Thomas Jefferson (2025) s01e05 Episode Script
President Jefferson (1793-1809)
1
[dramatic music]
- Previously on
"Thomas Jefferson"
- Benjamin Franklin decides
he's going to give up
his role
as minister to France,
and Jefferson
takes over for him.
- Jefferson insists that his
daughter Maria come to France.
- And he says she should come
with a careful Negro woman.
They send Sally Hemings.
- Sally and Jefferson begin
a sexual relationship.
- She's 16 years old.
♪
- And then, when Jefferson
returns home in late 1789,
George Washington
wants Alexander Hamilton to be
secretary of the treasury
and he wants Jefferson
to be secretary of state.
Jefferson believes
that Hamilton
is restoring the British
system to the United States.
But Washington agreed
with Hamilton and not him.
- That causes bad blood,
big time.
♪
- In the summer of 1793,
Thomas Jefferson has taken
on the role as America's
first secretary of state.
Though appointed directly
by George Washington,
he finds himself constantly
at odds with the president,
his vice president John Adams,
and his treasury secretary
Alexander Hamilton.
- The presidency, it's still an
office very much in evolution.
♪
People like John Adams
and Alexander Hamilton
are constantly agitating
for more titles, more pomp,
more circumstance.
Adams thinks that people
need that kind of figurehead
to look up to,
and there should be
some continuity between
the kings of Europe
and an American president.
- And Washington
and Hamilton were
seeing the struggle to
build a meaningful army,
to build institutions.
So they bring that to
the federal government.
How do we build institutions?
Can you really trust the people
to always do the right thing?
No, of course not.
- Jefferson believes
the exact opposite.
Jefferson believes
that anything that
tends towards monarchy
or British example
is a betrayal of
the Revolution;
that this is supposed to be
a country that's bottom up,
not top down.
But Washington,
Hamilton, Adams
are much more concerned
that anarchy can turn to
a new type of tyranny.
They see it happening
in France.
- Hamilton believes that
Jefferson and the people
who will come to be called
Jeffersonian Republicans
are adherents to the
French Revolution.
He believes they want
to overthrow all order.
Anarchy will be the result.
Blood will run in the streets.
America's republican experiment
will fail
and Britain will
take over again.
- After having been in
Paris in the early years
of the French Revolution,
Jefferson staunchly
supports the popular uprising.
Despite forming relationships
with the French royals,
Jefferson says he stands for
the toppling of all kings.
♪
- When it comes to the war
between Britain and France,
Washington declares a
policy of strict neutrality.
We are not going to get dragged
into continental squabbles.
But Jefferson disagrees.
Jefferson unfairly says
that neutrality
is a de facto endorsement
of England.
- And so he says
Washington isn't
listening to him anymore.
And Jefferson resigns
as secretary of state.
But of course,
he doesn't retire entirely.
He's a political animal.
♪
For over two years, he remains
in touch with people.
He's writing letters.
And he's maintaining his
networks, as we now say.
He's still agitating
behind the scenes.
- When Washington makes
the truly revolutionary step
of announcing his intention
to leave office
after his second term, setting
the second term precedent,
it eases those monarchical
concerns immediately.
It also sets off
the first contested election.
♪
- Jefferson runs for
president in 1796.
♪
- The 1796 election marks
the first official partisan
election in the United States.
53-year-old
Thomas Jefferson runs
as a Democratic Republican
against Federalist John Adams.
♪
- Jefferson is the founder
of the Democratic
Republican Party.
And it says that
government shouldn't
be so federalized,
that a lot of the power
should go to the states.
The federal government
shouldn't spend too much,
shouldn't tax too much.
The Washingtonian party
becomes the Federalists.
They were fighting for
more centralized power.
It's an ugly fight.
Adams is cast as
a puffed-up plutocrat,
a would-be monarchist,
an elite
who's out of touch
with the common people.
Jefferson is attacked as
an effete intellectual,
who's an apostate and
a radical revolutionary,
who has no faith,
and is therefore immoral.
♪
- It's hard for us
to imagine just how
acrimonious the 1790s were.
We sort of imagine people
like Jefferson and Hamilton
as stiff.
But these are human beings,
who had emotions,
who got angry,
who felt insulted,
who didn't like each other.
The 1790s was a moment where
you really had
two opposing parties form,
each of whom thought that
if the other group had power,
the American experiment
would fail.
♪
- In 1796, the winner
of the election
is the person who
gets the most votes
in the electoral college.
But unlike today,
the person who comes second
becomes vice president.
- In theory,
this is really nice.
You're going to reunite
the nation after an election
and get people to transcend
their partisan divides
by working together.
- But that doesn't happen.
♪
- Adams wins.
Jefferson becomes
his vice president.
And actually, Adams makes
overtures to working together,
but Jefferson rebuffs.
- Jefferson thought he'd
been there at the beginning,
and he wanted it to be
the way he wanted it.
He thought that he was right.
He thought the Republicans
are the nation.
That's the way he saw it.
- He's already
planning for a rematch.
- Rather than watch Adams
and the Federalists
move forward with an agenda
he disagrees with,
Jefferson disengages from
his role as vice president.
♪
- He comes back to Monticello
a lot during this time
to his mistress.
Sally Hemings has
her first child Harriet
in 1795 before Jefferson
becomes vice president.
And then, thereafter,
every two or three years,
has another baby.
- Meanwhile, in Philadelphia,
John Adams and his
Federalist cabinet
receive fierce criticism
and accusations of tyranny.
Adams signs the Alien
and Sedition Acts,
which authorized the
president to deport immigrants
and arrest any citizens who
make what he deems to be
false or malicious statements
about the federal government.
The Democratic Republicans
staunchly oppose these acts,
which they believe
are direct assaults
to the freedom of speech
guaranteed by
the First Amendment.
A promise to repeal these
unconstitutional acts
will be a tenant
of Jefferson's
next presidential campaign.
- The 1796 election,
it's an ugly fight.
But the election of 1800
is even uglier.
[drumming]
- You see the beginning of
a vitriolic partisan press
that is full of misinformation
and half-truths and truths
that are exaggerated.
- I mean, Adams is accused
of being a hermaphrodite.
- It's widely reported by
Federalists in New England
that if Jefferson is elected,
he's an atheist
and he'll take
your Bibles away.
- The Federalists really
believed that if Jefferson
was elected, you would have
a French-loving anarchist
who is hostile to the
Christian religion in power,
and he would threaten
the stability of society
with all his wild-eyed ideas
of letting the people
rule themselves.
- Now,
on the other side of this,
Jeffersonians had
been broadly hinting
that if Jefferson
didn't become president,
the Union was gone--
the experiment in Republican
government would fail.
Jefferson and Adams become
highly polarizing
and polarized figures.
♪
- Paradoxically, because
of the intense animosities,
you also have
intense engagement.
We've seen this in our
most recent election,
that that animosity in some
ways can breed engagement.
Citizens are really coming out
to make their will known.
So both the Federalists
and Jefferson realize
that they need
to appeal to voters,
and voters need to
therefore be informed,
or misinformed
as the case may be,
so that they'll vote
for the right person.
And this is really important
for American democracy
because the voters themselves
are starting to learn
that they have a role to play.
- And so in order to appeal to
and mobilize support
in Virginia,
Jefferson says, in order
for a republic to succeed,
its citizens
should be small farmers,
farming their own land--
independent farmers.
- There is this
weird thing where
you have a wealthy person
who is a champion
of supposedly the little guy.
But he is seen as the person
who represents the common man.
He's against banks
and the elites,
and he wants public education
for people.
That kind of talk
is galvanizing,
and makes him popular
among artisans and farmers
and people who recoil
at the Federalists,
whom they see as elitists.
♪
- In the election of 1800,
it's a confused and confusing
election because it ends up
that New York Senator
Aaron Burr and Jefferson,
both Republicans,
are tied in the
electoral college.
And that means the outgoing
House of Representatives,
which is dominated
by Federalists,
has to decide the election.
- And it takes Congress
36 tries to break that tie.
♪
- After two months
of House re-votes,
lobbying,
and backdoor dealing,
Jefferson's adversary
Alexander Hamilton writes,
"In a choice of evils,
let them take the least.
Jefferson is in every view
less dangerous than Burr."
And so thanks to the support
of his archrival,
on February 17, 1801,
Thomas Jefferson is announced
as the third president
of the United States.
♪
- On March 4, 1801,
after an extremely fraught
and ugly election,
57-year-old Thomas Jefferson
is elected the third president
of the United States.
♪
- Jefferson gets it by
the skin of his teeth.
And this is the first time
we've had a change of parties
in the United States.
These two parties have
believed for a decade
that the other represents
a mortal danger,
an existential threat,
to the United States.
♪
For the people have spoken,
and they have decided
to elect a different
president in response
to Federalist highhandedness.
And so this is a
revolution because we had
a peaceful transfer of power.
This is a big part of what the
American political tradition
is all about.
♪
Thomas Jefferson is the first
president to be inaugurated
in Washington, D.C.
- Jefferson walks over into
the old Senate chamber.
And in that chamber
are gathered
our entire government.
They have the House of
Representatives, the Senate,
and the Supreme Court.
[applause]
- Adams is bitter.
He bails on the inauguration.
- After the swearing-in,
Jefferson then turns
to read his inaugural address.
- And it's the first great
presidential inaugural speech.
♪
It's his best piece of writing
since the Declaration.
♪
- "Let us, then,
fellow citizens,
"unite with one heart
and one mind.
"Let us restore to
social intercourse
"that harmony and affection,
without which liberty
and even life itself
are but dreary things."
- The first inaugural
is all about togetherness
and how beautiful
the country is.
♪
- He is preaching the
values of national unity,
saying famously,
we are all Republicans,
we are all Federalists.
He defends the
right of dissent,
saying criticism in a
democracy is your birthright.
Our country is going to be
strong enough to withstand it.
That's new.
But what's really
stunning is when
he becomes
a born-again Washingtonian
on the issue
of foreign policy.
Remember, he has been
arguing against neutrality,
saying it's a de facto
endorsement of England.
Suddenly, he's in
the presidential chair,
and he starts by
extolling the virtues
of America's relative isolation
from the problems of Europe.
We're insulated from
those fights, he says.
We don't need to
be part of them.
That's what Washington's
been arguing all along
that he's been attacking.
- "Let us stand with
courage and confidence,
"pursue our own federal
and republican principles,
"our attachment to union and
representative government,
"kindly separated by nature
and a wide ocean
from the exterminating havoc
of one quarter of the globe."
- He's saying like,
we're really lucky because
the Atlantic Ocean separates us
from our greatest enemies.
And also, we're really
fortunate because,
on the other side of us,
to our west,
there's a bunch of forests
through which
it's hard for enemies to come.
- And then he does
a better articulation
of Washington's vision
of foreign policy for America
than Washington ever did,
despite spending
the past decade
fighting those principles.
♪
- "Equal and exact justice
to all men
"of whatever state
or persuasion,
"religious or political,
"peace, commerce, and honest
friendship with all nations,
entangling alliances
with none."
- It shows how much
that where you stand
is often a matter
of where you sit,
that Jefferson is
already being changed
and constrained by
the responsibility
of the presidency.
A president has an
obligation to think bigger.
♪
- But the address itself,
nobody could hear it.
♪
Because he basically
had his text
and he mumbled his text
to himself.
♪
- He literally reads it.
He holds it up this close.
He has his spectacles on, and
he reads his inaugural address
very much like this.
They say that those seated
beyond the second row
could not hear
a single word he uttered.
♪
- So I argue Jefferson couldn't
run for president today.
He doesn't have the skill set,
didn't like speaking in public,
doesn't like conflict,
couldn't have a debate.
He has the wrong skill set
to run for president,
not just today,
but, frankly,
throughout much
of American history.
- As soon as Jefferson
moves into the White House,
he begins to redefine
the role of the presidency.
♪
- Washington was very aware
of his dignity and gravitas.
And in many respects,
this was very important
because this was
a new government
and Washington was
striving to give
that government legitimacy.
Jefferson, by contrast,
was very critical of what
he saw as a kind of regal
style around Washington,
and actively sought
to push against that
in his presidency.
He walks to the Capitol
to be inaugurated.
He doesn't take a coach.
He wears a plain brown suit.
Famously,
in November of 1803,
he encountered the British
ambassador Anthony Merry.
♪
Merry was in his full
diplomatic uniform,
and was dressed appropriately
to meet a head of state.
And Merry commented
with some disdain--
Jefferson, as he put it,
was wearing
down-at-the-heels slippers.
He called him slovenly, even.
This wasn't an accident.
He also was making
a political statement here.
♪
In contrast
to the imperial grandeur
that Merry represented,
Jefferson was deliberately
attempting to cultivate
a democratic sensibility,
and expressing that
in the way he dressed
when he greeted Merry.
♪
- As president,
Jefferson does not try
to dominate public debate.
He also governs in that
dinner table diplomacy format
that hearkens back
to his youth in Virginia.
- Dinners at the
Jefferson White House,
instead of having
formal seating plans,
the seating was pell-mell,
as they described it.
People were meant to just
find their own seats.
And this is more democratic
than the more formal style
of the Washington
administration.
- He knows he's not going
to command a room
the way Washington did.
But he brings together
people at his dinner table
for honest and frank
discussion and debate.
He gains political
intelligence.
He networks.
He earns goodwill.
He doesn't necessarily
combine the Republicans
and the Federalists at
the same dinner table,
but the Federalists in
Congress get to know him.
And they find that,
on an interpersonal level,
he's almost
impossible to dislike.
He's interesting.
He listens.
That's something that most
politicians are terrible at.
♪
- But while Jefferson
gains a reputation
as a charming politician
in Washington,
in Virginia, he gains a
reputation for something else.
[birds chirping]
[dramatic music]
- Two years into
his presidency,
Thomas Jefferson is popular.
He's established America's
first military academy
at West Point
and has repealed
a number of controversial
taxes and laws,
and let the unconstitutional
Alien and Sedition Acts
expire.
But though he is
a political success,
rumors fly about
his personal life.
♪
- People who knew Jefferson
noticed that
when they come to dinners
at Monticello,
that there seemed to be
a number of mixed-race people
who kind of resembled
Thomas Jefferson around.
♪
- Over the years, there are
some blind items in newspapers
clearly talking
about Jefferson
and his addiction
to golden affections,
meaning mixed-race women.
So we get a sense that
people are talking
about this in his area.
- Then, in September 1802,
a bombshell article
is published by popular
political writer
James Callender.
- Callender had really
come to the fore
for attacking
Alexander Hamilton
on behalf of Jefferson
in the 1790s.
- He also wrote some really
nasty things about John Adams
in the past, which Jefferson
ends up supporting.
So Callender is one of the
people who got jailed because
of the Sedition Act,
and Jefferson promised
to pardon all of those people
if he were elected.
And when Jefferson is elected,
Callender was one
of those individuals.
- Callender was looking
to restart his career.
And he had asked Jefferson for
an appointment as postmaster,
but Jefferson declined
to give him that post.
♪
- So Callender turns on him.
♪
- It's James Thompson
Callender
who will publish and make
public the allegations
that Jefferson had had
a longstanding relationship
with one of the people
he enslaved, Sally Hemings.
♪
- He writes that Sally Hemings
only has a child
nine months after she has been
in close physical contact
to Thomas Jefferson.
♪
When Thomas Jefferson
is away in Washington,
Sally Hemings isn't
getting pregnant.
When Thomas Jefferson
is away in Philadelphia,
she's not getting pregnant.
When Thomas Jefferson
is at Monticello
and Sally is at Monticello,
she's getting pregnant.
♪
- It's a bombshell.
It's a huge scandal.
♪
- Callender uses this
as an attempt
to attack Thomas Jefferson,
to discredit his suitability
to be president.
- He refers to her as a slut
as common as the pavement.
It's pretty vile stuff.
- This is grist for
the political mill
of Jefferson's opponents.
The Federalist press in
particular picks up on this,
and there are derisory cartoons
mocking Jefferson and Hemings.
♪
So in response to this,
Jefferson has to adopt
a media strategy, effectively.
And his strategy
is to say nothing.
♪
- So there's just silence.
- Silence.
He was not going to give
people the satisfaction
of responding, as if
this were their business.
♪
- It never gained
any traction.
I mean, it's something
that people talk about,
but it's not something that
people get very upset about.
So it kind of comes and goes.
- It doesn't have
the kind of effect
that James Callender wanted.
People think that
this is going to sink
Jefferson's presidency.
But it doesn't.
People didn't care.
- The scandal doesn't
sink Jefferson,
but his resolve to ignore it
solidifies America's belief
in the First Amendment and
the press's right to attack
any sitting president.
And like any scandal,
the Hemings story
becomes old news
when President Jefferson's
next move dominates headlines.
♪
In 1803,
Jefferson turns his attention
to the Louisiana Territory,
an area comprised of more
than 800,000 square miles.
- Jefferson says
this is the most
important spot on the globe
for us because of geography.
And whoever controls
New Orleans
basically has
a knife to our throat
because the United States
at that time
extended from
the Atlantic Ocean
to the Mississippi west of
the Appalachian Mountains--
just a rapidly growing part
of the United States.
That growing population
west of the mountains
can't get their
produce to market
easily over the mountains.
So what do they do?
They go down the Ohio River
to the Mississippi,
down the Mississippi
to New Orleans,
through the Gulf of Mexico,
and to the wider world.
♪
- And so if you have
a hostile power
controlling access
to New Orleans,
then you have several problems.
One is the trade down
the Mississippi River.
The other was it wasn't clear
that the Americans in the West
would remain loyal
to the nation,
and Jefferson's dream of an
expanding empire could falter.
♪
- He thought America should
have the entire continent.
♪
- In 1803,
the Louisiana Territory
is controlled by France
and its notoriously
erratic leader,
Napoleon Bonaparte.
♪
Originally, Napoleon had
grand plans to establish
a North American empire.
But around the same time
he acquires Louisiana in 1800,
he begins to embroil France
in battles all over Europe.
By 1802, he has lost interest
in North America
and needs cash to fund his
military campaigns in Europe.
Jefferson sees an opportunity.
- He also thought that
one of the purposes
of the American Revolution was
to take the United States
out of European conflict.
He thought that if you could
have an ocean on one side
and an ocean on the other
side, you could have peace.
So it was about
national security.
- Jefferson sends
a trusted dignitary to France
to negotiate a sale
with the volatile dictator.
- The negotiations
were undertaken
by Robert Livingston.
But Robert Livingston
is aging,
he's deaf,
and he didn't speak French.
French was the language
of diplomacy
at the turn of
the 19th century.
It was also
the language of France
[laughing] At the turn of the
19th century, and remains so.
And Jefferson's worried
about this.
And so he dispatches
James Monroe to assist.
Monroe had served in France
before as a diplomat.
His French was better
than Livingston's.
And Monroe was the luckiest
diplomat in American history
because he turns up
virtually at the same moment
Napoleon has decided
to sell Louisiana
to the United States.
♪
- Napoleon offers to sell
the entire Louisiana Territory
to the United States
for $15 million--
about $388 million today.
♪
- Jefferson, in the 1790s,
and certainly
when he was
secretary of state,
had been an advocate
of what was called
strict construction
of the Constitution.
If something
is not stipulated,
if it's not specified
in the Constitution,
he said,
look, you can't do it.
Well, nowhere in
the Constitution
does it authorize the
president of the United States
to buy hundreds of thousands
of square miles of territory
just because it's a good deal.
- Jefferson talked about
maybe we should float the idea
of a constitutional amendment
to authorize it.
- And his secretary of state,
his old friend James Madison,
said, look, if you dither,
Napoleon could change his mind.
We don't have time for this.
Think back
to his governorship.
One of the things
he learned was
you can't dither when
you're making decisions.
Because if you do,
disaster can happen.
- So Jefferson's advisors
convinced him, look,
just do it.
- And so, presented
with this opportunity,
Jefferson seized it
with two hands
because he believed
this was essential
for the economic future
of the United States.
♪
- And so, in October of 1803,
Jefferson authorizes
James Monroe
to accept Napoleon's offer,
and effectively increases
America's size by 140%.
♪
- It becomes
one of the most intense
and significant actions
the federal government
has ever done,
to more than double
the size of the nation
by buying land.
♪
- It was a great
real estate deal.
But the Jefferson
who purchases Louisiana
despite constitutional scruples
is acting like a king,
the very thing
he supposedly despised.
♪
- If Alexander Hamilton
had tried to buy Louisiana,
Thomas Jefferson's head
would have exploded
because it would have been
this massive overreach
of constitutional power.
But Thomas Jefferson
as president does it.
- So he's willing to embrace
his inconsistencies
when it helps achieve
larger goals.
- As he said, you can believe
something in principle,
but act differently
in practice.
That's the nature of politics.
♪
- Despite its hypocrisy,
the Louisiana Purchase
is the biggest accomplishment
of Jefferson's presidency.
But let's not forget
that land is occupied.
♪
So that expansion,
that necessary growth
as he sees it,
will come at the expense
of Indigenous people.
And in the southern part
of that,
where slave-based agriculture
is being practiced,
much of the labor is going to
be provided by enslaved labor.
♪
- Expanding the size
of the country
opened up that territory
for slavery.
♪
- Acquiring
the Louisiana Territory
gives the United States
large tracts of land
ripe for the
cultivation of cotton,
which in 1802 accounts
for nearly
20% of American exports.
However,
the profitability of cotton
relies entirely
on unpaid labor.
- This vision of his,
it's coming
at the expense of others.
♪
- The Louisiana Purchase
is a major victory
for the Jefferson
administration.
The acquired land
more than doubles
the size of the country.
Just seven months later,
on May 14, 1804,
Jefferson sends Meriwether
Lewis and William Clark
on an expedition
to explore and survey
not only the newly acquired
530 million acres,
but the uncharted mountains
and Pacific Northwest beyond.
- Jefferson was also
very interested
in issues around exploration.
And he's got some
bizarre ideas.
For example, he thinks there
might still be woolly mammoths
west of the Mississippi River
because he's not sure
how natural history
might have unfolded there.
- Meriwether Lewis
and William Clark
have four dozen men with them.
And so it's a huge expedition,
called the Corps of Discovery.
As they're going up
the Missouri
and they're carrying
all of this equipment,
they are instructed
to keep journals
to give to Thomas Jefferson.
They discovered
178 new kinds of plants,
122 species of animals.
- Lewis and Clark depart
from St. Louis, Missouri,
and over the course
of two years,
travel more than 8,000 miles
to the Pacific Ocean.
They are often touted
as lone adventurers,
taming uncharted territory.
But in reality,
they elicit the help
of hundreds
of Indigenous people
throughout their journey.
- Lewis and Clark
meet something like
50 different tribes, handing
out these peace medals--
like medallions.
Lewis and Clark told
the native leaders,
you are friends with
Thomas Jefferson.
♪
The difficulty in world history
is always in shared space,
and that's where he begins
to change his ideas
about the rights
of Native people.
[tense music]
- Jefferson believed that
there were stages
of human development,
and that Native Americans
had the potential to be equal
to European Americans,
but they were at a different
stage of development.
♪
- It was all tied up
with this notion of
America and North America
and the New World
having inherently
good things in it.
And Native Americans
were part of that.
But Africans were never
supposed to be here.
So Jefferson says Blacks
are intellectually inferior.
- And because of that,
Jefferson's Indian policy
was to cultivate Native people
so that they would become
"more civilized."
- Jefferson said
that Native Americans
had to adopt European ways.
They had to farm
like Europeans.
They had to bring their women
in the house.
In many Native American
cultures, women worked.
And he said
we should intermarry,
our blood should mingle.
So that was his solution
for Native Americans.
- He thought they could
become the equal to whites--
at the cost of their
culture, of course.
He lamented, as he saw it,
that they would probably
never catch up.
But he allowed for the
possibility that they might.
♪
- But also,
Thomas Jefferson
wants to really kind of
keep them at peace.
He believes that,
if we keep them at peace,
we then can later
bargain for their lands.
♪
And so trading posts
are set up by Jefferson
and the government,
and owned by the government,
not individuals.
That's key.
- Jefferson's strategy
for western expansion,
first laid out in a letter
to William Henry Harrison
in 1803, is quite clear--
"to promote this disposition
to exchange lands,
"which they have to spare
and we want,
"we shall push
our trading uses,
"and be glad to see the good
and influential individuals
"among them run in debt.
"We observe that when
these debts get beyond
"what the individuals can pay,
they become willing
to lock them off
by a cession of lands."
- He sees, the more that
they become dependent
upon American goods,
then they will build up debts,
then they will need to pay
with their lands.
It's maneuvering.
It's exploitation.
It's taking advantage.
- He admired Native peoples,
but he believed they were
passing from the scene
because that was
the price of progress.
- For Jefferson,
the fact was there were
two possible solutions
for Native Americans--
assimilation or annihilation.
♪
- In November 1804,
fueled in part
by his successful acquisition
of the Louisiana Territory,
Jefferson is reelected
in a landslide victory
over the Federalist candidate
Charles Pinckney.
[dramatic music]
His second term
is largely uneventful,
until 1807,
when he is yet again faced
with a delicate
foreign policy issue.
As Britain and France duel
in a series of battles
surrounding Napoleon's attempts
to annex Italy and Germany,
despite its distance, America
is caught in the crossfire.
♪
- Britain and France
are at war.
And the United States benefits
from this because
the United States trades
with both sides.
♪
The United States is neutral,
and Jefferson believes
in free trade.
He said, we should be able to
trade with anybody we like.
♪
The British and the French
say, you can trade with us,
but you can't trade
with our enemies.
Also, since Britain hasn't
always recognized or respected
American independence,
the British Navy
has a habit of engaging in
what's called impressment,
where they stop
American merchant ships
and review their crews.
And if they identify
anybody they believe
is a deserter
from the Royal Navy,
they take them off the ship.
And then, in 1807,
there's an incident
off the coast of Virginia,
when a British Navy ship,
the HMS "Leopard,"
stopped a United States warship,
the USS "Chesapeake."
So not a merchant ship--
and this is important--
just within
international waters.
And there are actually
deserters on the "Chesapeake."
So the British forces them
into the Royal Navy.
And the "Leopard" fires
on the "Chesapeake."
[explosion]
And there's a widespread call
to declare war on Britain.
♪
There's also
a widespread belief
that the British
are encouraging
Native peoples in the West
to attack American settlers.
And these are the issues
that are going to become
the justification for
a declaration of war in 1812.
But Jefferson recognized
that the United States
was not in a position
to go to war in 1807.
And so he proposed an embargo.
He said, the United States
will not trade with anybody.
We're taking our ball
and we're going home.
♪
- Jefferson believed
Americans could show
France and England
that their economic interests
lay in peaceful free trade.
So the solution was to hold
all American ships in port.
- I don't think this is
necessarily as naive
as it's often portrayed.
I think it's the least
bad option available to him.
However, it's a disaster.
♪
- Jefferson imposes
an embargo.
He closes all
U.S. ports to exports,
and severely restricts
imports from Britain.
- The embargo wrecks
the American economy.
- American exports collapse.
- It led to protests.
It led to one of America's
first secession movements.
New England Federalists met and
talked about the possibility
of leaving the Union.
- The authority
of the government
is called into question.
Western farmers, who are
Jefferson's core constituency,
they suffer really, really
badly as a result of this.
Smuggling is rife.
- So because of this,
he goes through a period where
he's not as popular
as he was before.
And he's pretty thin skinned,
very thin skinned.
He didn't like criticism.
- Desperate to revive
his public image,
Jefferson turns to
the controversial business
of slavery.
♪
The cotton harvested
by unpaid labor
had nearly doubled
since the Revolution.
In 1808,
the Southern United States
is home to more
millionaires per capita
than any other region
on Earth.
And so despite
Northern sentiments
moving towards emancipation,
national abolition
is out of the question.
Instead, Jefferson makes
a calculated move.
- There was
a compromise made
at the Constitutional
Convention in 1787,
where Congress couldn't outlaw
American participation
in the transatlantic
slave trade for 20 years.
- So going back to 1806,
President Jefferson
goes to Congress and says,
in 1808, we can end
the slave trade.
Let's pass a law now
so that the slave traders know
that on January 1, 1808,
the slave trade
will be illegal,
and they won't bring any
more slaves in after that.
We've got to give them
advance notice.
- This is the most
concrete step he took
during his long public life
in opposition to slavery.
♪
And it is a significant step,
but it's a relatively
moderate step.
♪
- In the North, the gradual
abolition of slavery
had been rolling out
for decades.
Even in the Deep South,
they're not really worried
about importing slaves
from Africa anymore.
People have a lot of slaves.
- Look, almost everyone
agrees at the time
that the transatlantic
slave trade
is just a terrible, terrible,
terrible crime.
And so for slaveholders
who want to demonstrate
their anti-slavery
credentials,
that's the position
they can take.
- Now, we look at that and say,
well, that's ridiculous,
because obviously slaves
are going to increase here.
They're going to reproduce.
- Abandoning
the transatlantic slave trade
only makes American slavery
more lucrative.
♪
- Jefferson, in his ledgers,
at one point
does calculate that there's
a guaranteed 4% rise in value
over time of slave women,
who are going to reproduce.
He sees women are valuable
in Virginia precisely because
you're thinking about
selling their children.
♪
- Years later,
Jefferson writes,
"I consider a woman who brings
a child every two years
"as more profitable than
the best man of the farm.
"What she produces is in
addition to the capital,
while his laborers disappear
in mere consumption."
♪
- After the abolition
of the slave trade,
the value of domestic slaves
is actually going to go up.
- So this also simply makes
Jefferson much richer.
And there's
one more piece of this,
which historians
don't talk about very much.
♪
Under Jefferson's law,
if you import slaves
to the United States
and you're caught--
you're smuggling them--
the Africans will be seized
and they are given to
the governor of the state
where they're brought in.
And the governor
gets to sell them
for the benefit of the state.
So the state makes money,
and Jefferson
doesn't have to worry
about freeing Black people.
And so the governments
of the states
will become involved
in the very slave trade
that we're supposed
to be suppressing.
- As President,
Jefferson has the opportunity
to untangle America from
its dependence on slavery.
Yet his actions only ensure
that the country continues
to rely on slave labor
for another 57 years.
♪
- In 1809,
Jefferson has no interest
in serving a third term.
♪
Washington had set
the precedent
of a president serving
two terms.
And so he would only
serve two terms.
- He is somebody who is
happy to have the job,
but is also ready
for it to end.
- And so, after 40 years
in public service,
he said, probably one of
the greatest pleasures
was to leave eight years
of a splendid misery.
♪
He is putting
the federal government
that he built in the hands
of some very close friends.
- When he leaves office,
he is succeeded
by his friend James Madison,
and then James Monroe.
So he has sort of
an extended term
even after he's gone because
his acolytes take his place.
And he is confident that
the political program
of the Democratic
Republican Party,
of which he was the head,
would continue.
- But though
his political career ends
in 1809, Jefferson's story
is far from over.
♪
[dramatic music]
- Previously on
"Thomas Jefferson"
- Benjamin Franklin decides
he's going to give up
his role
as minister to France,
and Jefferson
takes over for him.
- Jefferson insists that his
daughter Maria come to France.
- And he says she should come
with a careful Negro woman.
They send Sally Hemings.
- Sally and Jefferson begin
a sexual relationship.
- She's 16 years old.
♪
- And then, when Jefferson
returns home in late 1789,
George Washington
wants Alexander Hamilton to be
secretary of the treasury
and he wants Jefferson
to be secretary of state.
Jefferson believes
that Hamilton
is restoring the British
system to the United States.
But Washington agreed
with Hamilton and not him.
- That causes bad blood,
big time.
♪
- In the summer of 1793,
Thomas Jefferson has taken
on the role as America's
first secretary of state.
Though appointed directly
by George Washington,
he finds himself constantly
at odds with the president,
his vice president John Adams,
and his treasury secretary
Alexander Hamilton.
- The presidency, it's still an
office very much in evolution.
♪
People like John Adams
and Alexander Hamilton
are constantly agitating
for more titles, more pomp,
more circumstance.
Adams thinks that people
need that kind of figurehead
to look up to,
and there should be
some continuity between
the kings of Europe
and an American president.
- And Washington
and Hamilton were
seeing the struggle to
build a meaningful army,
to build institutions.
So they bring that to
the federal government.
How do we build institutions?
Can you really trust the people
to always do the right thing?
No, of course not.
- Jefferson believes
the exact opposite.
Jefferson believes
that anything that
tends towards monarchy
or British example
is a betrayal of
the Revolution;
that this is supposed to be
a country that's bottom up,
not top down.
But Washington,
Hamilton, Adams
are much more concerned
that anarchy can turn to
a new type of tyranny.
They see it happening
in France.
- Hamilton believes that
Jefferson and the people
who will come to be called
Jeffersonian Republicans
are adherents to the
French Revolution.
He believes they want
to overthrow all order.
Anarchy will be the result.
Blood will run in the streets.
America's republican experiment
will fail
and Britain will
take over again.
- After having been in
Paris in the early years
of the French Revolution,
Jefferson staunchly
supports the popular uprising.
Despite forming relationships
with the French royals,
Jefferson says he stands for
the toppling of all kings.
♪
- When it comes to the war
between Britain and France,
Washington declares a
policy of strict neutrality.
We are not going to get dragged
into continental squabbles.
But Jefferson disagrees.
Jefferson unfairly says
that neutrality
is a de facto endorsement
of England.
- And so he says
Washington isn't
listening to him anymore.
And Jefferson resigns
as secretary of state.
But of course,
he doesn't retire entirely.
He's a political animal.
♪
For over two years, he remains
in touch with people.
He's writing letters.
And he's maintaining his
networks, as we now say.
He's still agitating
behind the scenes.
- When Washington makes
the truly revolutionary step
of announcing his intention
to leave office
after his second term, setting
the second term precedent,
it eases those monarchical
concerns immediately.
It also sets off
the first contested election.
♪
- Jefferson runs for
president in 1796.
♪
- The 1796 election marks
the first official partisan
election in the United States.
53-year-old
Thomas Jefferson runs
as a Democratic Republican
against Federalist John Adams.
♪
- Jefferson is the founder
of the Democratic
Republican Party.
And it says that
government shouldn't
be so federalized,
that a lot of the power
should go to the states.
The federal government
shouldn't spend too much,
shouldn't tax too much.
The Washingtonian party
becomes the Federalists.
They were fighting for
more centralized power.
It's an ugly fight.
Adams is cast as
a puffed-up plutocrat,
a would-be monarchist,
an elite
who's out of touch
with the common people.
Jefferson is attacked as
an effete intellectual,
who's an apostate and
a radical revolutionary,
who has no faith,
and is therefore immoral.
♪
- It's hard for us
to imagine just how
acrimonious the 1790s were.
We sort of imagine people
like Jefferson and Hamilton
as stiff.
But these are human beings,
who had emotions,
who got angry,
who felt insulted,
who didn't like each other.
The 1790s was a moment where
you really had
two opposing parties form,
each of whom thought that
if the other group had power,
the American experiment
would fail.
♪
- In 1796, the winner
of the election
is the person who
gets the most votes
in the electoral college.
But unlike today,
the person who comes second
becomes vice president.
- In theory,
this is really nice.
You're going to reunite
the nation after an election
and get people to transcend
their partisan divides
by working together.
- But that doesn't happen.
♪
- Adams wins.
Jefferson becomes
his vice president.
And actually, Adams makes
overtures to working together,
but Jefferson rebuffs.
- Jefferson thought he'd
been there at the beginning,
and he wanted it to be
the way he wanted it.
He thought that he was right.
He thought the Republicans
are the nation.
That's the way he saw it.
- He's already
planning for a rematch.
- Rather than watch Adams
and the Federalists
move forward with an agenda
he disagrees with,
Jefferson disengages from
his role as vice president.
♪
- He comes back to Monticello
a lot during this time
to his mistress.
Sally Hemings has
her first child Harriet
in 1795 before Jefferson
becomes vice president.
And then, thereafter,
every two or three years,
has another baby.
- Meanwhile, in Philadelphia,
John Adams and his
Federalist cabinet
receive fierce criticism
and accusations of tyranny.
Adams signs the Alien
and Sedition Acts,
which authorized the
president to deport immigrants
and arrest any citizens who
make what he deems to be
false or malicious statements
about the federal government.
The Democratic Republicans
staunchly oppose these acts,
which they believe
are direct assaults
to the freedom of speech
guaranteed by
the First Amendment.
A promise to repeal these
unconstitutional acts
will be a tenant
of Jefferson's
next presidential campaign.
- The 1796 election,
it's an ugly fight.
But the election of 1800
is even uglier.
[drumming]
- You see the beginning of
a vitriolic partisan press
that is full of misinformation
and half-truths and truths
that are exaggerated.
- I mean, Adams is accused
of being a hermaphrodite.
- It's widely reported by
Federalists in New England
that if Jefferson is elected,
he's an atheist
and he'll take
your Bibles away.
- The Federalists really
believed that if Jefferson
was elected, you would have
a French-loving anarchist
who is hostile to the
Christian religion in power,
and he would threaten
the stability of society
with all his wild-eyed ideas
of letting the people
rule themselves.
- Now,
on the other side of this,
Jeffersonians had
been broadly hinting
that if Jefferson
didn't become president,
the Union was gone--
the experiment in Republican
government would fail.
Jefferson and Adams become
highly polarizing
and polarized figures.
♪
- Paradoxically, because
of the intense animosities,
you also have
intense engagement.
We've seen this in our
most recent election,
that that animosity in some
ways can breed engagement.
Citizens are really coming out
to make their will known.
So both the Federalists
and Jefferson realize
that they need
to appeal to voters,
and voters need to
therefore be informed,
or misinformed
as the case may be,
so that they'll vote
for the right person.
And this is really important
for American democracy
because the voters themselves
are starting to learn
that they have a role to play.
- And so in order to appeal to
and mobilize support
in Virginia,
Jefferson says, in order
for a republic to succeed,
its citizens
should be small farmers,
farming their own land--
independent farmers.
- There is this
weird thing where
you have a wealthy person
who is a champion
of supposedly the little guy.
But he is seen as the person
who represents the common man.
He's against banks
and the elites,
and he wants public education
for people.
That kind of talk
is galvanizing,
and makes him popular
among artisans and farmers
and people who recoil
at the Federalists,
whom they see as elitists.
♪
- In the election of 1800,
it's a confused and confusing
election because it ends up
that New York Senator
Aaron Burr and Jefferson,
both Republicans,
are tied in the
electoral college.
And that means the outgoing
House of Representatives,
which is dominated
by Federalists,
has to decide the election.
- And it takes Congress
36 tries to break that tie.
♪
- After two months
of House re-votes,
lobbying,
and backdoor dealing,
Jefferson's adversary
Alexander Hamilton writes,
"In a choice of evils,
let them take the least.
Jefferson is in every view
less dangerous than Burr."
And so thanks to the support
of his archrival,
on February 17, 1801,
Thomas Jefferson is announced
as the third president
of the United States.
♪
- On March 4, 1801,
after an extremely fraught
and ugly election,
57-year-old Thomas Jefferson
is elected the third president
of the United States.
♪
- Jefferson gets it by
the skin of his teeth.
And this is the first time
we've had a change of parties
in the United States.
These two parties have
believed for a decade
that the other represents
a mortal danger,
an existential threat,
to the United States.
♪
For the people have spoken,
and they have decided
to elect a different
president in response
to Federalist highhandedness.
And so this is a
revolution because we had
a peaceful transfer of power.
This is a big part of what the
American political tradition
is all about.
♪
Thomas Jefferson is the first
president to be inaugurated
in Washington, D.C.
- Jefferson walks over into
the old Senate chamber.
And in that chamber
are gathered
our entire government.
They have the House of
Representatives, the Senate,
and the Supreme Court.
[applause]
- Adams is bitter.
He bails on the inauguration.
- After the swearing-in,
Jefferson then turns
to read his inaugural address.
- And it's the first great
presidential inaugural speech.
♪
It's his best piece of writing
since the Declaration.
♪
- "Let us, then,
fellow citizens,
"unite with one heart
and one mind.
"Let us restore to
social intercourse
"that harmony and affection,
without which liberty
and even life itself
are but dreary things."
- The first inaugural
is all about togetherness
and how beautiful
the country is.
♪
- He is preaching the
values of national unity,
saying famously,
we are all Republicans,
we are all Federalists.
He defends the
right of dissent,
saying criticism in a
democracy is your birthright.
Our country is going to be
strong enough to withstand it.
That's new.
But what's really
stunning is when
he becomes
a born-again Washingtonian
on the issue
of foreign policy.
Remember, he has been
arguing against neutrality,
saying it's a de facto
endorsement of England.
Suddenly, he's in
the presidential chair,
and he starts by
extolling the virtues
of America's relative isolation
from the problems of Europe.
We're insulated from
those fights, he says.
We don't need to
be part of them.
That's what Washington's
been arguing all along
that he's been attacking.
- "Let us stand with
courage and confidence,
"pursue our own federal
and republican principles,
"our attachment to union and
representative government,
"kindly separated by nature
and a wide ocean
from the exterminating havoc
of one quarter of the globe."
- He's saying like,
we're really lucky because
the Atlantic Ocean separates us
from our greatest enemies.
And also, we're really
fortunate because,
on the other side of us,
to our west,
there's a bunch of forests
through which
it's hard for enemies to come.
- And then he does
a better articulation
of Washington's vision
of foreign policy for America
than Washington ever did,
despite spending
the past decade
fighting those principles.
♪
- "Equal and exact justice
to all men
"of whatever state
or persuasion,
"religious or political,
"peace, commerce, and honest
friendship with all nations,
entangling alliances
with none."
- It shows how much
that where you stand
is often a matter
of where you sit,
that Jefferson is
already being changed
and constrained by
the responsibility
of the presidency.
A president has an
obligation to think bigger.
♪
- But the address itself,
nobody could hear it.
♪
Because he basically
had his text
and he mumbled his text
to himself.
♪
- He literally reads it.
He holds it up this close.
He has his spectacles on, and
he reads his inaugural address
very much like this.
They say that those seated
beyond the second row
could not hear
a single word he uttered.
♪
- So I argue Jefferson couldn't
run for president today.
He doesn't have the skill set,
didn't like speaking in public,
doesn't like conflict,
couldn't have a debate.
He has the wrong skill set
to run for president,
not just today,
but, frankly,
throughout much
of American history.
- As soon as Jefferson
moves into the White House,
he begins to redefine
the role of the presidency.
♪
- Washington was very aware
of his dignity and gravitas.
And in many respects,
this was very important
because this was
a new government
and Washington was
striving to give
that government legitimacy.
Jefferson, by contrast,
was very critical of what
he saw as a kind of regal
style around Washington,
and actively sought
to push against that
in his presidency.
He walks to the Capitol
to be inaugurated.
He doesn't take a coach.
He wears a plain brown suit.
Famously,
in November of 1803,
he encountered the British
ambassador Anthony Merry.
♪
Merry was in his full
diplomatic uniform,
and was dressed appropriately
to meet a head of state.
And Merry commented
with some disdain--
Jefferson, as he put it,
was wearing
down-at-the-heels slippers.
He called him slovenly, even.
This wasn't an accident.
He also was making
a political statement here.
♪
In contrast
to the imperial grandeur
that Merry represented,
Jefferson was deliberately
attempting to cultivate
a democratic sensibility,
and expressing that
in the way he dressed
when he greeted Merry.
♪
- As president,
Jefferson does not try
to dominate public debate.
He also governs in that
dinner table diplomacy format
that hearkens back
to his youth in Virginia.
- Dinners at the
Jefferson White House,
instead of having
formal seating plans,
the seating was pell-mell,
as they described it.
People were meant to just
find their own seats.
And this is more democratic
than the more formal style
of the Washington
administration.
- He knows he's not going
to command a room
the way Washington did.
But he brings together
people at his dinner table
for honest and frank
discussion and debate.
He gains political
intelligence.
He networks.
He earns goodwill.
He doesn't necessarily
combine the Republicans
and the Federalists at
the same dinner table,
but the Federalists in
Congress get to know him.
And they find that,
on an interpersonal level,
he's almost
impossible to dislike.
He's interesting.
He listens.
That's something that most
politicians are terrible at.
♪
- But while Jefferson
gains a reputation
as a charming politician
in Washington,
in Virginia, he gains a
reputation for something else.
[birds chirping]
[dramatic music]
- Two years into
his presidency,
Thomas Jefferson is popular.
He's established America's
first military academy
at West Point
and has repealed
a number of controversial
taxes and laws,
and let the unconstitutional
Alien and Sedition Acts
expire.
But though he is
a political success,
rumors fly about
his personal life.
♪
- People who knew Jefferson
noticed that
when they come to dinners
at Monticello,
that there seemed to be
a number of mixed-race people
who kind of resembled
Thomas Jefferson around.
♪
- Over the years, there are
some blind items in newspapers
clearly talking
about Jefferson
and his addiction
to golden affections,
meaning mixed-race women.
So we get a sense that
people are talking
about this in his area.
- Then, in September 1802,
a bombshell article
is published by popular
political writer
James Callender.
- Callender had really
come to the fore
for attacking
Alexander Hamilton
on behalf of Jefferson
in the 1790s.
- He also wrote some really
nasty things about John Adams
in the past, which Jefferson
ends up supporting.
So Callender is one of the
people who got jailed because
of the Sedition Act,
and Jefferson promised
to pardon all of those people
if he were elected.
And when Jefferson is elected,
Callender was one
of those individuals.
- Callender was looking
to restart his career.
And he had asked Jefferson for
an appointment as postmaster,
but Jefferson declined
to give him that post.
♪
- So Callender turns on him.
♪
- It's James Thompson
Callender
who will publish and make
public the allegations
that Jefferson had had
a longstanding relationship
with one of the people
he enslaved, Sally Hemings.
♪
- He writes that Sally Hemings
only has a child
nine months after she has been
in close physical contact
to Thomas Jefferson.
♪
When Thomas Jefferson
is away in Washington,
Sally Hemings isn't
getting pregnant.
When Thomas Jefferson
is away in Philadelphia,
she's not getting pregnant.
When Thomas Jefferson
is at Monticello
and Sally is at Monticello,
she's getting pregnant.
♪
- It's a bombshell.
It's a huge scandal.
♪
- Callender uses this
as an attempt
to attack Thomas Jefferson,
to discredit his suitability
to be president.
- He refers to her as a slut
as common as the pavement.
It's pretty vile stuff.
- This is grist for
the political mill
of Jefferson's opponents.
The Federalist press in
particular picks up on this,
and there are derisory cartoons
mocking Jefferson and Hemings.
♪
So in response to this,
Jefferson has to adopt
a media strategy, effectively.
And his strategy
is to say nothing.
♪
- So there's just silence.
- Silence.
He was not going to give
people the satisfaction
of responding, as if
this were their business.
♪
- It never gained
any traction.
I mean, it's something
that people talk about,
but it's not something that
people get very upset about.
So it kind of comes and goes.
- It doesn't have
the kind of effect
that James Callender wanted.
People think that
this is going to sink
Jefferson's presidency.
But it doesn't.
People didn't care.
- The scandal doesn't
sink Jefferson,
but his resolve to ignore it
solidifies America's belief
in the First Amendment and
the press's right to attack
any sitting president.
And like any scandal,
the Hemings story
becomes old news
when President Jefferson's
next move dominates headlines.
♪
In 1803,
Jefferson turns his attention
to the Louisiana Territory,
an area comprised of more
than 800,000 square miles.
- Jefferson says
this is the most
important spot on the globe
for us because of geography.
And whoever controls
New Orleans
basically has
a knife to our throat
because the United States
at that time
extended from
the Atlantic Ocean
to the Mississippi west of
the Appalachian Mountains--
just a rapidly growing part
of the United States.
That growing population
west of the mountains
can't get their
produce to market
easily over the mountains.
So what do they do?
They go down the Ohio River
to the Mississippi,
down the Mississippi
to New Orleans,
through the Gulf of Mexico,
and to the wider world.
♪
- And so if you have
a hostile power
controlling access
to New Orleans,
then you have several problems.
One is the trade down
the Mississippi River.
The other was it wasn't clear
that the Americans in the West
would remain loyal
to the nation,
and Jefferson's dream of an
expanding empire could falter.
♪
- He thought America should
have the entire continent.
♪
- In 1803,
the Louisiana Territory
is controlled by France
and its notoriously
erratic leader,
Napoleon Bonaparte.
♪
Originally, Napoleon had
grand plans to establish
a North American empire.
But around the same time
he acquires Louisiana in 1800,
he begins to embroil France
in battles all over Europe.
By 1802, he has lost interest
in North America
and needs cash to fund his
military campaigns in Europe.
Jefferson sees an opportunity.
- He also thought that
one of the purposes
of the American Revolution was
to take the United States
out of European conflict.
He thought that if you could
have an ocean on one side
and an ocean on the other
side, you could have peace.
So it was about
national security.
- Jefferson sends
a trusted dignitary to France
to negotiate a sale
with the volatile dictator.
- The negotiations
were undertaken
by Robert Livingston.
But Robert Livingston
is aging,
he's deaf,
and he didn't speak French.
French was the language
of diplomacy
at the turn of
the 19th century.
It was also
the language of France
[laughing] At the turn of the
19th century, and remains so.
And Jefferson's worried
about this.
And so he dispatches
James Monroe to assist.
Monroe had served in France
before as a diplomat.
His French was better
than Livingston's.
And Monroe was the luckiest
diplomat in American history
because he turns up
virtually at the same moment
Napoleon has decided
to sell Louisiana
to the United States.
♪
- Napoleon offers to sell
the entire Louisiana Territory
to the United States
for $15 million--
about $388 million today.
♪
- Jefferson, in the 1790s,
and certainly
when he was
secretary of state,
had been an advocate
of what was called
strict construction
of the Constitution.
If something
is not stipulated,
if it's not specified
in the Constitution,
he said,
look, you can't do it.
Well, nowhere in
the Constitution
does it authorize the
president of the United States
to buy hundreds of thousands
of square miles of territory
just because it's a good deal.
- Jefferson talked about
maybe we should float the idea
of a constitutional amendment
to authorize it.
- And his secretary of state,
his old friend James Madison,
said, look, if you dither,
Napoleon could change his mind.
We don't have time for this.
Think back
to his governorship.
One of the things
he learned was
you can't dither when
you're making decisions.
Because if you do,
disaster can happen.
- So Jefferson's advisors
convinced him, look,
just do it.
- And so, presented
with this opportunity,
Jefferson seized it
with two hands
because he believed
this was essential
for the economic future
of the United States.
♪
- And so, in October of 1803,
Jefferson authorizes
James Monroe
to accept Napoleon's offer,
and effectively increases
America's size by 140%.
♪
- It becomes
one of the most intense
and significant actions
the federal government
has ever done,
to more than double
the size of the nation
by buying land.
♪
- It was a great
real estate deal.
But the Jefferson
who purchases Louisiana
despite constitutional scruples
is acting like a king,
the very thing
he supposedly despised.
♪
- If Alexander Hamilton
had tried to buy Louisiana,
Thomas Jefferson's head
would have exploded
because it would have been
this massive overreach
of constitutional power.
But Thomas Jefferson
as president does it.
- So he's willing to embrace
his inconsistencies
when it helps achieve
larger goals.
- As he said, you can believe
something in principle,
but act differently
in practice.
That's the nature of politics.
♪
- Despite its hypocrisy,
the Louisiana Purchase
is the biggest accomplishment
of Jefferson's presidency.
But let's not forget
that land is occupied.
♪
So that expansion,
that necessary growth
as he sees it,
will come at the expense
of Indigenous people.
And in the southern part
of that,
where slave-based agriculture
is being practiced,
much of the labor is going to
be provided by enslaved labor.
♪
- Expanding the size
of the country
opened up that territory
for slavery.
♪
- Acquiring
the Louisiana Territory
gives the United States
large tracts of land
ripe for the
cultivation of cotton,
which in 1802 accounts
for nearly
20% of American exports.
However,
the profitability of cotton
relies entirely
on unpaid labor.
- This vision of his,
it's coming
at the expense of others.
♪
- The Louisiana Purchase
is a major victory
for the Jefferson
administration.
The acquired land
more than doubles
the size of the country.
Just seven months later,
on May 14, 1804,
Jefferson sends Meriwether
Lewis and William Clark
on an expedition
to explore and survey
not only the newly acquired
530 million acres,
but the uncharted mountains
and Pacific Northwest beyond.
- Jefferson was also
very interested
in issues around exploration.
And he's got some
bizarre ideas.
For example, he thinks there
might still be woolly mammoths
west of the Mississippi River
because he's not sure
how natural history
might have unfolded there.
- Meriwether Lewis
and William Clark
have four dozen men with them.
And so it's a huge expedition,
called the Corps of Discovery.
As they're going up
the Missouri
and they're carrying
all of this equipment,
they are instructed
to keep journals
to give to Thomas Jefferson.
They discovered
178 new kinds of plants,
122 species of animals.
- Lewis and Clark depart
from St. Louis, Missouri,
and over the course
of two years,
travel more than 8,000 miles
to the Pacific Ocean.
They are often touted
as lone adventurers,
taming uncharted territory.
But in reality,
they elicit the help
of hundreds
of Indigenous people
throughout their journey.
- Lewis and Clark
meet something like
50 different tribes, handing
out these peace medals--
like medallions.
Lewis and Clark told
the native leaders,
you are friends with
Thomas Jefferson.
♪
The difficulty in world history
is always in shared space,
and that's where he begins
to change his ideas
about the rights
of Native people.
[tense music]
- Jefferson believed that
there were stages
of human development,
and that Native Americans
had the potential to be equal
to European Americans,
but they were at a different
stage of development.
♪
- It was all tied up
with this notion of
America and North America
and the New World
having inherently
good things in it.
And Native Americans
were part of that.
But Africans were never
supposed to be here.
So Jefferson says Blacks
are intellectually inferior.
- And because of that,
Jefferson's Indian policy
was to cultivate Native people
so that they would become
"more civilized."
- Jefferson said
that Native Americans
had to adopt European ways.
They had to farm
like Europeans.
They had to bring their women
in the house.
In many Native American
cultures, women worked.
And he said
we should intermarry,
our blood should mingle.
So that was his solution
for Native Americans.
- He thought they could
become the equal to whites--
at the cost of their
culture, of course.
He lamented, as he saw it,
that they would probably
never catch up.
But he allowed for the
possibility that they might.
♪
- But also,
Thomas Jefferson
wants to really kind of
keep them at peace.
He believes that,
if we keep them at peace,
we then can later
bargain for their lands.
♪
And so trading posts
are set up by Jefferson
and the government,
and owned by the government,
not individuals.
That's key.
- Jefferson's strategy
for western expansion,
first laid out in a letter
to William Henry Harrison
in 1803, is quite clear--
"to promote this disposition
to exchange lands,
"which they have to spare
and we want,
"we shall push
our trading uses,
"and be glad to see the good
and influential individuals
"among them run in debt.
"We observe that when
these debts get beyond
"what the individuals can pay,
they become willing
to lock them off
by a cession of lands."
- He sees, the more that
they become dependent
upon American goods,
then they will build up debts,
then they will need to pay
with their lands.
It's maneuvering.
It's exploitation.
It's taking advantage.
- He admired Native peoples,
but he believed they were
passing from the scene
because that was
the price of progress.
- For Jefferson,
the fact was there were
two possible solutions
for Native Americans--
assimilation or annihilation.
♪
- In November 1804,
fueled in part
by his successful acquisition
of the Louisiana Territory,
Jefferson is reelected
in a landslide victory
over the Federalist candidate
Charles Pinckney.
[dramatic music]
His second term
is largely uneventful,
until 1807,
when he is yet again faced
with a delicate
foreign policy issue.
As Britain and France duel
in a series of battles
surrounding Napoleon's attempts
to annex Italy and Germany,
despite its distance, America
is caught in the crossfire.
♪
- Britain and France
are at war.
And the United States benefits
from this because
the United States trades
with both sides.
♪
The United States is neutral,
and Jefferson believes
in free trade.
He said, we should be able to
trade with anybody we like.
♪
The British and the French
say, you can trade with us,
but you can't trade
with our enemies.
Also, since Britain hasn't
always recognized or respected
American independence,
the British Navy
has a habit of engaging in
what's called impressment,
where they stop
American merchant ships
and review their crews.
And if they identify
anybody they believe
is a deserter
from the Royal Navy,
they take them off the ship.
And then, in 1807,
there's an incident
off the coast of Virginia,
when a British Navy ship,
the HMS "Leopard,"
stopped a United States warship,
the USS "Chesapeake."
So not a merchant ship--
and this is important--
just within
international waters.
And there are actually
deserters on the "Chesapeake."
So the British forces them
into the Royal Navy.
And the "Leopard" fires
on the "Chesapeake."
[explosion]
And there's a widespread call
to declare war on Britain.
♪
There's also
a widespread belief
that the British
are encouraging
Native peoples in the West
to attack American settlers.
And these are the issues
that are going to become
the justification for
a declaration of war in 1812.
But Jefferson recognized
that the United States
was not in a position
to go to war in 1807.
And so he proposed an embargo.
He said, the United States
will not trade with anybody.
We're taking our ball
and we're going home.
♪
- Jefferson believed
Americans could show
France and England
that their economic interests
lay in peaceful free trade.
So the solution was to hold
all American ships in port.
- I don't think this is
necessarily as naive
as it's often portrayed.
I think it's the least
bad option available to him.
However, it's a disaster.
♪
- Jefferson imposes
an embargo.
He closes all
U.S. ports to exports,
and severely restricts
imports from Britain.
- The embargo wrecks
the American economy.
- American exports collapse.
- It led to protests.
It led to one of America's
first secession movements.
New England Federalists met and
talked about the possibility
of leaving the Union.
- The authority
of the government
is called into question.
Western farmers, who are
Jefferson's core constituency,
they suffer really, really
badly as a result of this.
Smuggling is rife.
- So because of this,
he goes through a period where
he's not as popular
as he was before.
And he's pretty thin skinned,
very thin skinned.
He didn't like criticism.
- Desperate to revive
his public image,
Jefferson turns to
the controversial business
of slavery.
♪
The cotton harvested
by unpaid labor
had nearly doubled
since the Revolution.
In 1808,
the Southern United States
is home to more
millionaires per capita
than any other region
on Earth.
And so despite
Northern sentiments
moving towards emancipation,
national abolition
is out of the question.
Instead, Jefferson makes
a calculated move.
- There was
a compromise made
at the Constitutional
Convention in 1787,
where Congress couldn't outlaw
American participation
in the transatlantic
slave trade for 20 years.
- So going back to 1806,
President Jefferson
goes to Congress and says,
in 1808, we can end
the slave trade.
Let's pass a law now
so that the slave traders know
that on January 1, 1808,
the slave trade
will be illegal,
and they won't bring any
more slaves in after that.
We've got to give them
advance notice.
- This is the most
concrete step he took
during his long public life
in opposition to slavery.
♪
And it is a significant step,
but it's a relatively
moderate step.
♪
- In the North, the gradual
abolition of slavery
had been rolling out
for decades.
Even in the Deep South,
they're not really worried
about importing slaves
from Africa anymore.
People have a lot of slaves.
- Look, almost everyone
agrees at the time
that the transatlantic
slave trade
is just a terrible, terrible,
terrible crime.
And so for slaveholders
who want to demonstrate
their anti-slavery
credentials,
that's the position
they can take.
- Now, we look at that and say,
well, that's ridiculous,
because obviously slaves
are going to increase here.
They're going to reproduce.
- Abandoning
the transatlantic slave trade
only makes American slavery
more lucrative.
♪
- Jefferson, in his ledgers,
at one point
does calculate that there's
a guaranteed 4% rise in value
over time of slave women,
who are going to reproduce.
He sees women are valuable
in Virginia precisely because
you're thinking about
selling their children.
♪
- Years later,
Jefferson writes,
"I consider a woman who brings
a child every two years
"as more profitable than
the best man of the farm.
"What she produces is in
addition to the capital,
while his laborers disappear
in mere consumption."
♪
- After the abolition
of the slave trade,
the value of domestic slaves
is actually going to go up.
- So this also simply makes
Jefferson much richer.
And there's
one more piece of this,
which historians
don't talk about very much.
♪
Under Jefferson's law,
if you import slaves
to the United States
and you're caught--
you're smuggling them--
the Africans will be seized
and they are given to
the governor of the state
where they're brought in.
And the governor
gets to sell them
for the benefit of the state.
So the state makes money,
and Jefferson
doesn't have to worry
about freeing Black people.
And so the governments
of the states
will become involved
in the very slave trade
that we're supposed
to be suppressing.
- As President,
Jefferson has the opportunity
to untangle America from
its dependence on slavery.
Yet his actions only ensure
that the country continues
to rely on slave labor
for another 57 years.
♪
- In 1809,
Jefferson has no interest
in serving a third term.
♪
Washington had set
the precedent
of a president serving
two terms.
And so he would only
serve two terms.
- He is somebody who is
happy to have the job,
but is also ready
for it to end.
- And so, after 40 years
in public service,
he said, probably one of
the greatest pleasures
was to leave eight years
of a splendid misery.
♪
He is putting
the federal government
that he built in the hands
of some very close friends.
- When he leaves office,
he is succeeded
by his friend James Madison,
and then James Monroe.
So he has sort of
an extended term
even after he's gone because
his acolytes take his place.
And he is confident that
the political program
of the Democratic
Republican Party,
of which he was the head,
would continue.
- But though
his political career ends
in 1809, Jefferson's story
is far from over.
♪