Thomas Jefferson: A View from the Mountain; Part 1

it's been funding for this program was provided by central and northern

virginia public television by a grant from the university of virginia and through the generous support of viewers like you johnson is probably the most symbolic is this jefferson's words and jefferson's image as a proponent of individual rights and equality as varied and speeches that other teenagers are made in their writings in her sermons he was always present the cello is a wonderful place to visit and what else

and has been no where his nature spread so rigid mental and the high mountains

forests and wrongs reverse and with what measures tend to weed their ride above the store that looks down into the workhouse still way off on the glorious sun and then rising out of the war just killed in the tops of the mountains and giving rides or as thomas jefferson each morning for his mountaintop whole thomas jefferson could look out the wonders and workings of nature for jefferson the natural world is his classroom and he needs most of my rings eugene order and balance the major reveals also serves to guy jefferson to his beliefs about human nature

as a boy jefferson won the skills he later in paris from his father the only builds the home of his dreams and calls a modern show along with its styles and ancient and modern european modern cello shines against the rugged virginia wins over four decades jefferson designed and redesigned modern cello as he shapes and reshape spending both stanis creative endeavors the most creative mind and his lasting reflections one of america's great renaissance man the industry clinton is this thomas jefferson is one of the most

fascinating and complex figure ever come on the american landscape of his ideas about individual rights education freedom of religion and freedom from the impressions of our own government have made him more than an important figure in our national mythology to many jefferson has become a symbol of all that we value in america so it remains one of the great ironies in our history but the man who writes the declaration of independence declaring the equality of all men and the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness writes these immortal words while holding scores of african americans as slaves jefferson certainly is a man of his day on a day when the institution of slavery was deeply entrenched in the american colonies in fact jefferson's own well social status and his political opponents in some ways fun and so many of the way that jefferson is not a man specialist personally

jefferson has to be a victory twice the normal life expectancy at the time his life spans a period in history when america is radically rethinking its notions about race and slavery and jefferson's own words have enormous impact sometimes the horns by james parton a hundred a little over a hundred years ago a pardon was our first official biographer and i think he put his finger on what jefferson has had become even to his time at age seventy four he said it jefferson is wrong america's wrong and jefferson is really americans right that kind of moral equivocation has continued into our own time and he is the source i think of much of the controversy that surrounds johnson when jefferson does something whether

he's in a global fashion editors in america itself in a way i was naive kid in the ghettos of houston texas and in about sixth grade seventh grader never did get to the declaration of independence i thought it sounded just great and i would write speeches about that what does this country a promise that all men in sensitive about it being all men back when i was a kid and i thought that those words really gave america the kind of promise an opportunity which would freak me as an individual to soar as high as flawed and why has it come from

comparing what we are with this standard thomas jefferson's up and the standard he set for us is an ideal that north korea and we look at race relations today well respected position and all don't have certainly not allowed to use the same kind of lies and so we contrast that experience with this ideal and where we find ourselves once on that sense yes racial discussion derives precisely from cinema owners itself precisely because the thomas jefferson that's most important is the one who wrote those were his knowledge referred to or is hope but in the hot that hope with a persistent laurie which we all share which are untried debate over jefferson's it's worrying that

somehow that scene of evil there was plenty of the slavery there at the very beginning the american nation is still going to be what kills us i dreamed i not evansville on the new body was that is i dreamed that matt evans deal but nobody was dazed and ninety two the league says that not all is well my head he's the first african slaves in an english colony of about twenty rides in jamestown virginia and sixty nine to five seventeen

fifty some ten million africans have been taken in chains to the western hemisphere will come as the american colonies they're all for decades that african slavery was an economic institution of friction a longtime slavery coexist with miniatures servitude if you'd ask a leading virginia to save a preferred lender said if we could have this be a white man's country for good have enough english men and women come here willing to work hard for seven years the only way that we would like to come in and wanted to come on line quickly if we're going to be kind of plantations we first and have current labor wears a lame available that are bringing slaves from africa

so process that takes a very long time to congeal now slavery is illegal in the northern colonies for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but it is not as critical as in the south because the growing season issue in the south slave labor is thought to be essential to plantation life it many plantation owners still complain about how unproductive slave labor says one reason is that that surcharge stage for north south that exists is that slavery didn't seem to be an institution with much of a future it seemed to honestly have made meeting in virginia rich that had been here for a hundred twenty thirty years' time texas born but ms wasserman says this is not the wave of the future or

thomas jefferson in the seventeenth and the edge of the virginia frontier on a plantation known as sharon he is the third child and the first son of here and jamie jeffers his mother his father is a native virginian of modest means with little formal education peter jefferson would become a successful farmer and surveyor two silvers he teaches his son even from his earliest days african americans are part of jefferson's life on the plantation one in particular is a slave named jupiter was born in the same year as jefferson and it was jefferson's own brother was very much younger than he was and we can we can begin to speculate that jupiter perhaps might've been a boyhood companion at shadwell where when jefferson was growing up he became joseph crist will serve and accompanied him

to williamsburg jefferson would give him wide sums of money to go out into town and buy things he was a very trusted servant again classics early to school i would've amounted to vendors construction the curators there just came to latin and greek he was always very conscientious according to people who were fourteen fifteen years and they'll study so he immersed himself very rapidly in the classical languages even as a teenager began two two draw from cicero from senator from that curious from other classical authors so the greek philosopher epicurus writes it is not possible to live a pleasant without leaving prudently honorably and

just simon johnson learns that the highest than any preacher consists in acting in accordance with its nature from these classic philosophers jefferson begins to shape the direction for his life and seventeen jefferson attends the college of william and mary in williamsburg after which he takes on the study of war his mentor is the brilliant george with in years to come with is a signer of the declaration of independence from a harsh critic of sleep at the age of twenty one jefferson inherits the family estate after the death of his father inheritance includes five thousand acres of land and twenty two slaves is now part of virginia's landed gentry and in seventeen sixty eight at the age of twenty five thomas jefferson is elected to virginia's governing body the house of vertices at this time virginia

law makes it difficult for slave owners' to free their slaves freed slaves our challenge to the institution but at the same time the law prevents masters from abandoning those slaves were too old or too sick to work in his first session in the thomas jefferson proposes changes and the slavery laws he joins with little richard land that jefferson described as an older and respected member of the house their proposal to extend protection for slaves and allows limited menu mission i second glance ocean and that's a younger member was more spare than the debate mccain was denounced as an enemy of his country and was treated with the gross to call thomas jefferson so jefferson was unique did jefferson have now distinguished himself from any

other plantation owners by identifying slavery as an institution in need of change the whole thomas between master and slave is perpetual exercise of the most boisterous patients most one pot and degrading trouble for my country when i was like that got to be is just that he's just just cannot sleep forever jefferson is convinced slavery is an evil that someday will and he also believes that when free blacks must be colonized in africa or the caribbean where they can live is jefferson the history of abuse and suffering or is four to bring blacks and whites never live together deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the injuries to have sustained new provocations

than the real distinctions which nature has made and many other circumstances will divide us and two parties and produced convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of one or the other race and thomas jefferson rights commission who are you years after thomas jefferson's

about life on the mountain like many family name relief today on this worlds of jefferson's family slate's the african mainland children who lived on the five thousand acre plantation life jefferson referred to everyone who lived on the plantation as his family he spoke of my family of a hundred and twenty seven source in iran by doing that he's using the word family in a sense that's obsolete today meaning an entire household with our jefferson at the head of that household or in his case a plantation on new year's day seventy seventy two thomas jefferson mary ottaway is no painting of mortars sometimes although some believe this to be her soul away she's described as petite by

vicious a model of rapes and she shares her husband's love for music she plays the harpsichord two years ago jefferson's father john williams guys jefferson and carrots eleven thousand acres of land and one hundred thirty five slaves jefferson who express so much of his taste of the institution of slavery has now through inheritance become the second largest slave holder in the county but in addition to the land and the slaves jefferson also inherited from his father in law a rather sizeable debt postage and appliances like john wales own money to british quiet except in the property as

inheritance jefferson must also assume that that's what it is seventeen seventy four jefferson is in good financial shape and confident we can eliminate that miscalculation staggering miscalculation but how could jefferson have anticipated the american revolution the revolution that both makes him famous creates the great world historical opportunity for him to be a great revolutionary leader but also and wary and flips the burden of their own tradition throughout his life finding it necessary to sell a few more slaves to accomplish the deadness to wales to faron jones i have thought of disposing of diana and her family as her husband lives with you i should choose to sell her in your neighborhood sos to unite her with him thomas jefferson jefferson was very critical of the transaction will

get a new counterterrorism law that was too small to keep you know exactly how much leverage has raised a huge plantation what became of it and how much we saw the pilot which for sixty years the overseer of modern cello is in and they can jettison describes bacon as an honest correct manner misconduct who possesses the esteemed confidence and goodwill of his neighbors and most large plantations the overseer directs the work of the slaves owned plantation owners like jefferson to keep some distance slate's lily each year we have to talk a lot about what kind of overseers would be in charge of them and some of them were known to be buried oh so even though jefferson possibly expressed his wish that his slaves be treated humanely and that the use of the wit he reduced to a minimum we do know that there was there was forty and physical punishment on the plantation

i think jefferson when dealing with his slaves on a one to one basis was very sympathetic merciful god he acted as a human being in his relationship with them in that way but he was also the head of an economic enterprise the five thousand acre plantation and so he had to act as a manager of labor are also an owner of valuable property and these two impulses were in constant collision i think in the course of its life yet what the slaves enabled jefferson to do is develop his great love of forming more land or the most precious part of the state experiments with images of crop rotation to increase he devises a detailed plans for a seed in harvesting fruit and vegetable invented the mobile wallets for cloud as a veteran waited

till was so when he decides not to patent saying its contribution to the american farmer is too important to be in profit he was he wanted individuals to be able to stand on their own two feet and all this translated into his term the notion that a person would only a certain amount of land and then by the sweat of his own bow and he would have a certain self sufficiency and would not be that the little brothers or a certain all the government things in many ways of jefferson is dependent on the health of his slaves over his lifetime he owns an estimated four hundred slaves they were mostly as house servants skilled

craftsman and field hands for more than fifty years in jefferson keeps records of a slave family and his farm book he records their births and deaths list the provisions they receive calculations of the finest detail the importance of having an even owns this small pox inoculation jefferson has little use for doctors so we insists on doing inoculations himself for one of the slave families jefferson in paris from his father soon changes month a child it is that having spent the hemmings or experienced house servant and skilled artisans take on privilege status in the jefferson john hemmings who can read and write becomes a spool cotton producing many fine with james venice becomes the principal

paul martin shelling later he accompanies jefferson to france to learn the art of french cooking robert having some places boys were companion jupiter as jefferson's personal valid and betty hemmings heads the household staff over the years jefferson owns thirty i mean jettison most highly of her speech he gave her a lane to head to conserve on the head a former from the midst of a very highly of her she suddenly the matriarch of all the house lays their eggs as long as she was able to do that so she must've been pretty intelligent most likely most likable person well the hemmings family enjoys and privilege that is that martin shell and more slaves than the day working the fields

and raising wheat corn all ages would be in the field mother father sister brother our grandma everybody would be the man just undo it would ever intend to tobacco and that's going to that's where maintenance submarine that hard work some sunbelt sixties cousin it was difficult where you had to find a way to break that monotony of that word and the waiting and that was the news music in the form a work song we have caller response believe ad ran a movie maybe a movie they may long singing and tell

stories this is it every sense of duty that he did he tried to tell i don't think there's another person they're concerned that president

for geographical site place in particular building is as much a parliament and so intrinsically a part of the agreement to pursue in the case of jefferson unlike almost any other president nasser uk know jefferson to uganda much is that residual his designs jefferson the entrance way is a showcase the natural history and flumes from the journeys of lewis and clark mastodon bones jefferson believes no animal created in nature than ever become extinct a giant deerskin tells the story of a battle between the suit and mandiant can be

dropped from his earliest years jefferson looked for abolition and native americas jefferson's private library and study on his inner sanctum he reads in seven languages including greek and latin and prefers to really work in its original form so nothing can be lost in translation here in his cabinet jefferson spends hours instead of exchanging correspondence with the great minds of his then a polygraph creates a duplicate copies of his letters during his lifetime jefferson writes morning sounds amazing and it was basically because it seems to matter whether another way a good metaphor for slightly calibrated tuesday just that precisely his grandson said he was a

miser with his time he was nothing if not organized the word every minute to cover something constructive he wants to hire a sliding schedule for her date with respect for the distribution of your time the following is what i should improve from eight to ten o'clock practice music from ten to one dance one day and draw the other from wanted to draw on that day in dance and white or whether the next day from three to read french from fortified exercise yourself in music from five until bedtime read english right and center i expect the white house to take care of the snow ps keep my letters and read them at times that you may always have present in your mind and those things which will undo to listen to a

very active role in the education of his daughters and his grandchildren we engage directly in their education self and the evidence was scanty about what he thought was appropriate for his slaves there really is no evidence that he felt they should be educated in any way in fact what does survive suggest that he thought slaves should not be educated they first should the top habits of industry and how to survive but quite quite a number of my cello slaves could at least meet in many could read and write and there's a wonderful letter from a slave house of an app op were forced to jefferson sending her readings master i write you a few lines to let you know that your house and furniture are all say is i think you will be glad to know i heard that you did not expect to come up this fall i was sorry to hear

that you were so long where women could not come hickory well as you have been so blessed in this life that you consider it was got the dermot and no other one we ought to be thankful for what he has done for us we are to serve in the bay his commandments but you may set to win the prize that the glory run pastor i do not believe might be ignorant let it will be much encouragement to us you know i'm a poor ignorant creature this thesis oh well thank you while his slaves to the bulk of the manual labor on the plantation jefferson spent much of his day

in the endless pursuit of knowledge some topics including mr yunus yeah this is really delicious jefferson is a major american city in an international community of intellectuals known as the enlightenment science had only recently discovered things like gravity electricity magnetism and energy and out of these discoveries universal lot about nature and the natural light and thinkers reason that if there was a natural order of the things that we see around them and must be a natural order to manage well nature now became a tool to be utopian dreams of

universal peace and equality jefferson most of meyer's every englishman who believe that man could decipher of the simple basic structures of nature the scientist isaac newton who attempted to explain the mechanical laws of the physical universe and philosopher john locke who argued against the divine writing the declaration of independence that all men and people in the state of nature and there's a certain natural another important influence on jefferson he's a presbyterian minister frances hutchinson a leader of the scottish enlightenment hutchison claimed that a person's highest faculty sends a sense avoiding lot of benevolence towards on matters of the heart is part of our nature and equal in human beings for jefferson has moral sense makes us accountable to

ourselves and each other and it makes possible the right to self government the similarity in the moral sense also makes all other physical and mental differences minor jefferson the nurses himself hour after hour in this world of knowledge from his mountain top home he fashions an outlaw that is a fusion of ideas from philosophy science law and history it is from this place of study and his own family experience at jefferson's ideas about race and slavery lululemon room the condition of their slaves was much more than the blacks it among roman slave often the rarest bake sale to insights and so much to be usually employees to trust the masses true it does i think the reason why

thomas jefferson these words come from jefferson's notes on the state of virginia written by him in longhand it is the only book jefferson ever publishes notes is not intended as a book on race and slavery but jefferson's response to many of the false notions about the new world being advanced by european activists including francis celebrated georgia we look for claims america is away and only recently emerged from the deluge damp humid place where animals and people are smaller than normal calls it bland best suited for insects reptile has given the new world before an enlightened your jefferson dispatches observers across the countryside the measure and collect data on everything from the smallest creatures to the natural one you know jefferson described in

detail rivers mountains climate a bonded minerals and native indian populations black's also part of a study of the new world and the notes on the state of virginia jefferson becomes more of the first americans to put in print ideas about racial differences comparing the by the fact that his memory reason and imagination it appears to me that in memory equal to whites in recent much fear as i think one could scarcely without capable of tracing uncomprehendingly investigations of you and that imagination that all taste as an anomalous in notes jefferson uses his studies of science to draw conclusions about blacks including how their blood is darker than whites and how basically fluids

differently than what all these conclusions he says are tentative i needed for the scientific observations jefferson stresses that he is merely the observer of the differences that nature not be as determined just a song around him or by tyranny and ignorance and superstition that has a car ms own world that people seem to have produced great cathedrals and great mansions in the palaces and so everywhere there was the presence of institutional power over people's lives that dwarfed ordinary people and he very much wanted to dismantle these symbols and this reality of power over people know the greatest weapon he could use was to say that it was a natural that nature had a better planned than this artificial one that kings and and and churches it created so in order to use nature as a weapon

against the armed forces of the past he emphasized uniform of these similarities but all men are like all men are equal what images if there were people who were conspicuously different like african americans or native americans or women he assume that nature had to have pushed them out our side this new liberal natural order and at the time it enabled him to combat religion status inherited it forms but it did create a new way to discriminate jettison a very intolerant of living with diversity jefferson concludes with some reservation that in matters of the blacks are inferior to whites but for jefferson there is the other dimension of the moral sense

whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture nature has been less than the imbalance of the head i believe in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice jefferson is reluctant to have notes on the state of music the future and inspiration yet the work becomes like a jefferson finds himself defending his remarks be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely denied due to see a complete reputation of the doubts i have myself entertained and expressed on the great of understanding a lot of negroes by nature and to find that in this respect they are the policies need my doubts were the result of personal observation on limited sphere of my own state where the opportunities for the development of a genius were not those of exercising still last

night's press and therefore with great hesitation or whatever be their degree of talent is no measure of their rights this but this has been this has been this is because most powerful nation in philadelphia delegates gather to decide one of the curiosities of the era of the american revolution is that their leaders

talk about equality and liberty and yet the leaders are in fact not the equal folks they are since aristocrats many of the delegation to the second continental congress who were slave owners in his time slavery is still legal in every column of the way inside the virginia delegation including thomas jefferson makes the initial proposal in congress appointed a committee of five to write the declaration committee includes jefferson john adams and benjamin franklin jefferson disaster right the readings and studies at jefferson's young life enable him to turn our revolution into a struggle for all humanity i entitled by the laws of nature and teenagers go on sale all right but they aren't out by their creator with

certain inalienable rights that among these are my liberty and the pursuit of happiness shek and judicial prosecution wants a syrian of the maturation of the tradition comes armed law define the inalienable rights of life liberty and property jefferson substitute for property the pursuit of happiness probably was a civil right not a natural right underneath it all along he could not so anything that would give the patient a right to the ownership of slavery to worship of other men human challenge i say that this was shorter than about his long it would just be unconscionable and i could not be done so he's

going to do that and there's such possibility by dropping property from the trinity of human rights and human rights and by doing something rare revolutionary by declaring life liberty interest of happiness jefferson identifies with his slaves and with all slaves and his concern about the loss of freedom a loss of independence the loss of self mastery this is what the revolution meant for jefferson his colleagues and that is if the british triumphs and freedom would be lost and jefferson could see himself in the condition of the slaves this may seem far fetched or exaggerated us but it's the principle of the fund manager jefferson and that is that if you don't control yourself your sleeve and in this census over smile on that one can say the jefferson the city hall

and that is he acknowledges that losing their freedom privileged whites such as himself could become like the slaves that helped launch jefferson and other man of his times who had an intellectual bent were very aware i love the history of the institution of slavery of the classical tradition the history of the idea of slavery and western civilization the end of freedom in western civilization and they were very aware that in every society there've always been a lot of people were not included in the body politic that there was nothing inconsistent about standing for freedom and equality for those who were part of the citizenry the body politic and evolution and had new clients which didn't work and that was a lot of manual labor and all the rest of it on which this class this upper class started and their

minds this week that seemed inconsistent it would not have seemed inconsistent so it makes sense that when jefferson said you know men are created equal and he did me and slaves exactly what jefferson meant when he said all men are created equal is not easily answered he certainly meant more then all people are equal before the law meant much more than that in some basic sense he believe that all work creating now in his particular case he simply could not accept the quality of wax he could accept the quality of indians felt they were deprived of that was simply a question of empowerment and if you change their environment and educated than they could be they symbolized the way most recently was blind to this he was

unable to fulfill his own rhetoric his own mind that slays all men are created equal we'll always the catalyst with it i think jefferson knew exactly what you know and i think his contemporaries knew what it meant it was a well established principle of moral fear that before going on in the state of nature more people are born with it and independent values are not under the jurisdiction of anyone else they don't are not born with a disability are born with special privileges that's what equality means i think that was clear for jefferson i think it's clear to him and everyone else that applied to all people from their perspective award winner created equal blacks are created equal if they are insulated to it's an example of tyranny imposed upon them because they're neither natural quality that's totally apart from the quality of abilities or any other issues of an empirical sort jefferson speculated broadly and not always consistently about the enjoy our get blacks but none of this

speculation about blacks had a thing in the world to do with human equality has expressed an agreeable integration independence but in addition to the preamble jefferson's original draft was the grievances against the king alas grievance attacks the king for controlling the american slave trade and for gorging slaves to arm against the colonies for powerful men and he says that that trade is the war against human nature itself and he goes on to describe the horrors of the war and goes on to point out that the slaves all men and eakin in capital letters the decorations relationship to slavery is full of mexico whole variety of them a one of them is that jefferson tried to end slavery or attack slavery in the declaration and this is simply not the case out whichever soon propose was attack on king george

for encouraging the african slave trade there was a certain amount of truth jefferson's a cat tech virginia for example have tried to prohibit the african slave trade in the seventies seventies and king george's council had overruled the virginia legislature and prohibited virginia from banning the trade but virginia was banning the slave trade as their one to ban slavery they were banning the slave trade for economic reasons too much money was flowing back to england or back to willy's slave traders and for prudential reasons they were afraid of all these africans coming over the africans were more likely to report that they believed then that african americans who were born in the country and they made it a moment of had to any slaves and with a surplus of slaves there are lots of reasons for opposing the african slave trade some of their managers she checks

are you after much debate congress approved the phrase he has excited domestic considerations are state license to sell it was so

nice a declaration english whether samuel johnson to ask her was it really allowed among the plotters of money it's b virginia's border slave states in exchange for service because frankly hundred slaves joining part of the colonies in some sixty thousand slaves were away from their masters joined the three in the first years of the revolution the continental army excluded blacks when analysts or has a policy changes slave owners

offered him listen closely to fight in the cause of independence as many as a thousand and eight jefferson and automation during the revolution jefferson serves in the virginia legislature and later as governor he's succeeded passing a bill banning the for the importation of slaves into virginia but he refuses to support allows slave battle has laid out the support of jerks at the end of jefferson's turner's sweeping marcelo and the surrounding plantations i seventy once hoped wisconsin along now has a british on the wrong with friends

as its ally furlaud news for the british in yorktown virginia and in october the british sunni struggle for american independence so ms jefferson and his slaves we

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