaved chef,
James Hemings,
arrive in Paris.
♪
- It's the most opulent place
he'd ever lived in.
He is in love
with the architecture,
and he talks about going
to the Hotel de Salm
and gazing at it like
a lover at his mistress.
♪
He bought all the wine,
and he bought all the food.
- Paris offered all the things
that the real Jefferson
really loved,
music, theater, the arts.
He sent home crates of stuff,
paintings, books.
This was a material,
consumer engagement
with the City of Light.
- A lot of the things
that define him
and the qualities
of his personality
are best put to use precisely
in an appointment
like ambassador to France
because Jefferson carries
the influence
of those intimate dinners
of Virginia society forward
into a dinner table diplomacy,
where Jefferson saw how
to work things out
of small groups.
There's
the interpersonal politics
within a court context.
There's no direct conflict.
There is a wooing of people
around dinner tables.
He hits his stride in France.
- While Jefferson
expertly maneuvers
around the French court,
he still grieves the loss
of his beloved wife
and finds himself unable
to connect again romantically.
- The French women
were kind of scary to him.
♪
He saw the French men and
women had adulterous affairs
right and left.
And so he professed to be
disappointed that marriage
wasn't based on affection,
as he believed it was
in his world.
- He says, young American men
shouldn't come to France
when they're too young
because they're
going to be seduced by women.
They'll be corrupted.
But if you're in your 40s,
like me, it's OK
because we have
enough republican fiber
to resist this.
- But then he became
involved with Maria Cosway,
an artist who was married.
- Maria's husband, Richard,
served as the painter
for the Prince of Wales.
Unlike most of the women
Jefferson had met,
who never left rural Virginia,
Maria is cultured
and cosmopolitan.
He becomes enamored of her.
♪
- She spoke a musical
mélange of languages.
♪
They went to museums together,
went to the countryside,
where they were able
to spend time alone.
♪
And it is here that Jefferson
fell on his right wrist
and fractured it.
So as she was about
to leave with her husband
to England, Jefferson,
who was by this time
tremendously smitten by her,
he writes the famous 12-page
"Head and Heart" letter.
It must have taken him
an entire day,
writing painstakingly
with his left hand.
♪
- In the letter, Jefferson's
heart pines for Cosway,
while his head
chastises his heart
for forming
emotional attachments
that can only result
in the pain of loss.
♪
"Head, well, friend, you
seem to be in a pretty trim.
"Heart, I am indeed
the most wretched
"of all earthly beings,
overwhelmed with grief,
"every fiber
of my frame distended
beyond its natural
powers to bear."
♪
- The heart disputes
the head's formula,
saying, without one generous
spasm of the heart,
nothing is worth anything.
The heart wins the argument.
All in all, it gives us
a lot of intimate detail
about the way
Jefferson perceived himself.
It was a testament to
his own capacity for feeling.
- And at some point,
she writes to him,
and he doesn't
answer these letters
for long stretches of time.
So he was infatuated with her,
but it sort of cooled
at some point.
- As Jefferson's
feelings for Maria wane,
he continues to wine and dine
the French court.
♪
Meanwhile,
across the Atlantic,
his fellow founding fathers
begin to debate
what the laws and tenets
of the new American
government will be.
And then in May 1787,
55 delegates from 12 states
meet in Philadelphia at what
will eventually be known
as the Constitutional
Convention.
♪
- Jefferson
and John Adams miss it.
♪
- Adams is also serving
as an ambassador overseas,
getting loans
from the Dutch and the British.
- Jefferson called
the Constitutional Convention
an assembly of demigods.
One wonders--in the same way
that we don't
have tone in email,
we don't have tone
in mail from the 18th century--
whether he was being
sarcastic or not.
He's aware of what's
going to happen,
and he follows the events
to the extent he can,
but it's very difficult
because there's almost
no information coming
out of Philadelphia
during the summer of 1787.
♪
Now, his relationship
with his protege and ally,
James Madison,
was very, very close.
♪
And Madison is going
to be the architect
of the federal Constitution
in Philadelphia.
♪
So Jefferson plays
an indirect but important role
via his correspondence
with Madison,
particularly sending him
hundreds and hundreds of books
relating to the history
of republics,
and confederacies,
and constitutions.
Jefferson's fear is
they're going to be restoring
monarchy to the United States.
- But, remember,
this is a 4-mile-an-hour world.
And Jefferson is receiving
information from Madison,
but the information is
not happening overnight.
It takes eight weeks
to sail across the Atlantic.
- And so when Madison
sends him the Constitution,
he's disappointed because
Jefferson sort of says,
well, meh, it's OK.
Madison's saying,
I'm tearing my hair out.
I sweated blood over this.
Jefferson says,
well, it could be improved.
♪
- And one of the reasons why
Jefferson had mixed feelings
about the Constitution
is he didn't see
the Constitution as being
essential to the creation
of a more perfect union.
In fact, he thought,
if you got it wrong,
it would actually drive
the states apart.
- He's a little worried
about the strength
of the presidency.
And he's very concerned
about the absence
of a Bill of Rights.
- Jefferson is adamant
that the government guarantee
personal liberties,
such as freedom of religion,
freedom of the press,
and trial by jury.
The Bill of Rights,
enshrining these values,
will be ratified
four years later in 1791.
- Jefferson also writes
that constitutions
should be temporary,
and they shouldn't last
more than 19 years,
and every generation
should govern itself.
♪
- He says, how can
you own a constitution
from some dead generation
from decades ago?
- But people
like James Madison,
who know how hard it was
to work out a compromise, say,
has this guy lost it?
How is it possible
that this person
doesn't realize how
hard it is to create
political compromise?
- So he says,
you know, we could
have a second convention.
But Madison
and his fellow founders,
they say, don't mess with it.
♪
- The Constitution is
ratified in September 1787.
And eventually,
Jefferson comes to support it.
♪
But as he comes to terms
with its compromises,
across the Atlantic,
a surprising visitor prepares
for a life-changing journey.
♪
[dramatic music]
- Throughout 1787,
while the nuances
of the new American laws
are debated in the States,
Jefferson continues to foster
diplomatic relationships
and raise his 15-year-old
daughter in France.
♪
- When Jefferson
was sent to France,
he took with him
his oldest daughter, Martha.
But he left his two
other daughters home.
♪
- In 1784,
his younger daughter, Lucy,
died of smallpox.
♪
And he is missing
his other daughter, Maria.
♪
And so in 1787, Jefferson
insists that his daughter
Maria come to France.
♪
- And he says,
"She should come
with a careful Negro woman,
such as Isabel."
And Isabel Hern was 28, 29,
but she was pregnant
at this time.
And instead,
they send Sally Hemings,
who is at the time
14 years old.
♪
- Sally Hemings' parents
are Elizabeth Hemings,
who's an enslaved woman,
a matriarch of the enslaved
community at Monticello,
and John Wayles, who was
Thomas Jefferson's
father-in-law.
So that makes Sally Hemings,
Martha Jefferson,
Thomas Jefferson's late wife,
makes them half-sisters.
♪
- So 14-year-old
Sally Hemings,
who has known Virginia
her whole life,
is asked to be the company
for young Maria Jefferson
on this weeks at sea
and then arrival in France.
♪
- In July of 1787,
Thomas Jefferson
and his eldest daughter,
Martha,
welcome his eight-year-old daughter,
Maria, and Sally Hemings
to the City of Lights.
♪
- There will be
dramatic changes
in both his and Sally Hemings'
personal life
during his time in Paris.
- When they get to Paris,
Sally Hemings
is very quickly thrust
into a position
that many Americans,
especially the enslaved people,
were never in.
She traveled over the ocean
and into this
unfamiliar territory.
- She'd come from an extremely
rural place to a metropolis.
♪
Paris was a very active place.
So it would have been
a very exciting time for her
but kind of scary.
♪
- She's by herself.
She's got an older brother,
but he's also hired out,
training to become
a professional chef.
♪
She can't speak French.
And the only people
that she knows
are Jefferson
and his daughters.
♪
And so her world in France
would have been
pretty confusing
because Jefferson is attempting
to conceal that he
has enslaved people in France
because French law
actually prohibits
enslaved people in the city.
- Although slavery isn't
officially outlawed in France
until 1794,
the Freedom Principle
had long held
that any enslaved person
who set foot on French soil
was considered free.
♪
After the Enlightenment,
slavery fell
out of fashion in Paris.
And the number of enslaved
who sued for their freedom
nearly doubled between 1762
and when Sally Hemings
arrives in 1787.
♪
- Both of the Hemingses could
have sued for their freedom.
♪
- So Jefferson has
to grapple with the rights
they have in France
that they would
not have in the United States.
- Jefferson writes,
saying that the law
is on the side
of the enslaved person.
And there's nothing
you can do if they
find out that they are free.
♪
- It will be difficult,
if not impossible,
to interrupt the course
of the law.
Nevertheless,
I have known an instance
where a person
bringing in a slave
and saying nothing
about it has not been
disturbed in his possession.
- The person Jefferson
refers to in the letter
is of course himself.
He can only hope
that the language barrier
is enough to keep
Sally and James unaware
of their options
while they're in France.
- Because if she'd gone to
the Admiralty Court and said,
this man is trying
to keep me from my freedom,
it would have been a disaster
for his reputation.
And Jefferson has his status
as the apostle of liberty
among all these other people
who admire him in France.
That would be damaged
irrevocably if they knew
he had enslaved people
with him.
That would have been
a huge embarrassment.
And so because he kept
a record of every transaction
that he made,
we know eventually
he begins to pay wages
because he understands
that it's a different status
than if they were in Virginia.
And so at that point,
she begins living a life
that was unlike anything
that she probably could
have imagined
before that time period.
♪
- Sally Hemings becomes
the maid for his daughters.
♪
So she would have had
to have been in society
accompanying her charges.
♪
- But we don't
really even know exactly
what Sally is doing all day
because the girls
are in school.
But we might extrapolate
from research,
she eventually went
from being the lady's maid
to Jefferson's daughters
to being a chambermaid
because she's being paid
with the servants
at the Hotel de Langeac,
which is Jefferson's residence.
And then in 1789,
when she's 16 years old,
Jefferson starts buying her
a good amount of clothing.
Before, he's just
paying her the salary,
but then he's
buying clothes for her.
- Jefferson's in his 40s.
His wife has died.
He is used to having people
around him who tend his body,
who dress him and undress him.
It's clear
that Sally and Jefferson
begin a sexual relationship.
♪
- When exactly
Thomas Jefferson begins
his sexual relationship
with the enslaved
Sally Hemings is unknown,
but it is clear
that the physical relationship
begins while she is in France,
between 1787 and 1789,
when she would have been
between 14 and 16 years old.
[dramatic music]
- There is no ethical landscape
in our world today that says
that a sexual relationship
between a 40-year-old male
and a 16-year-old
enslaved female is OK.
It's an unequal
power relationship.
That is absolutely certain.
But many people
in early Virginia
got married at the age of 16,
men and women.
Some people got
married younger.
It was not the scandal
in the 18th century
that certainly it
would be today.
- It's hard for us.
This is so out of bounds,
but it wasn't out of bounds
at that time.
I'm talking
about the age part of it.
The slavery part,
that's always a problem.
♪
- There has been
much speculation
about the nature of Sally
and Jefferson's relationship.
Many historians have
presented theories
that there was a deep
affection between them,
possibly even love.
- Her grandchildren say
Mr. Jefferson loved her dearly.
They don't talk
about what she felt about him.
♪
- Does she feel
flattered and adored?
Or does she feel like
she has no choice
because,
after all, he owns her?
♪
We don't know.
I think for somebody to say
that it is a deep love affair
is to make up a story
because we don't have
any evidence.
- Sally Hemings,
being an enslaved woman,
could not have consented.
She could not have
refused his advances.
There's a gross imbalance
of power.
♪
- To think about love
and to think about things
in that way without thinking
about the vulnerability
in the position
that particularly
enslaved women were in,
it makes it a very,
very fraught subject.
- And I don't know how
we position a story
that is rooted in such
an exploitative relationship
as something benevolent,
as something
that was good for her.
♪
- As Jefferson navigates
his complicated relationship
with Sally Hemings,
unrest between France's
sharply distinct classes
escalates.
♪
In April 1789,
the tension comes to a head
when factory riots lead
to the death of 25 people
at the hands of police.
♪
In the wake
of the American Revolution,
Jefferson can see the signs
of a burgeoning crisis
in France and wants
to understand its roots.
♪
- Something was rotten
in the state of France.
This was a period of the
crisis of the French monarchy.
Things were not
working all that well.
The monopolies, the abuses
of the French aristocracy,
the barriers to free exchange,
all of these things
were impoverishing
the French people.
♪
- Jefferson at one point goes
to visit a peasant's hovel.
On one hand, he provides us
with an account which explains
the conditions
that are going to lead
to the French Revolution.
On the other hand,
think of this poor peasant
who this ambassador
is kind of examining
his house as though
he's visiting, you know,
a scientific exhibit.
- Jefferson really believes
that the more
the economic interests
of the government
are aligned with the economic
interests of elites,
the more likely it is that
the liberties and opportunities
for ordinary people to pursue
life, liberty, and happiness
would be limited.
It's ironic because Jefferson
was an elite member
of the Virginia gentry.
But he saw firsthand,
French peasants
barely had enough to eat while
the elite lived in grandeur.
- And for Jefferson,
this was all proof
that the old regime
in Europe was corrupt,
and America was better
because poor people
were better off in America,
if you don't factor in
the enslaved people, of course.
♪
- Then the revolutionary
struggle becomes hotter,
and hotter, and hotter,
and sort of explodes.
♪
- In May 1789, the French
Revolution officially
begins when riots break
out at the Etats Généraux,
an assembly of representatives
from the feuding classes.
More than a hundred people
are killed in the mayhem.
- The revolution was
underway and would have
followed its course whether
he'd been there or not,
but he does host meetings with
some of the revolutionaries.
I mean, you can't escape it
in Paris in 1789.
- Jefferson drafts
a Charter of Rights
with his friend,
Marquis de Lafayette,
a French aristocrat who fought
in the American Revolution.
In August, just a month after
French insurgents stormed
a medieval political prison
known as the Bastille,
Lafayette and other French liberals
meet secretly
at Jefferson's home to discuss
a new French constitution.
- He says, "The Republican
movement in France
is a continuation
of our revolution."
So when other Americans
are put off by the terror
and because now there had
been violence, Jefferson says,
no, we've got to support this.
This was part of a global
movement for liberty.
♪
- But in September, five years
after arriving in Paris,
watching yet another violent
revolution erupt around him,
Jefferson wonders if it
may be time to return home.
♪
- In September of 1789,
as the French Revolution
gains steam,
Jefferson decides
it's time to return home.
- When it's time to come home,
Jefferson has the idea
that he's going
to take Sally and her brother,
James Hemings,
back to Monticello with him.
[dramatic music]
- Despite Jefferson's
best efforts
to keep Sally
and James in the dark
about French slavery laws,
they are both aware
of the choices
they now have.
- So the decision
would have been,
do you stay in France,
where you have freedom?
Or do you return
to slavery in the States?
- Sally Hemings decides
that she was free in France,
she was enjoying herself,
and she wanted to stay there.
- But Jefferson pleads
with Sally to return
to Monticello with him.
♪
- And so Jefferson
is forced into a position
of negotiating for what that
relationship is going to be.
- Historians can't prove this.
To produce documents
with her name,
telling people how he was
going to take care of her,
it would have
been an admission.
But this is one of the things
that historians
say is likely true.
Jefferson promises her
she would have a good life
at Monticello and that
any children she had
would be freed
when they were 21.
She agrees to that.
And she decides
to come home with him.
♪
- I'm in awe of Sally Hemings,
the courage
this young woman showed
to stand up to the man
who owned her,
to tell one of the most
powerful people in the world
the terms on which
she would do something.
♪
- Even though I imagine
she knew once she comes back
to Virginia he could say,
nah, never mind,
he could die,
and it was a huge risk.
♪
And so people ask me
all the time,
well, why did she do that?
But you have
to think about choice
under those circumstances.
- She was far from her mother.
She was far from her family.
It's not as simple
as slavery or freedom.
♪
- And I don't know
that France would
have been a real viable
solution to her at the time.
♪
When the French Revolution
is emerging in France,
what choices would she have
had as a young Black woman
not of an adult age?
Where was she going
to live in France, with whom?
- And that's a dilemma
that a number
of enslaved people faced,
even when people were deciding
whether to take their freedom
or run away when they
were in the United States.
It's great to be free,
but would you want
to be away from your family?
♪
- Well, here's what some
of the descendants and I feel.
We don't know.
There's no documentation.
♪
But we think
that she wanted to come back.
But she was really smart.
And she thought,
this man wants to be with me.
And she exercised
her own agency
because, by the way,
Sally Hemings was pregnant.
♪
- In September 1789,
Jefferson returns home
to Virginia
with his enslaved mistress,
Sally Hemings.
- When she's 17,
Sally Hemings gives birth
to her first child.
The child died.
But her relations
with Jefferson would continue.
- Jefferson moves Sally
from enslaved quarters
to a stone room
below Monticello
so that she can be closer
to his room
in the main mansion.
- Sally negotiated
with Jefferson
an easier life for herself
within Monticello's
plantation system.
- And so Sally Hemings
becomes a seamstress,
which is relatively
light labor compared
to what other enslaved women
would have been doing.
- Sally will occupy
her quarters under Monticello
for the next 40 years.
Over the course of that time,
she will bear
six more children.
- Her children
are able to remain with her,
which is different
than a lot of enslaved women.
And there's a lot more work
that I think the Hemings
are largely spared from
because of their position
within the enslaved community.
- Was there hierarchy?
Yes, there was hierarchy.
We must always remember,
members of the Hemings family
were related to their owners.
We know that other Hemings
siblings were related
to Jefferson's wife's father.
And, as a result,
they were light-skinned people.
- In the 1790s,
the Duke of Rochefoucauld
comes to Monticello.
And he reports
that there are some members
of the enslaved families
who are just as white,
if not even whiter, than he is.
♪
- Yes, many of the enslaved
people related to their owners
had privileges.
And so unfortunately, this idea
that the lighter your skin is,
the closer you are
to privileged people continues
to plague our society.
♪
- We need
to challenge ourselves
about our understanding
about race and beauty
and how it affects
how we view history.
Even though we embrace
our multiculturalism today,
we still do rank
our multiculturalism.
Our fascination
with Sally Hemings
has a lot to do
with our exoticism of her.
If she had been
an African woman
unmixed by any European blood,
I think that it might have
been even more cause
for consternation.
She's accepted now
as having been his mistress.
But I often wonder if it's
not qualified by the fact
that she is,
by many standards, half white.
I wonder if we would
be able to accept him
having a sexual relationship
with a woman
who was not mixed race.
♪
- While Jefferson settles
into a quiet life
with Sally at Monticello,
the new American government
under its first president
is beginning
to take shape without him.
[dramatic music]
- In April 1789,
while Jefferson
was still in Paris,
his friend and fellow
Virginian George Washington
had been sworn in
as the first president
of the United States.
And all of the most powerful
voices of the revolution
are vying for seats
in his cabinet.
♪
- Washington is a president
without precedent.
He is filling in the role
of president
with only the broadest outlines
being established
by the Constitution.
- He wants Jefferson
to be secretary of state,
particularly because Jefferson
has all this international
experience as a diplomat.
But Washington has to beg
Jefferson to take the job.
And he sends
James Madison to see him.
He says, hey,
are you going to accept this?
And Jefferson says,
I'm not sure.
And Madison has to tell
Washington to ask him again.
♪
This is testimony
to how highly Washington
thought of Jefferson.
He sort of bites his lip
and writes to him again
and says, please serve
as secretary of state.
The country really needs you.
And Jefferson goes,
well, if you really want me,
I guess I'll do it.
♪
- Jefferson had intended to
eventually return to France,
but in March of 1790, he heads
to the new U.S. capital
in New York City to serve
in America's first cabinet
alongside his soon-to-be rival,
Revolutionary War hero
Alexander Hamilton.
♪
- Hamilton, Washington's
young aide de camp,
is tapped
as Treasury secretary.
Now, Hamilton and Jefferson
famously feuded
throughout most
of their adult life.
And one of Hamilton's
attacks on Jefferson
was that he was an elite
who talked about populism.
And Jefferson looked
down on Hamilton
as an immigrant upstart.
- Fundamentally,
each believes the other
represents an existential
threat to the republic.
♪
Hamilton believes
that Jefferson
wants to overthrow all order.
Jefferson believes
that Hamilton is restoring
monarchy to the United States.
- Jefferson is
horrified to realize
that the system of government
that has been set up
while he was in France
seems to be heading
towards more centralized power,
what he sees
as a more British direction,
in particular
in Hamilton's plan
to centralize
the federal Treasury
and to begin accumulating debt
to build the United States.
♪
- Hamilton's financial plan,
which is modeled
on the Bank of England,
is to consolidate
one national debt
that the Treasury controls
and the government repays.
- It's a system built on
a recognizable British model,
and Jefferson hates that.
And he also wants to get
the cabinet out of New York.
He doesn't like cities.
He doesn't like New York City.
- He believes cities
were sources of corruption.
They were sources
of inequality.
The residents of cities,
in his view,
didn't make good citizens.
- He wants to move
the center of gravity
further towards the south.
And so one of the great
critical compromises
in American history is where,
over dinner
at Jefferson's house,
he brings together
Madison and Hamilton
and negotiates
moving the capital
down to Virginia area
off the Potomac,
but accepting
Hamilton's financial plan
for a more centralized
financial system.
But the banking center
will remain in New York.
In the infamous room
where it happened,
they both got what
they most wanted.
And it ends up
being a pretty good trade
in the fullness of time.
- And so there
was an opportunity there
when they did work
together productively.
- But you get that sense
of the seeds of disagreement
that will really rupture.
- And the differences
between Hamilton and Jefferson
will quickly spread
beyond the cabinet room
to the public at large.
- Despite
their successful compromise,
Jefferson and Hamilton
continue to clash.
And in this divide, America's
two-party political system
is born.
Supporters of Hamilton become
known as the Federalists.
They support
centralized government,
a national bank,
alliance with Britain,
and an economy
based on merchants and trade.
Supporters of Jefferson become
the Democratic
Republican Party.
They support states' rights,
strict interpretation
of the Constitution,
an agricultural economy,
and an alliance with France.
- It's hard for us
to imagine just how
acrimonious the 1790s were.
♪
You really had
two opposing parties form,
each of whom thought that
if the other group had power,
the American experiment
would fail.
- Jefferson and Hamilton seem
to be fighting
over everything.
And Jefferson
is telling Washington,
look,
Hamilton's out to get you.
Hamilton's going
to overthrow the republic
and institute a monarchy.
And Washington is saying,
no, he's not going to do that.
♪
- Jefferson thought
that Washington
would side with him,
naturally,
because they're
both Virginians.
But Hamilton and Washington had
been through the war together,
and Jefferson had not been.
He admired Washington.
And he wanted to be
the favored son of Washington.
And that didn't happen.
♪
[dramatic music]
- In 1793, as the American
government is taking shape,
Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI
are brutally executed
in France.
And once again,
Thomas Jefferson
and Alexander Hamilton find
themselves on opposite sides
of the political fence.
♪
- The whole world
was fighting with itself
in the 1790s in the wake
of the French Revolution.
And the reverberations
of the bloodbath
in France were felt in America.
♪
- Jefferson feels
the French Revolution is being
inspired by America's example.
And they topple their king,
so much the better,
despite the fact
that the king is the person
who'd bailed out
the United States
during the Revolutionary War.
And Jefferson's idealism
in this regard,
his radicalism
becomes a little bloody.
The statements he makes
excusing the excesses,
the mob
in the French Revolution,
are pretty close
to indefensible.
♪
- He writes one
of his most infamous letters
in response
to the French Revolution.
- My own affections have
been deeply wounded
by some of the martyrs
to this cause.
But rather than it
should have failed,
I would have seen half
the Earth desolated.
Were there but an Adam and
an Eve left in every country
and left free, it would be
better than as it is now.
- It doesn't quite say,
you need to break
a few eggs to make an omelet,
but that's
kind of the thinking.
- He is fine
with a bunch of heads
rolling down in the wake
of a guillotine.
He's an ends-just-the-means
kind of guy
when it comes to liberty.
But Washington, Hamilton, Adams
are much more concerned
that anarchy can turn
into a new type of tyranny.
Washington declares a policy
of strict neutrality.
He says, we are not
going to get dragged
into continental squabbles.
We are going to focus
on building our own strength,
economically and militarily,
and expanding and solidifying
our new nation.
Jefferson is
secretary of state,
but he disagrees with his
government's foreign policy.
Jefferson crucially
sees neutrality
as aligning the United States
with the British
and is a betrayal of this idea
of an empire of liberty.
- And so Jefferson
starts to engage
in sort of really
kind of dirty politics.
- So there's the "Gazette
of the United States,"
which is
a proadministration organ.
And Jefferson thinks
it needs a counterpoint.
And so there's a critical
excursion up the Hudson River
that Jefferson takes
with Madison.
They stop off and recruit
a newspaper editor
named Philip Freneau,
who had gone to college
at Princeton with Madison,
to be the editor
of a new opposition newspaper.
Philip Freneau
hates the British.
He'd been briefly captured
by them during the war.
But he says, you know what?
I can't make enough money
running a newspaper.
Jefferson says,
don't worry about it.
We'll hire you in the State
Department as a translator.
So Jefferson is serving
in the cabinet
as secretary of state,
furious about a foreign policy
he doesn't support.
But not only doesn't
he support it,
he's actively trying to subvert
it by funding and incubating
a new newspaper whose
sole purpose is to attack
the foreign policy
of the government
that he is serving
as secretary of state in.
♪
It's close to treasonous.
In any other context,
it would be called just that.
And it is driving
Washington nuts
to see himself being attacked
in the press.
- But Hamilton also
sponsors a newspaper,
which is basically
the party organ
of the Treasury Department.
And so what we see
is the media being used
to mobilize political opinion
in the United States
for the first time.
- They're starting
two political parties
under the nose of Washington
and against
his express wishes.
Washington was not a member
of a political party
as a matter of principle,
our first and only
independent president.
The hope was that people
in Congress
would represent
their conscience
and their constituents,
that they could do this
without retreating to faction.
♪
- In 1793,
George Washington begins
his second term as president.
And he, his vice president,
John Adams,
and secretary of the Treasury,
Alexander Hamilton,
continue on
with the Federalist initiative
for international neutrality
and a centralized
federal government.
- And so Jefferson
concludes that he's
always the odd man out.
He feels that he's not
getting anything accomplished
and that Washington isn't
listening to him anymore.
- He eventually resigns
in a huff.
♪
- In December 1793,
Jefferson retires once more
to Monticello
as the country falls deeper
into political divide.
Just 20 years after the Sons
of Liberty threw 46 tons
of tea into Boston Harbor,
the new nation appears
to be charging
toward Civil War.
And despite Thomas Jefferson's
best efforts to remove himself
from the fight,
he will soon be thrust
right back
onto the front lines
of dirty partisan politics.
♪