Thomas Jefferson (2025) s01e06 Episode Script
Jefferson's Legacy (1809-1826)
1
- Previously
on "Thomas Jefferson"
[dramatic music]
- The election of 1800 is
Adams versus Jefferson.
♪
It's an ugly fight.
But this time, Jefferson wins.
♪
- 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.
♪
But the people have spoken,
and they have decided
to elect a different
president in response
to Federalist high-handedness.
♪
In 1802,
James Thomson Callender
both published and made public
the allegations that Jefferson
had had a long-standing
relationship
with one of the people he
enslaved, Sally Hemings.
♪
- 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.
♪
- But Jefferson
has no interest
in serving a third term.
He's ready to retire.
♪
That is when the real
story comes to the fore.
♪
♪
- In 1809, just 33 years
after writing the
Declaration of Independence,
Thomas Jefferson sits
in the White House
as president
of a thriving nation.
He, along with his
fellow founding fathers,
have worked tirelessly to mold
13 independent
British colonies
into 17 United States.
What was once a disparate
collection of farmers
forging new lives thousands
of miles from home
has become a beacon
of democracy,
leading a global charge
towards a new way
of governing.
As his second term
comes to a close,
Thomas Jefferson looks
forward to finally retiring
on top of his
beloved Monticello Mountain.
♪
- At the end of his presidency,
Jefferson is what he was
when he was born back in 1743.
He's a Virginian.
♪
This was a well-traveled man,
traveled widely in Europe,
and he goes back to Virginia.
♪
Never left Virginia again.
♪
- When Jefferson returns
to Monticello in 1809,
his oldest daughter, Martha,
and her nine children
are there to greet him.
His youngest daughter,
Maria, his only other child
to survive to adulthood,
had died five years earlier
after complications
from childbirth.
♪
- He never, ever lost
his zest for life
and particularly
the company of children--
to surround himself
with children,
particularly his grandchildren.
♪
On the West Lawn,
when he would gather,
not only his grandchildren
but the children
of the neighborhood to come
around and enjoy races,
essentially, ice cream races
♪
Because when he would draw the
line for the race to commence
and then drop a handkerchief,
those children,
who would run the distance
across the West Lawn,
and the first to make it
and the second and third
would be presented
with the gift of ice cream.
♪
Perhaps the recipe
of ice cream
that was gained in Paris,
and the more so because
that recipe was flavored
with the little vanilla bean
that Jefferson
brought back from Paris.
♪
The favorite flavor
for ice cream in the Colonies
before that was oyster,
oyster ice cream.
Here, Jefferson
introduces the vanilla bean.
So you can imagine
these children,
anxious to succeed
in those races
and enjoy that novel flavor
of vanilla ice cream.
♪
- He was tremendously
affectionate
to his grandchildren,
more openly affectionate
and playful
than he was with his daughters,
his white daughters.
♪
Remember, Sally Hemings
had six children,
who would have
been at Monticello
with his white grandchildren.
♪
- Over the course of Sally
and Jefferson's
40-year entanglement,
she bears six children,
four of whom live
to adulthood
♪
Harriet, Beverly,
Madison, and Eston.
♪
- We don't have any letters
that say,
I know that these
are Jefferson's children.
♪
But the diary
of one of his friends
talked about this connection
between Jefferson
and an enslaved
woman, Sally Hemings.
♪
Madison Hemings said
he was kind to them,
but he was distant.
♪
He wasn't in the habit
of being affectionate to them
in the way that he was
to his grandchildren.
But he had planned for them
in a different way
than other enslaved people.
♪
All of the young men were
put to apprenticeships
with the master
carpenter at Monticello.
♪
Jefferson's
granddaughters' letters
talk about their trips--
stopping at inns
and having picnics.
We know they're there, because
when Jefferson is writing,
he says, I'm coming with the
carpenter and his apprentices.
That would be his sons.
♪
- The Hemings children
are interesting.
Like, they're all
very talented people.
♪
- The daughter,
Harriet, learns to spin.
All three of the sons played
the violin, as Jefferson did.
They're all carpenters,
and Jefferson
did woodworking himself.
So they're sort of like
versions of himself, in a way.
♪
- And as promised
in France in 1789,
Jefferson frees
all of Sally's children
when they turn 21.
♪
- Her sons, Madison and Eston,
move to the city
of Charlottesville,
and then they move to Ohio,
where they have large families.
And they carry a lot of the
Monticello history with them.
♪
- Beverly and Harriet--
Beverly is the oldest son--
they left Monticello
to live as white people.
- They have
very light complexions,
and, in fact, do pass
into white society,
adopt new identities,
and disappear.
♪
- After his presidency
ends in 1809,
Jefferson sees
his home, Monticello,
as the embodiment of who he is
and all he has accomplished.
He becomes obsessed
with decorating
and adorning his home
in a fashion worthy
of America's founding father.
One visitor would later write,
"If it had not been called
Monticello,
"I would call it Olympus--
Jove, its occupant."
♪
- Monticello
becomes not a house.
It's a museum.
It symbolizes what he
wants his legacy to be.
♪
- Jefferson adored control.
He adored architecture.
He adored a sense
of himself in the world.
And Monticello becomes
this embodiment,
an extension of himself.
- He bought everything he
liked, everything he saw.
He didn't worry
about what it would cost.
♪
- He would have been
an Amazon Prime customer.
There's no doubt
in my mind about this,
and he would have
pressed, yes, one click,
and I want it tomorrow.
♪
- But Monticello was not
a tremendously
profitable place.
He didn't pay enough attention
to the business side of it.
♪
- On top of the fact
that this guy is a consumer,
there are macroeconomic
issues at work against him.
During his retirement,
the agricultural economy
is not changing for the
better for Virginia planters.
Most of his agricultural
practices and activities
don't produce the profits
that he hoped.
♪
- Tobacco planters
generally relied so heavily
on British credit,
they were normally
always deeply in debt.
♪
That didn't mean they
didn't have great resources,
that they didn't have a lot of
money to spend on themselves.
But it did mean that there was
a kind of perpetual dependency
on overseas markets.
- They're used to carrying debt
in ways that, frankly,
would probably make most of us
uncomfortable.
Planters are borrowing
money from each other.
They're signing notes for
each other to pay their debts.
And if you're
a member of the elite,
you never really
get called on it.
Most of the time,
you can keep signing notes,
and people
will keep taking them
and giving you wine
or books or people.
♪
- Jefferson is
aware of his debt,
but he sees it
as the currency of his class.
♪
Having always had wealth,
he presumes he always will.
♪
- Jefferson has a great
sense of entitlement
to the good life,
but not that sense
of hardscrabble responsibility
on how to make money
and keep it.
♪
- But when Jefferson's
creditors come to collect,
his pockets are empty.
♪
[dramatic music]
- In 1809, when
Jefferson returns
to Monticello
after his presidency,
he is forced
to reconcile his debt.
After many years of floating
his lavish lifestyle
on loans and favors,
when his creditors ask
to be paid,
Jefferson realizes
he must come up
with a way to generate cash.
- He responded to this debt
by coming up
with various schemes.
♪
He had a flour mill.
He had other ventures
at his plantation
that he thought would
actually make money for him.
♪
- But Jefferson is not
a good businessman.
His efforts to diversify--
a lot of them
are based on ideals of how
a plantation should work,
rather than what
is actually going
to work best for Monticello.
♪
Jefferson is experimenting
in industries
like weaving and spinning.
There are men who do ironwork.
♪
- He establishes the nailery,
and they start
manufacturing nails.
♪
Young men working
in that nailery
are often being
treated quite harshly.
- And in the end, the various
mills and that nail factory
didn't make the money that
he thought could be made.
- After three years
of failed attempts
to make money,
in 1812, a new conflict
with Britain
emerges over contested trade
routes and infringements
of American rights at sea.
Amidst the chaos of war comes
an opportunity for Jefferson.
♪
- During the War of 1812,
the British burned part
of the capital.
And one of the
things they burned
is what was then the
Library of Congress.
So Jefferson's friends in
Congress know he's in debt.
They pass a law to authorize
the purchase
of Jefferson's
private library
♪
Because he collects
a huge number
of books, thousands of books.
♪
- He sells the entire
collection intact.
He says, you can't
just take the books
on politics and history.
You have to take
all the books,
because all knowledge should
be of interest to legislators.
And that becomes the core
of the Library of Congress
that we know today.
- So they buy
Jefferson's library
for a lot more
than it's worth.
And Jefferson now
can pay his debts.
What does he do?
He takes the money and starts
ordering books from England,
where he
can get them much cheaper,
and he replaces everything
he sold, plus a lot more.
- This guy's a consumer.
He needs the infusion of cash,
but instead, he builds
a third library.
And so he's getting into
greater and greater debt.
And then there's
the Panic of 1819.
There's a massive
economic downturn.
It's effectively a depression,
and he's caught out by that.
- After years of prosperity
and expansion,
the Panic of 1819
is America's first
financial setback.
A result of fallout
from the global markets
in the aftermath of
the wars in Europe
and America's lack of
regulation on paper money,
the Panic forces
wealthy planters,
who previously just moved
debts around, to pay up.
Jefferson finds himself
responsible for paying back
not only money he borrowed
but money his friends
borrowed as well.
- Jefferson cosigns loans
for friends that fail,
and he's on the hook for those.
♪
- The suggestion was
that he should downsize
and sell people the land.
But he didn't want to do that.
- Because you don't
sell land in Virginia.
You buy land.
You get land.
Land is power in this place.
And the elite Virginians are
obsessed with acquiring it.
You don't give up land
unless you absolutely have to.
And the same,
to a large extent,
goes for enslaved people.
But you don't get rid of
your assets in that way
in order to get out of debt,
not in that culture
at that time.
♪
- And so
the Jefferson family--
they bring up the idea,
we could convince him to move
to the Deep South,
where cotton is booming.
♪
The opportunity is there.
If you take the enslaved
laborers who are at Monticello
and take them
to a different landscape,
you could absolve the debt
without having to separate
the enslaved community.
But Jefferson's grandson said,
you know he'll never go
for that.
And so the family
basically gives up
on trying to solve Jefferson's
financial problems.
♪
- He wanted everything
to remain the same.
It was sort of really
unrealistic
that everything
is going to remain the same.
And so there's no question
that he was enormously
depressed at the end.
♪
He felt that he had
failed as a patriarch,
he had failed to
protect his family.
- After a life as a celebrated
revolutionary and aristocrat,
in his final years,
Thomas Jefferson
finds himself broke and alone.
♪
- At 76 years old,
Thomas Jefferson's political
career is over,
and he is deeply in debt.
He is celebrated as the author
of the
Declaration of Independence,
America's third president,
and a beloved founding father.
But he is still determined
to leave America with more.
♪
- In 1819
he's a man
in declining health,
but he wanted to be remembered
as the embodiment of the
principles
of liberty and equality.
And so he spends much of his
retirement engaged in founding
the University of Virginia.
♪
- Jefferson presided over
the University of Virginia,
with hopes that this
could be a seminary
for Republican leaders
of the future.
♪
- But people were upset
because it didn't have
a chapel.
People called it
a godless institution.
♪
- And so Jefferson's
vision was,
this is going to be
a secular institution
that's meant
to be explicitly political.
He's going to properly train
young Southern men
to be good Republican citizens.
And he takes immense pride
in that.
♪
- On Jefferson's tombstone,
he cites three things--
author of the
Declaration of Independence,
author of the Virginia
Statute for Religious Freedom,
and founder of the
University of Virginia.
And it's fascinating he
chose those things
and not his presidency.
- As Jefferson
descends into old age,
he becomes acutely aware
of the way he would like
to be remembered.
- He'd been there
at the beginning.
The American Revolution was
a really, really big deal.
♪
We don't take
monarchy seriously,
but that was the predominant
form of governance.
And for having defeated that--
and he knew that
it was something
that he would be
remembered for,
and he wanted to be remembered
in a particular kind of way.
♪
- Jefferson deliberately wrote
his own autobiography
because he was writing
a version of history
that he wanted
to be remembered.
♪
- He wants to be remembered
as someone who defended
the people's liberties
and he stood
for human equality,
religious freedom,
and education and science.
- Jefferson's life that we
get from his autobiography
is very carefully edited
and cultivated.
♪
It doesn't just influence our
understanding of him early on.
I think it continues
to this day.
♪
- In his 70s,
Thomas Jefferson
is reflective and sentimental
about what he's accomplished.
His health is declining,
but his mind is still sharp.
♪
- Jefferson
was a hale old man,
but he was
an old man nevertheless.
He'd lived considerably longer
than the average life span
for an American man
at that time.
- He would go out
and ride around the plantation
occasionally,
and he would come for dinner,
but he spent most
of his time writing.
- Jefferson loves
writing letters
and receiving letters
and trading books.
And one of the great joys
for him
is his correspondence
with John Adams
well into his last years.
- The Adams-Jefferson
relationship
is a fascinating relationship.
♪
There's a very,
very close bond.
They first meet
in the Continental Congress.
Of course, they serve
on the committee of five
that drafts the
Declaration of Independence.
They're in Paris together
before Adams goes to London.
♪
But then they become estranged,
really, over politics.
Adams famously skipped
Jefferson's inauguration.
- After a decade-long standoff
between the founding fathers
of America's two opposing
political parties,
John Adams
and Thomas Jefferson
find themselves nostalgic
for the days
of revolutionary fervor.
♪
Years before, in 1812,
just as Jefferson began
to compile plans
for the University
of Virginia,
Benjamin Rush, who had served
with him and Adams
in the Continental Congress,
encouraged the two
old patriots to reconcile.
- Benjamin Rush
gets into his head
that these two people should
not be enemies
because they had been
such great friends.
♪
He approaches both people,
and they start
this correspondence
that has become famous.
- They correspond a lot.
- "I have thus stated
my opinion
"on a point
on which we differ,
"not with a view
to controversy,
"for we are both too old
to change opinions
"which are the result
of a long life
of inquiry and reflection."
♪
- They're both retired.
They're both opinionated.
They're both gifted
letter writers.
♪
We have these two leaders
of the American Revolution
reflecting on their life's work.
- Adams, characteristically,
writes three letters
for every one of Jefferson's.
♪
Adams can't help himself.
He just writes and writes
and writes and writes.
♪
- "Your letter was
received in due time
"and with the welcome
of everything which comes
"from you with its opinions on
the difficulties of revolution
from despotism to freedom,
I very much concur."
♪
- They still don't
agree on everything.
But the venom has been taken
out of things.
The sting is out of it.
They're arguing about history,
to some extent.
They're arguing about politics,
to some extent.
But they're not fighting
about it anymore.
♪
- "I wish your
health may continue
"to last much better
than mine.
"We shall meet again,
"so wishes and so
believes your friend.
But if we are disappointed,
we shall never know it."
♪
- It's as if Adams and
Jefferson are reimagining
and reaffirming the original
bond that made them both,
at the same moment, Americans.
♪
- In 1826, he had been ill
for a number of months.
He'd had a bout of some
sort of bacterial infection
and had been treated
with mercury.
♪
- By June, it's clear
that he's failing.
♪
In the last few days
of his life
♪
It's early July,
and he's coming in
and out of consciousness.
♪
He's asking those around him,
is it the Fourth?
Is it the Fourth?
♪
- He called his
family into the room,
and he said, the end is near.
Do not weep for me.
Turning to his
daughter, he said,
I go where your mother is.
And we prepare a place for you.
- And a story that is told
is that he asks
to be raised on his pillow,
and nobody knows
what he's saying.
The only person who knows
that's what he's saying
is Burwell Colbert,
an African American
enslaved person who does it
and raises him on his pillow.
And then he closes his eyes,
and he goes to sleep,
and he doesn't wake up.
♪
John Adams and Jefferson
die on the same day
♪
July 4, 1826.
- They die
on the 50th anniversary
of the
Declaration of Independence.
It's an amazing coincidence,
and it's a fitting end
to their story.
♪
- When Jefferson dies,
he is surrounded
by people who have been looking
after him his entire life.
- One of the last people
that he sees
is an African American man,
enslaved man.
It brackets his life.
- He comes into the world at
the hands of enslaved people,
and at the end, he, again, is
surrounded by enslaved people.
♪
- Jefferson left this country
with its founding creed,
but only after his death
will the enslaved people
of Monticello find out
if his vision of liberty
applies to them.
♪
[dramatic music]
- After Jefferson's death
and his lifetime
spent espousing
man's natural right
to liberty,
the enslaved community
of Monticello
anxiously awaits their fate
upon the reading of his will.
♪
- There was some hope within
the enslaved community
that because this is
the apostle of liberty,
he would have
a deathbed conversion.
♪
- There's people like
Washington, who, in his will,
frees enslaved people
who belong to him.
♪
- But Jefferson didn't
free his slaves.
- 90% of his wealth is bound
to these enslaved people.
He doesn't free people,
because he can't afford to.
He died deeply in debt,
and as a result of that,
there's a huge auction
to settle his debt.
♪
- That sale is advertised--
"130 valuable Negroes."
It's among the largest sales
of enslaved people
in the United States.
- And so on a cold
January morning in 1827,
the moment arrived to liquidate
Thomas Jefferson's property.
♪
Can you imagine
what that must have felt like,
to watch a member
of your family be sold?
Sold alongside artwork
out of the house,
chairs from the dining room,
alongside horses and cattle.
- My great-great-
great-grandfather
was sold there on
the West Lawn,
along with scores
of other people.
♪
- My fourth great-grandfather
is Peter Hemings,
and Peter Hemings was
sold at the 1827 sale.
♪
- Despite talking
about the consequences,
about family separation,
a lot of these families
ended up separated.
Generations of people never
saw their families again.
♪
- In one case, Jefferson
puts in his will
that his blacksmith,
Joe Fossett, is freed
and can live in his cabin
with his wife and his family.
But Jefferson didn't free
his wife and his family.
♪
And so the day Joe Fossett
got his freedom,
he watched his wife
and his children
auctioned off to a number
of different purchasers.
- His son Peter Fossett,
who was 11 years old,
many years later said,
we were scattered
all over the country,
never to meet each other again
until we meet in another world.
I think about that
line all the time.
♪
- He understands what
separating people
from their families does.
He understands
the long-term consequences,
but these families end up
scattered all over the world,
all because this one family
couldn't figure out
what to do with their finances.
♪
- He had written
about personal liberty.
He had written about equality.
He had expressed
some of the most beautiful
and important sentiments
known to man.
And yet, he could not
live out his ideals.
Jefferson separated,
by sale or gift,
400 enslaved people over
the course of his lifetime.
♪
- In the last 250 years
♪
Thomas Jefferson's story
has been pruned and curated.
♪
That he has come to be known
as the pinnacle
of American exceptionalism
is no accident.
♪
- There was a revival
of interest in Jefferson
around the time
of the Second World War.
- When set against fascism
in an existential fight
like the Second World War,
Franklin Roosevelt,
and I think the American people
more generally,
saw Jefferson as the embodiment
of the principles
of liberty and equality.
And Roosevelt dedicated
the Jefferson Memorial in 1943.
♪
And it's the high watermark
of the representation
of Jefferson
as the apostle of liberty.
- And so the Jefferson
many of us grew up with
was an extension of an FDR-era
Democratic Party
that was liberal--
lowercase L--
inspiring,
rooted in the Declaration,
and intelligent.
The lessons of his presidency,
of the writing that he did
can be used to inspire
patriotism.
- Over the course
of the last 70 years,
Jefferson's story
has been molded
in order to bolster
the American narrative.
♪
But until Jefferson's
full story is told,
can the real story of
America's founding be known?
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
- Much conversation
has surrounded
Jefferson's relationship
with Sally Hemings,
as well as the promise
he upheld
to emancipate her children.
♪
But though Sally watched
each of her children
walk free
upon their 21st birthday,
she, like the rest
of the enslaved community
at Monticello,
learns her fate
upon the reading of his will.
- He does not free
her in his will.
♪
- Jefferson's daughter
basically gives Sally Hemings
an unofficial sort of freedom.
She's given her time.
And that means that
she's basically allowed
to go and come as she pleases.
♪
So Sally Hemings moves
into Charlottesville
with her sons,
Madison and Eston,
and she's able to live there
until her death.
♪
- After a nearly
40-year relationship,
Sally Hemings
is neither granted her freedom
nor ever
officially acknowledged
by Jefferson or his family.
♪
While Jefferson's loved ones
and descendants are buried
next to him at Monticello,
Sally's gravesite is unknown.
♪
Years later, after Sally
and Jefferson's deaths,
Sally's son Madison
publishes a memoir
claiming that he
and his siblings
are Thomas Jefferson's
children.
But his story
is fervently denied
by Jefferson's
white descendants.
- Jefferson's grandson
says it wasn't Jefferson.
It was a nephew.
♪
Jefferson's granddaughter,
Ellen Coolidge,
says a similar thing.
Two of Jefferson's
grandchildren are quoted,
saying that
the children were fathered
by Jefferson's nephews.
That's why they look
just like Jefferson.
♪
And so that's the line
that historians stuck to.
The idea is that
this is impossible.
Jefferson would never
do anything like this.
He couldn't have lived
among his grandchildren
and have a mistress.
♪
Historians are saying
there's no evidence
that this happened.
♪
I was insulted by that.
To say that Madison Hemings's
recollections
and the recollections
of a man named
Israel Gillette Jefferson,
who corroborates
what Madison Hemings said--
to say that there
was no evidence
was like saying that
they didn't even speak.
♪
If you don't listen to
enslaved people about slavery,
what the heck are you doing?
The morality suggests that
you should pay attention
to what they're saying.
And that's how I ended up
writing the first book.
So, in my book, I look
at these two stories--
the Jefferson
grandchildren's story
and Madison Hemings's
recollections--
to try to see what
corroborating evidence
there was to prove that these
are Jefferson's children.
♪
- If you look at who is
at Monticello at the time
that Sally Hemings conceives
all of her children,
it's Thomas Jefferson.
- When Thomas Jefferson
is away in Washington,
Sally Hemings isn't
getting pregnant.
When Thomas Jefferson
is at Monticello,
she's getting pregnant.
- The children are named for
people connected to Jefferson,
and then there's
one nuclear family
that walks away
from that place,
and that's Sally Hemings
and her children.
All of this made it clear
that Madison Hemings
was likely telling the truth
when he said that Jefferson
was his father.
♪
- But these histories
from the enslaved community
are discounted
because historians have long
discounted the oral histories
of African Americans
by saying
that they are less valid
than other types
of historical information,
things like diaries
and handwritten records.
The key here being,
people who are literate
are able to produce
better history
than those who are not.
And so the story
that Jefferson's
white family weaves
becomes the main narrative.
These are the ways that
they have protected his legacy
for 200 years.
♪
- My book came out in 1997.
Eugene Foster arranged
the DNA testing
in 1998.
- They test the descendant
of Sally Hemings'
youngest son, Eston,
and they compare that
with an unbroken line
through to Thomas Jefferson's
brother Peter.
- The DNA study
in 1998 confirms
that Thomas Jefferson
fathered Sally Hemings's
last child, Eston.
♪
- Annette Gordon-Reed
got it right
before the scientists did.
It's one of the singular
and most formidable
contributions
of an American historian, ever.
- So the combination
of the things that I'd done
and the DNA changed
the way people saw things.
Why is this important?
♪
Because of what it said
about the way
people write about history
and who is a credible witness
and whose story matters
and the suggestion
that the founding era is
the era of white people
and not the era of lots
of different people.
♪
- We learn about the Hemings
through Madison Hemings
and through
Israel Gillette Hemings,
who confirm
from their own experience--
They were there.
They witnessed it.
And yet, historians,
for decades,
dismiss these
firsthand accounts
from the enslaved community.
But this DNA study
and Annette Gordon-Reed
shows us that these
enslaved families matter.
♪
It's important to resist
the idea
that researching slavery
is difficult or impossible
or too challenging a project
to undertake.
I think the more that we
think through ways
that we can elevate
the stories
and preserve these histories,
the more that we can start
to bring some of this history
out of the shadows.
- Suddenly, centuries of lies
and wishful thinking are gone.
And what stands is the truth.
And what is that truth?
The truth is what America is,
which is this remarkable
combination
of lies and reality
and contradiction
and hope and fear,
all of which Jefferson was.
♪
If we want to understand
who we've been and who we are
and who we want to be,
it begins
with an honest conversation
about Thomas Jefferson.
♪
[dramatic music]
- As more
of Thomas Jefferson's
complicated story
has come to light
♪
Many changes have been made
in the way history is taught
and understood in America.
♪
- There was this turn
with historic sites,
including Monticello
♪
starting to supplement
those traditional
historic records
with the human side,
grappling with slavery,
to teach history
as a full story,
as not just the high point.
- Monticello and
early American history
are way more than
stories about Jefferson.
- The Getting Word African
American Oral History Project
traveled over 40,000 miles,
looking for descendants
of families
associated with the Monticello
enslaved community,
locate them, and record
their oral histories.
This work that goes
into understanding
enslaved communities
is part of a groundswell
that's happening
to reunite those families.
Monticello hosted
the 25th anniversary
of the Getting Word Project,
and over 300 people came
from the descendant
community alone.
♪
- It's almost beyond words,
all of the descendants
gathered at the West Lawn,
where our ancestors
had been sold.
♪
- I mean, it's this
power of place.
It's the power of saying,
this is where it happened.
♪
- My job as a descendant
of enslaved people
is to debunk the myth
♪
and to give voice
to my ancestors.
Their voices were silenced
in life, but mine isn't.
And my people represent
millions of enslaved people
throughout American history.
- Jefferson could
never have envisioned
that descendants would return
to Monticello for a reunion.
We can unite with one another
and learn about what happened
and also move forward.
Those individuals
have lived out
the Declaration
of Independence.
They are the patriots.
They have taken and extended
the Declaration
of Independence
for themselves
and for their families
and for their communities in
ways that Thomas Jefferson
never would have envisioned.
♪
- People have said to me,
you seem to be proud
of Thomas Jefferson.
Missing the whole point.
I'm not ashamed
or proud of Jefferson.
He will always be very
important to our history
and to making this
country what it is.
But I'll tell you
who I am proud of--
those people who
stood up and made
his life possible,
made it possible
for the United States
to be here today.
♪
- So what do we make
of the legacy
of Thomas Jefferson today?
♪
- He was, obviously, a person
with this vision of a society.
He articulated things that
hadn't been articulated
in quite that way before.
It sets forth an
ideal when you think
about citizenship and its
glories and responsibilities.
♪
- But we have to reckon
the apostle-of-liberty
Jefferson
with the Jefferson
whose legacy makes us
uncomfortable.
♪
- Jefferson was the one
politician--
brilliant, articulate,
popular, a slave-owner--
who could have made
a difference
and didn't.
- The crime feels worse
because
it's abetted by things
that we admire.
And we don't quite know where
one starts and the other ends.
♪
- And so we worry that
if Jefferson was impure,
then our ideals are impure.
We worry that if Jefferson was
wrong, our nation is wrong.
♪
- Because
America's greatnesses
are linked inextricably
with
its horrors.
♪
There's nobody else
that contains that observation
about the country
like Jefferson.
♪
- And so we have to think
about the period
of America's founding
in ways that would be
productive and helpful
and help us envision a future
where we could solve
some of the inequality caused
by the systems set up by people
like Thomas Jefferson.
♪
- Some of the founding fathers
hold up better to scrutiny
than others.
So you have to take the good
with the bad and the ugly
and look at all of it
together in context
and not demonize them
and not idolize them,
which itself makes their
wisdom more accessible,
which I think is infinitely
more interesting,
because it's more human.
♪
And that itself, I think, can
inspire us to hold ourselves
up to higher standards and
learn from their examples--
their successes
and their failings.
♪
- We need to continue
debunking the mythology.
However, we must
always remember
those inspiring words.
♪
- Jefferson didn't write those
words considering Black people
who were free or enslaved.
He didn't write those
words considering women.
He certainly wasn't thinking
about the Indigenous
populations
whose land they were occupying.
But he did give us
this inspirational place
that we could always aspire
to be.
We could always
aspire for equality.
We could always work
to make these words true.
And for generations of people,
that is exactly
what has happened.
♪
- Jefferson's story is one
of conflict and contradiction.
But it remains
the story of America.
As he himself wrote
in a letter in 1790
♪
"The ground of liberty is
to be gained by inches,
"and we must be contented to
secure what we can from time
"to time and eternally
press forward
for what is yet to get."
♪
- Previously
on "Thomas Jefferson"
[dramatic music]
- The election of 1800 is
Adams versus Jefferson.
♪
It's an ugly fight.
But this time, Jefferson wins.
♪
- 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.
♪
But the people have spoken,
and they have decided
to elect a different
president in response
to Federalist high-handedness.
♪
In 1802,
James Thomson Callender
both published and made public
the allegations that Jefferson
had had a long-standing
relationship
with one of the people he
enslaved, Sally Hemings.
♪
- 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.
♪
- But Jefferson
has no interest
in serving a third term.
He's ready to retire.
♪
That is when the real
story comes to the fore.
♪
♪
- In 1809, just 33 years
after writing the
Declaration of Independence,
Thomas Jefferson sits
in the White House
as president
of a thriving nation.
He, along with his
fellow founding fathers,
have worked tirelessly to mold
13 independent
British colonies
into 17 United States.
What was once a disparate
collection of farmers
forging new lives thousands
of miles from home
has become a beacon
of democracy,
leading a global charge
towards a new way
of governing.
As his second term
comes to a close,
Thomas Jefferson looks
forward to finally retiring
on top of his
beloved Monticello Mountain.
♪
- At the end of his presidency,
Jefferson is what he was
when he was born back in 1743.
He's a Virginian.
♪
This was a well-traveled man,
traveled widely in Europe,
and he goes back to Virginia.
♪
Never left Virginia again.
♪
- When Jefferson returns
to Monticello in 1809,
his oldest daughter, Martha,
and her nine children
are there to greet him.
His youngest daughter,
Maria, his only other child
to survive to adulthood,
had died five years earlier
after complications
from childbirth.
♪
- He never, ever lost
his zest for life
and particularly
the company of children--
to surround himself
with children,
particularly his grandchildren.
♪
On the West Lawn,
when he would gather,
not only his grandchildren
but the children
of the neighborhood to come
around and enjoy races,
essentially, ice cream races
♪
Because when he would draw the
line for the race to commence
and then drop a handkerchief,
those children,
who would run the distance
across the West Lawn,
and the first to make it
and the second and third
would be presented
with the gift of ice cream.
♪
Perhaps the recipe
of ice cream
that was gained in Paris,
and the more so because
that recipe was flavored
with the little vanilla bean
that Jefferson
brought back from Paris.
♪
The favorite flavor
for ice cream in the Colonies
before that was oyster,
oyster ice cream.
Here, Jefferson
introduces the vanilla bean.
So you can imagine
these children,
anxious to succeed
in those races
and enjoy that novel flavor
of vanilla ice cream.
♪
- He was tremendously
affectionate
to his grandchildren,
more openly affectionate
and playful
than he was with his daughters,
his white daughters.
♪
Remember, Sally Hemings
had six children,
who would have
been at Monticello
with his white grandchildren.
♪
- Over the course of Sally
and Jefferson's
40-year entanglement,
she bears six children,
four of whom live
to adulthood
♪
Harriet, Beverly,
Madison, and Eston.
♪
- We don't have any letters
that say,
I know that these
are Jefferson's children.
♪
But the diary
of one of his friends
talked about this connection
between Jefferson
and an enslaved
woman, Sally Hemings.
♪
Madison Hemings said
he was kind to them,
but he was distant.
♪
He wasn't in the habit
of being affectionate to them
in the way that he was
to his grandchildren.
But he had planned for them
in a different way
than other enslaved people.
♪
All of the young men were
put to apprenticeships
with the master
carpenter at Monticello.
♪
Jefferson's
granddaughters' letters
talk about their trips--
stopping at inns
and having picnics.
We know they're there, because
when Jefferson is writing,
he says, I'm coming with the
carpenter and his apprentices.
That would be his sons.
♪
- The Hemings children
are interesting.
Like, they're all
very talented people.
♪
- The daughter,
Harriet, learns to spin.
All three of the sons played
the violin, as Jefferson did.
They're all carpenters,
and Jefferson
did woodworking himself.
So they're sort of like
versions of himself, in a way.
♪
- And as promised
in France in 1789,
Jefferson frees
all of Sally's children
when they turn 21.
♪
- Her sons, Madison and Eston,
move to the city
of Charlottesville,
and then they move to Ohio,
where they have large families.
And they carry a lot of the
Monticello history with them.
♪
- Beverly and Harriet--
Beverly is the oldest son--
they left Monticello
to live as white people.
- They have
very light complexions,
and, in fact, do pass
into white society,
adopt new identities,
and disappear.
♪
- After his presidency
ends in 1809,
Jefferson sees
his home, Monticello,
as the embodiment of who he is
and all he has accomplished.
He becomes obsessed
with decorating
and adorning his home
in a fashion worthy
of America's founding father.
One visitor would later write,
"If it had not been called
Monticello,
"I would call it Olympus--
Jove, its occupant."
♪
- Monticello
becomes not a house.
It's a museum.
It symbolizes what he
wants his legacy to be.
♪
- Jefferson adored control.
He adored architecture.
He adored a sense
of himself in the world.
And Monticello becomes
this embodiment,
an extension of himself.
- He bought everything he
liked, everything he saw.
He didn't worry
about what it would cost.
♪
- He would have been
an Amazon Prime customer.
There's no doubt
in my mind about this,
and he would have
pressed, yes, one click,
and I want it tomorrow.
♪
- But Monticello was not
a tremendously
profitable place.
He didn't pay enough attention
to the business side of it.
♪
- On top of the fact
that this guy is a consumer,
there are macroeconomic
issues at work against him.
During his retirement,
the agricultural economy
is not changing for the
better for Virginia planters.
Most of his agricultural
practices and activities
don't produce the profits
that he hoped.
♪
- Tobacco planters
generally relied so heavily
on British credit,
they were normally
always deeply in debt.
♪
That didn't mean they
didn't have great resources,
that they didn't have a lot of
money to spend on themselves.
But it did mean that there was
a kind of perpetual dependency
on overseas markets.
- They're used to carrying debt
in ways that, frankly,
would probably make most of us
uncomfortable.
Planters are borrowing
money from each other.
They're signing notes for
each other to pay their debts.
And if you're
a member of the elite,
you never really
get called on it.
Most of the time,
you can keep signing notes,
and people
will keep taking them
and giving you wine
or books or people.
♪
- Jefferson is
aware of his debt,
but he sees it
as the currency of his class.
♪
Having always had wealth,
he presumes he always will.
♪
- Jefferson has a great
sense of entitlement
to the good life,
but not that sense
of hardscrabble responsibility
on how to make money
and keep it.
♪
- But when Jefferson's
creditors come to collect,
his pockets are empty.
♪
[dramatic music]
- In 1809, when
Jefferson returns
to Monticello
after his presidency,
he is forced
to reconcile his debt.
After many years of floating
his lavish lifestyle
on loans and favors,
when his creditors ask
to be paid,
Jefferson realizes
he must come up
with a way to generate cash.
- He responded to this debt
by coming up
with various schemes.
♪
He had a flour mill.
He had other ventures
at his plantation
that he thought would
actually make money for him.
♪
- But Jefferson is not
a good businessman.
His efforts to diversify--
a lot of them
are based on ideals of how
a plantation should work,
rather than what
is actually going
to work best for Monticello.
♪
Jefferson is experimenting
in industries
like weaving and spinning.
There are men who do ironwork.
♪
- He establishes the nailery,
and they start
manufacturing nails.
♪
Young men working
in that nailery
are often being
treated quite harshly.
- And in the end, the various
mills and that nail factory
didn't make the money that
he thought could be made.
- After three years
of failed attempts
to make money,
in 1812, a new conflict
with Britain
emerges over contested trade
routes and infringements
of American rights at sea.
Amidst the chaos of war comes
an opportunity for Jefferson.
♪
- During the War of 1812,
the British burned part
of the capital.
And one of the
things they burned
is what was then the
Library of Congress.
So Jefferson's friends in
Congress know he's in debt.
They pass a law to authorize
the purchase
of Jefferson's
private library
♪
Because he collects
a huge number
of books, thousands of books.
♪
- He sells the entire
collection intact.
He says, you can't
just take the books
on politics and history.
You have to take
all the books,
because all knowledge should
be of interest to legislators.
And that becomes the core
of the Library of Congress
that we know today.
- So they buy
Jefferson's library
for a lot more
than it's worth.
And Jefferson now
can pay his debts.
What does he do?
He takes the money and starts
ordering books from England,
where he
can get them much cheaper,
and he replaces everything
he sold, plus a lot more.
- This guy's a consumer.
He needs the infusion of cash,
but instead, he builds
a third library.
And so he's getting into
greater and greater debt.
And then there's
the Panic of 1819.
There's a massive
economic downturn.
It's effectively a depression,
and he's caught out by that.
- After years of prosperity
and expansion,
the Panic of 1819
is America's first
financial setback.
A result of fallout
from the global markets
in the aftermath of
the wars in Europe
and America's lack of
regulation on paper money,
the Panic forces
wealthy planters,
who previously just moved
debts around, to pay up.
Jefferson finds himself
responsible for paying back
not only money he borrowed
but money his friends
borrowed as well.
- Jefferson cosigns loans
for friends that fail,
and he's on the hook for those.
♪
- The suggestion was
that he should downsize
and sell people the land.
But he didn't want to do that.
- Because you don't
sell land in Virginia.
You buy land.
You get land.
Land is power in this place.
And the elite Virginians are
obsessed with acquiring it.
You don't give up land
unless you absolutely have to.
And the same,
to a large extent,
goes for enslaved people.
But you don't get rid of
your assets in that way
in order to get out of debt,
not in that culture
at that time.
♪
- And so
the Jefferson family--
they bring up the idea,
we could convince him to move
to the Deep South,
where cotton is booming.
♪
The opportunity is there.
If you take the enslaved
laborers who are at Monticello
and take them
to a different landscape,
you could absolve the debt
without having to separate
the enslaved community.
But Jefferson's grandson said,
you know he'll never go
for that.
And so the family
basically gives up
on trying to solve Jefferson's
financial problems.
♪
- He wanted everything
to remain the same.
It was sort of really
unrealistic
that everything
is going to remain the same.
And so there's no question
that he was enormously
depressed at the end.
♪
He felt that he had
failed as a patriarch,
he had failed to
protect his family.
- After a life as a celebrated
revolutionary and aristocrat,
in his final years,
Thomas Jefferson
finds himself broke and alone.
♪
- At 76 years old,
Thomas Jefferson's political
career is over,
and he is deeply in debt.
He is celebrated as the author
of the
Declaration of Independence,
America's third president,
and a beloved founding father.
But he is still determined
to leave America with more.
♪
- In 1819
he's a man
in declining health,
but he wanted to be remembered
as the embodiment of the
principles
of liberty and equality.
And so he spends much of his
retirement engaged in founding
the University of Virginia.
♪
- Jefferson presided over
the University of Virginia,
with hopes that this
could be a seminary
for Republican leaders
of the future.
♪
- But people were upset
because it didn't have
a chapel.
People called it
a godless institution.
♪
- And so Jefferson's
vision was,
this is going to be
a secular institution
that's meant
to be explicitly political.
He's going to properly train
young Southern men
to be good Republican citizens.
And he takes immense pride
in that.
♪
- On Jefferson's tombstone,
he cites three things--
author of the
Declaration of Independence,
author of the Virginia
Statute for Religious Freedom,
and founder of the
University of Virginia.
And it's fascinating he
chose those things
and not his presidency.
- As Jefferson
descends into old age,
he becomes acutely aware
of the way he would like
to be remembered.
- He'd been there
at the beginning.
The American Revolution was
a really, really big deal.
♪
We don't take
monarchy seriously,
but that was the predominant
form of governance.
And for having defeated that--
and he knew that
it was something
that he would be
remembered for,
and he wanted to be remembered
in a particular kind of way.
♪
- Jefferson deliberately wrote
his own autobiography
because he was writing
a version of history
that he wanted
to be remembered.
♪
- He wants to be remembered
as someone who defended
the people's liberties
and he stood
for human equality,
religious freedom,
and education and science.
- Jefferson's life that we
get from his autobiography
is very carefully edited
and cultivated.
♪
It doesn't just influence our
understanding of him early on.
I think it continues
to this day.
♪
- In his 70s,
Thomas Jefferson
is reflective and sentimental
about what he's accomplished.
His health is declining,
but his mind is still sharp.
♪
- Jefferson
was a hale old man,
but he was
an old man nevertheless.
He'd lived considerably longer
than the average life span
for an American man
at that time.
- He would go out
and ride around the plantation
occasionally,
and he would come for dinner,
but he spent most
of his time writing.
- Jefferson loves
writing letters
and receiving letters
and trading books.
And one of the great joys
for him
is his correspondence
with John Adams
well into his last years.
- The Adams-Jefferson
relationship
is a fascinating relationship.
♪
There's a very,
very close bond.
They first meet
in the Continental Congress.
Of course, they serve
on the committee of five
that drafts the
Declaration of Independence.
They're in Paris together
before Adams goes to London.
♪
But then they become estranged,
really, over politics.
Adams famously skipped
Jefferson's inauguration.
- After a decade-long standoff
between the founding fathers
of America's two opposing
political parties,
John Adams
and Thomas Jefferson
find themselves nostalgic
for the days
of revolutionary fervor.
♪
Years before, in 1812,
just as Jefferson began
to compile plans
for the University
of Virginia,
Benjamin Rush, who had served
with him and Adams
in the Continental Congress,
encouraged the two
old patriots to reconcile.
- Benjamin Rush
gets into his head
that these two people should
not be enemies
because they had been
such great friends.
♪
He approaches both people,
and they start
this correspondence
that has become famous.
- They correspond a lot.
- "I have thus stated
my opinion
"on a point
on which we differ,
"not with a view
to controversy,
"for we are both too old
to change opinions
"which are the result
of a long life
of inquiry and reflection."
♪
- They're both retired.
They're both opinionated.
They're both gifted
letter writers.
♪
We have these two leaders
of the American Revolution
reflecting on their life's work.
- Adams, characteristically,
writes three letters
for every one of Jefferson's.
♪
Adams can't help himself.
He just writes and writes
and writes and writes.
♪
- "Your letter was
received in due time
"and with the welcome
of everything which comes
"from you with its opinions on
the difficulties of revolution
from despotism to freedom,
I very much concur."
♪
- They still don't
agree on everything.
But the venom has been taken
out of things.
The sting is out of it.
They're arguing about history,
to some extent.
They're arguing about politics,
to some extent.
But they're not fighting
about it anymore.
♪
- "I wish your
health may continue
"to last much better
than mine.
"We shall meet again,
"so wishes and so
believes your friend.
But if we are disappointed,
we shall never know it."
♪
- It's as if Adams and
Jefferson are reimagining
and reaffirming the original
bond that made them both,
at the same moment, Americans.
♪
- In 1826, he had been ill
for a number of months.
He'd had a bout of some
sort of bacterial infection
and had been treated
with mercury.
♪
- By June, it's clear
that he's failing.
♪
In the last few days
of his life
♪
It's early July,
and he's coming in
and out of consciousness.
♪
He's asking those around him,
is it the Fourth?
Is it the Fourth?
♪
- He called his
family into the room,
and he said, the end is near.
Do not weep for me.
Turning to his
daughter, he said,
I go where your mother is.
And we prepare a place for you.
- And a story that is told
is that he asks
to be raised on his pillow,
and nobody knows
what he's saying.
The only person who knows
that's what he's saying
is Burwell Colbert,
an African American
enslaved person who does it
and raises him on his pillow.
And then he closes his eyes,
and he goes to sleep,
and he doesn't wake up.
♪
John Adams and Jefferson
die on the same day
♪
July 4, 1826.
- They die
on the 50th anniversary
of the
Declaration of Independence.
It's an amazing coincidence,
and it's a fitting end
to their story.
♪
- When Jefferson dies,
he is surrounded
by people who have been looking
after him his entire life.
- One of the last people
that he sees
is an African American man,
enslaved man.
It brackets his life.
- He comes into the world at
the hands of enslaved people,
and at the end, he, again, is
surrounded by enslaved people.
♪
- Jefferson left this country
with its founding creed,
but only after his death
will the enslaved people
of Monticello find out
if his vision of liberty
applies to them.
♪
[dramatic music]
- After Jefferson's death
and his lifetime
spent espousing
man's natural right
to liberty,
the enslaved community
of Monticello
anxiously awaits their fate
upon the reading of his will.
♪
- There was some hope within
the enslaved community
that because this is
the apostle of liberty,
he would have
a deathbed conversion.
♪
- There's people like
Washington, who, in his will,
frees enslaved people
who belong to him.
♪
- But Jefferson didn't
free his slaves.
- 90% of his wealth is bound
to these enslaved people.
He doesn't free people,
because he can't afford to.
He died deeply in debt,
and as a result of that,
there's a huge auction
to settle his debt.
♪
- That sale is advertised--
"130 valuable Negroes."
It's among the largest sales
of enslaved people
in the United States.
- And so on a cold
January morning in 1827,
the moment arrived to liquidate
Thomas Jefferson's property.
♪
Can you imagine
what that must have felt like,
to watch a member
of your family be sold?
Sold alongside artwork
out of the house,
chairs from the dining room,
alongside horses and cattle.
- My great-great-
great-grandfather
was sold there on
the West Lawn,
along with scores
of other people.
♪
- My fourth great-grandfather
is Peter Hemings,
and Peter Hemings was
sold at the 1827 sale.
♪
- Despite talking
about the consequences,
about family separation,
a lot of these families
ended up separated.
Generations of people never
saw their families again.
♪
- In one case, Jefferson
puts in his will
that his blacksmith,
Joe Fossett, is freed
and can live in his cabin
with his wife and his family.
But Jefferson didn't free
his wife and his family.
♪
And so the day Joe Fossett
got his freedom,
he watched his wife
and his children
auctioned off to a number
of different purchasers.
- His son Peter Fossett,
who was 11 years old,
many years later said,
we were scattered
all over the country,
never to meet each other again
until we meet in another world.
I think about that
line all the time.
♪
- He understands what
separating people
from their families does.
He understands
the long-term consequences,
but these families end up
scattered all over the world,
all because this one family
couldn't figure out
what to do with their finances.
♪
- He had written
about personal liberty.
He had written about equality.
He had expressed
some of the most beautiful
and important sentiments
known to man.
And yet, he could not
live out his ideals.
Jefferson separated,
by sale or gift,
400 enslaved people over
the course of his lifetime.
♪
- In the last 250 years
♪
Thomas Jefferson's story
has been pruned and curated.
♪
That he has come to be known
as the pinnacle
of American exceptionalism
is no accident.
♪
- There was a revival
of interest in Jefferson
around the time
of the Second World War.
- When set against fascism
in an existential fight
like the Second World War,
Franklin Roosevelt,
and I think the American people
more generally,
saw Jefferson as the embodiment
of the principles
of liberty and equality.
And Roosevelt dedicated
the Jefferson Memorial in 1943.
♪
And it's the high watermark
of the representation
of Jefferson
as the apostle of liberty.
- And so the Jefferson
many of us grew up with
was an extension of an FDR-era
Democratic Party
that was liberal--
lowercase L--
inspiring,
rooted in the Declaration,
and intelligent.
The lessons of his presidency,
of the writing that he did
can be used to inspire
patriotism.
- Over the course
of the last 70 years,
Jefferson's story
has been molded
in order to bolster
the American narrative.
♪
But until Jefferson's
full story is told,
can the real story of
America's founding be known?
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
- Much conversation
has surrounded
Jefferson's relationship
with Sally Hemings,
as well as the promise
he upheld
to emancipate her children.
♪
But though Sally watched
each of her children
walk free
upon their 21st birthday,
she, like the rest
of the enslaved community
at Monticello,
learns her fate
upon the reading of his will.
- He does not free
her in his will.
♪
- Jefferson's daughter
basically gives Sally Hemings
an unofficial sort of freedom.
She's given her time.
And that means that
she's basically allowed
to go and come as she pleases.
♪
So Sally Hemings moves
into Charlottesville
with her sons,
Madison and Eston,
and she's able to live there
until her death.
♪
- After a nearly
40-year relationship,
Sally Hemings
is neither granted her freedom
nor ever
officially acknowledged
by Jefferson or his family.
♪
While Jefferson's loved ones
and descendants are buried
next to him at Monticello,
Sally's gravesite is unknown.
♪
Years later, after Sally
and Jefferson's deaths,
Sally's son Madison
publishes a memoir
claiming that he
and his siblings
are Thomas Jefferson's
children.
But his story
is fervently denied
by Jefferson's
white descendants.
- Jefferson's grandson
says it wasn't Jefferson.
It was a nephew.
♪
Jefferson's granddaughter,
Ellen Coolidge,
says a similar thing.
Two of Jefferson's
grandchildren are quoted,
saying that
the children were fathered
by Jefferson's nephews.
That's why they look
just like Jefferson.
♪
And so that's the line
that historians stuck to.
The idea is that
this is impossible.
Jefferson would never
do anything like this.
He couldn't have lived
among his grandchildren
and have a mistress.
♪
Historians are saying
there's no evidence
that this happened.
♪
I was insulted by that.
To say that Madison Hemings's
recollections
and the recollections
of a man named
Israel Gillette Jefferson,
who corroborates
what Madison Hemings said--
to say that there
was no evidence
was like saying that
they didn't even speak.
♪
If you don't listen to
enslaved people about slavery,
what the heck are you doing?
The morality suggests that
you should pay attention
to what they're saying.
And that's how I ended up
writing the first book.
So, in my book, I look
at these two stories--
the Jefferson
grandchildren's story
and Madison Hemings's
recollections--
to try to see what
corroborating evidence
there was to prove that these
are Jefferson's children.
♪
- If you look at who is
at Monticello at the time
that Sally Hemings conceives
all of her children,
it's Thomas Jefferson.
- When Thomas Jefferson
is away in Washington,
Sally Hemings isn't
getting pregnant.
When Thomas Jefferson
is at Monticello,
she's getting pregnant.
- The children are named for
people connected to Jefferson,
and then there's
one nuclear family
that walks away
from that place,
and that's Sally Hemings
and her children.
All of this made it clear
that Madison Hemings
was likely telling the truth
when he said that Jefferson
was his father.
♪
- But these histories
from the enslaved community
are discounted
because historians have long
discounted the oral histories
of African Americans
by saying
that they are less valid
than other types
of historical information,
things like diaries
and handwritten records.
The key here being,
people who are literate
are able to produce
better history
than those who are not.
And so the story
that Jefferson's
white family weaves
becomes the main narrative.
These are the ways that
they have protected his legacy
for 200 years.
♪
- My book came out in 1997.
Eugene Foster arranged
the DNA testing
in 1998.
- They test the descendant
of Sally Hemings'
youngest son, Eston,
and they compare that
with an unbroken line
through to Thomas Jefferson's
brother Peter.
- The DNA study
in 1998 confirms
that Thomas Jefferson
fathered Sally Hemings's
last child, Eston.
♪
- Annette Gordon-Reed
got it right
before the scientists did.
It's one of the singular
and most formidable
contributions
of an American historian, ever.
- So the combination
of the things that I'd done
and the DNA changed
the way people saw things.
Why is this important?
♪
Because of what it said
about the way
people write about history
and who is a credible witness
and whose story matters
and the suggestion
that the founding era is
the era of white people
and not the era of lots
of different people.
♪
- We learn about the Hemings
through Madison Hemings
and through
Israel Gillette Hemings,
who confirm
from their own experience--
They were there.
They witnessed it.
And yet, historians,
for decades,
dismiss these
firsthand accounts
from the enslaved community.
But this DNA study
and Annette Gordon-Reed
shows us that these
enslaved families matter.
♪
It's important to resist
the idea
that researching slavery
is difficult or impossible
or too challenging a project
to undertake.
I think the more that we
think through ways
that we can elevate
the stories
and preserve these histories,
the more that we can start
to bring some of this history
out of the shadows.
- Suddenly, centuries of lies
and wishful thinking are gone.
And what stands is the truth.
And what is that truth?
The truth is what America is,
which is this remarkable
combination
of lies and reality
and contradiction
and hope and fear,
all of which Jefferson was.
♪
If we want to understand
who we've been and who we are
and who we want to be,
it begins
with an honest conversation
about Thomas Jefferson.
♪
[dramatic music]
- As more
of Thomas Jefferson's
complicated story
has come to light
♪
Many changes have been made
in the way history is taught
and understood in America.
♪
- There was this turn
with historic sites,
including Monticello
♪
starting to supplement
those traditional
historic records
with the human side,
grappling with slavery,
to teach history
as a full story,
as not just the high point.
- Monticello and
early American history
are way more than
stories about Jefferson.
- The Getting Word African
American Oral History Project
traveled over 40,000 miles,
looking for descendants
of families
associated with the Monticello
enslaved community,
locate them, and record
their oral histories.
This work that goes
into understanding
enslaved communities
is part of a groundswell
that's happening
to reunite those families.
Monticello hosted
the 25th anniversary
of the Getting Word Project,
and over 300 people came
from the descendant
community alone.
♪
- It's almost beyond words,
all of the descendants
gathered at the West Lawn,
where our ancestors
had been sold.
♪
- I mean, it's this
power of place.
It's the power of saying,
this is where it happened.
♪
- My job as a descendant
of enslaved people
is to debunk the myth
♪
and to give voice
to my ancestors.
Their voices were silenced
in life, but mine isn't.
And my people represent
millions of enslaved people
throughout American history.
- Jefferson could
never have envisioned
that descendants would return
to Monticello for a reunion.
We can unite with one another
and learn about what happened
and also move forward.
Those individuals
have lived out
the Declaration
of Independence.
They are the patriots.
They have taken and extended
the Declaration
of Independence
for themselves
and for their families
and for their communities in
ways that Thomas Jefferson
never would have envisioned.
♪
- People have said to me,
you seem to be proud
of Thomas Jefferson.
Missing the whole point.
I'm not ashamed
or proud of Jefferson.
He will always be very
important to our history
and to making this
country what it is.
But I'll tell you
who I am proud of--
those people who
stood up and made
his life possible,
made it possible
for the United States
to be here today.
♪
- So what do we make
of the legacy
of Thomas Jefferson today?
♪
- He was, obviously, a person
with this vision of a society.
He articulated things that
hadn't been articulated
in quite that way before.
It sets forth an
ideal when you think
about citizenship and its
glories and responsibilities.
♪
- But we have to reckon
the apostle-of-liberty
Jefferson
with the Jefferson
whose legacy makes us
uncomfortable.
♪
- Jefferson was the one
politician--
brilliant, articulate,
popular, a slave-owner--
who could have made
a difference
and didn't.
- The crime feels worse
because
it's abetted by things
that we admire.
And we don't quite know where
one starts and the other ends.
♪
- And so we worry that
if Jefferson was impure,
then our ideals are impure.
We worry that if Jefferson was
wrong, our nation is wrong.
♪
- Because
America's greatnesses
are linked inextricably
with
its horrors.
♪
There's nobody else
that contains that observation
about the country
like Jefferson.
♪
- And so we have to think
about the period
of America's founding
in ways that would be
productive and helpful
and help us envision a future
where we could solve
some of the inequality caused
by the systems set up by people
like Thomas Jefferson.
♪
- Some of the founding fathers
hold up better to scrutiny
than others.
So you have to take the good
with the bad and the ugly
and look at all of it
together in context
and not demonize them
and not idolize them,
which itself makes their
wisdom more accessible,
which I think is infinitely
more interesting,
because it's more human.
♪
And that itself, I think, can
inspire us to hold ourselves
up to higher standards and
learn from their examples--
their successes
and their failings.
♪
- We need to continue
debunking the mythology.
However, we must
always remember
those inspiring words.
♪
- Jefferson didn't write those
words considering Black people
who were free or enslaved.
He didn't write those
words considering women.
He certainly wasn't thinking
about the Indigenous
populations
whose land they were occupying.
But he did give us
this inspirational place
that we could always aspire
to be.
We could always
aspire for equality.
We could always work
to make these words true.
And for generations of people,
that is exactly
what has happened.
♪
- Jefferson's story is one
of conflict and contradiction.
But it remains
the story of America.
As he himself wrote
in a letter in 1790
♪
"The ground of liberty is
to be gained by inches,
"and we must be contented to
secure what we can from time
"to time and eternally
press forward
for what is yet to get."
♪