686. Jefferson: The Betrayal of Liberty (Part 4)

This episode is brought to you by the Lloyds 5K House Deposit and this is something that was last seen in 1996. Yes, so the 1990s looks now like a lost golden age of prosperity and positivity, doesn't it? Think of the sort of the advent of the Blair administration in 1997, all the enthusiasm and excitement that surrounded that, the economic growth of the time, the technological developments, sort of sense of an endless golden summer where everyone is listening to Blair and Oasis and looking forward to buying their first houses and that of course takes us to mortgages. Now the good news is that in a nod to the 1990s Lloyds are offering 5K deposit mortgages to first time buyers, so search 5K first time buyer. 1996 average first time buyer deposits are based on ONS data, subject to status your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments and conditions apply. We hold these truths to be self-evident, though men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalible rights that among these are loyph, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. There whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it's the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such warm as to them shall see most loykely to effect their safety and happiness. So that was the declaration of independence. Now at those words, our American listeners, many of them will have started crying with pride and joy because this is of course the most celebrated document in all American history. They're told in school that it's one of the great masterpieces of English prose. They regarded as a statement of principles that's a symbol of the country and a testament to the power of the American dream, even though of course as Samuel Johnson pointed out at the time, many of the people who were endorsing the Declaration of Independence themselves owned other human beings. But of course we won't go into that tom just yet. So this is one of the landmark documents in all human history. We've been marking its 250th anniversary and the anniversary of the tax revolt for which it was a press release by looking at the lives of four of the most notable founding fathers. And today we turn our attention to the man who wrote those words and that man is of course Thomas Jefferson. It is and that is the document for which he is best known, a document which as you said is one of the very few documents to have changed history. But I think his status as the author of the Declaration of Independence kind of barely scratches the surface of his remarkable range of achievements. So you can see from the Declaration itself, which he wrote when he was only 33, that this is a man of remarkable intellectual gifts, Kenneth Clark in a civilization, the landmark BBC series in the episode on the revolutionary era. He described Jefferson as the emblematic genius of the age. He described him as a universal man. And when you look at the range of Jefferson's accomplishments, you can see what Clark was on about. So Jefferson was a scholar who's learning embraced classical scholarship. He was a brilliant classical scholar. He was fascinated in history and natural history, in agriculture, in philosophy, in architecture, very enthusiastic architect, music, philosophy, law, meteorology, palliant, I mean, basically there is no limit to the range of his interests. He knew Latin, he knew Greek, he knew Italian, he knew French, he knew Spanish. He was also a very keen gardener. He was a pioneer in the culture of the tomato, which at this time Americans viewed the tomato with great suspicion. And as far as I know, he's the only founding father to have written down a recipe for ice cream. Surely Aaron Burr had an excellent ice cream recipe. Now, this mention of ice cream, may prompt listeners who've heard our episode on George Washington. Yeah. To wonder what Jefferson's teeth were like. American teeth poor. And Dominic, you've been using the terrible state of his teeth as a bit of a metaphor, haven't you? Yeah. Do you know that Jefferson's teeth are excellent, so even in old age, he could boast that his natures were in a superb condition. He'd only lost one tooth, he said, with the rest continuing sound. He had the teeth of a horse, no, and indeed he resembled, he'd look like a horse. Like a surplus horse, he had no flesh. There's one of the comments on him, so he's a very lean, ranger man. Yeah, a coin. Yeah, so kind of a quilline as well, a kind of horse eagle. I guess you could get kind of a fusion. Right. And this is because, as well as being a devotee of ice cream, he's a very firm believer in a brisk fitness regime, which again is kind of very American, isn't it? In America, it seems to me, you're either guzzling ice cream or you're obsessively fit. Yeah. Jefferson is the embodiment of both. So he wrote to a friend in 1786, "If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong. The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise and of all the exercises walking is best." And he is not wrong. Do you know what Tom? He wants to rehabilitate Jefferson, because of course in Breton and in much of the world, Jefferson is regarded as one of history's great villains. But so far, you're not doing a great job because he sounds awful. He sounds, I mean, I hate him far more. You hate him more? Or his fitness? It's just so performative. Or this is so performative. Wittering on about gardens, talking about meteorites, learning Italian. Come on, pipe down and watch TV or something. Okay. Let's see if this makes him more appealing to you. Yeah. Do you love a canny, a hard-nosed political operator? I do. I love it. And I think there is no one in American history who has more brilliantly combined the kind of deep learning that you despise with the various arts required to obtain, to maintain, to utilize power. So obviously he's massively consequential as the author of the Declaration of Independence. But he is also a key player, perhaps the key player in shaping the American Republic in the first decades of its existence. And if you think of every plumb post that you could have as a politician in the early years of the American Republic, Jefferson holds it. So first of all, he is the ambassador to France. So he arrives there in 1784 in succession to Benjamin Franklin, who we did in a previous episode. And when he's in France, he becomes a massive francophone. He thinks France is great, and I can see your face clouding at this question. France is where he gets his recipe for ice cream. Yeah. Fair. Okay. And he leaves in September 1789, by which point, of course, the French Revolution has kicked off. And Jefferson is a big fan of the French Revolution and he sees it as a passing of the torch of liberty from America across the Atlantic to France. And he's a great pal of someone else, you really admire, which is a Lafayette. Lafayette and Jefferson have been absolute mates throughout the 1580s. And Jefferson advises Lafayette on the drafting of the rights of man and the citizen. And even when he gets back to America, and he discovers that enthusiasm there for the French Revolution is slightly muted by the tendency of the French Revolution to go around guillotineing everyone. Jefferson still sticks up for the revolution. So he says, we are not to expect to be translated from despotism into liberty in a feather bed. Problem for you, this Tom, because you would be feeling married to a net. So you have divided losses here. I value it. Everyone in their own terms, Tom. Okay. Fine. Well, I don't actually admire it. I think she was. I mean, she was hopeless. And what was she thinking? Wow. You've changed. You've changed. She was very, she was good as a queen in Versailles. She was terrible as someone who had to negotiate with the revolution. You're not smart. That's my take on her. Whereas Jefferson is a man who can accommodate himself to changing political circumstances, which is what he does when he gets back to America, where Washington appoints him as America's first secretary of state. And so he takes that office up in 1790. And of course, this brings him into massive conflict with the hero of our previous episode Alexander Hamilton. So Hamilton is in charge of finance. Jefferson is in charge of foreign affairs. And they are polar opposites. So as we heard in our previous episode, Hamilton, he's a federalist. He thinks that there should be a strong center. Banks. Yeah. He loves a bank. He loves a banker. He loves the national debt. He loves Britain. He hates anarchy. These are his principles. Jefferson is almost the polar opposite. So he sees a strong federal state as an enemy of the liberty of the individual states. He loves a farmer, not a banker. He sees bankers as vampires. sucking out the blood of hard-working, noble American farmers. He doesn't approve of national debts. He loves France, as we heard. And his great guiding principle is his hatred of tyranny. And so both men, Hamilton and Jefferson, see the other one. You know, not just the political opponent, but pretty much as a kind of threat to the liberty of the infant American Republic. Yeah. And Jefferson's own take on their relationship in Washington's Cabinet is that they were daily pitted in the Cabinet like two cocks. Listen, as you can make of that one, what they will. And there is so much cock fighting going on between them that in the end, Jefferson resigns, he resigns in 1793, because he recognizes that the disagreements between them can't be reconciled within the one government. So by now we have, as we were talking about last time, the beginnings of the first party system. So Jefferson is effectively the standard bear, isn't he? The America's first opposition party. Yes. So the Democratic Republicans, as they called, in opposition to Hamilton's Federalists. Yeah. And throughout this period, Washington, as you said in the previous episode, tries to stay above the fray in a kind of Olympian manner, but it is obvious that throughout his presidency, a two-party system is kind of evolving. And that isn't something that the Constitution had ever envisaged. That was never kind of part of the plan. And on one side, we have the Federalists, so Hamilton, but also John Adams, an old friend of Jefferson. Jefferson had hung out in France with John Adams and his remarkable wife, Abigail. So John Adams, Boston lawyer, this fantastically smart wife. And he ends up as Washington's vice president. And then on the other, we have effectively the first kind of mass popular party in history, really. And Jefferson stands at its head, but I guess the real creator of it, the guy who kind of operates the nuts and bolts is James Madison. Yeah. So key figure in draft in the Constitution will be president when our brave boys burn the White House and send Dolly Madison his wife fleeing. And Madison is busy kind of constructing the mechanics of a party system. And Jefferson plays the role of the enlightened philosopher. So again, a bit like Washington. Looking as though he's above the fray, but actually he isn't at all. And I think you could say that Madison and Jefferson's partnership is easily the most effective political partnership in early American history. Surely. Yeah. I mean, it's incredibly creative. And so this puts Jefferson in a very good position in 1796 when Washington stands down and it's clear there's going to be another president. And so he is running effectively against drawn Adams. I mean, there are other contenders as well. And it is Adams who is elected. Jefferson comes second. And by the conventions of the time, that means that he automatically becomes vice president. Adams has won, but it's not by a massive amount. So Adams has had 71 votes to Jefferson 68. And Jefferson is pretty chuffed by this. So he wrote that he saw his tally as the index of the place I hold in the esteem of my fellow citizens. And he's not wrong. Jefferson is clearly a potential election winner. This has not dashed his hopes of becoming president. He's in poor position probably to run in the next election. But having said that, the four years that he spends as vice president are very frustrating for him. Because effectively, as John Adams himself had found, being vice president is simply you have nothing to do. He was a guy called John Nance Garner who said it's not worth the picture of warm piss. Yes. So I think this with Jefferson wouldn't put it quite like that. Yeah. Put it into that he was Ciceroanian tones. But I think that's his perspective. But an additional problem. He doesn't just feel impotent. He feels aggravated by Adams's policies. So he's strongly disagrees with a lot of the policies that his old friend, John Adams is pursuing. And in fact, he ends up convinced that Adams administration is threatening the end of American liberty. He sees Adams and Hamilton as kind of monarchical figures. People who want to reimpose a kind of British constitution by the back door. And so unsurprisingly, his kind of old friendship with John and Abigail Adams completely crashes. It tanks. I mean, this is one of the things obviously we talked about last time, the extent to which the founding fathers, as they call, they're kind of splintered by factionalism. And they all come to believe, don't they? Because they've basically spent far too much time reading, doing that in. They come to believe that, you know, like the Roman Republic, their system is doomed to atrophy into despotism. Yeah. And that sort of shadow hangs over the whole story. There's a lot of Roman cosplaying. Yeah. And that means that if you're casting yourself as the hero in a Roman drama, there are all kinds of villains as we will, as we will see. But Jefferson sits it out. He doesn't resign. He doesn't flants off in a half. Because the whole way through, he's playing this kind of waiting game. He has his eyes fixed on the big prize, which is the presidency. And to win it, of course, he will have to depose John Adams, who is, you know, his old friend sitting president. And so this is the first presidential rematch in American history. And when the campaign begins, all along, Jefferson is the slight but definite favourite. Yeah. And Adams meets with Jefferson in Philadelphia before the election has actually been announced. And already, Adams is basically say, oh, I've lost their conversation is recorded as thus Adams. Well, I understand that you ought to beat me in this contest. And I will only say that I will be as faithful as subject as any you will have. Jefferson, Mr Adams, this is no personal contest between you and me. So it's very stirring. It's very founding fathers. It's the kind of thing that you might get to translate in a passage of Latin prose. You know, it's again, that absolutely cosplaying here. But actually, the presidential contest, the second one between Jefferson and Adams, it's much more Trump against Biden. Right. And it is something from the early years of the rail republic. Because of the bitterness, the sheer depths of the bitterness between federalists and democratic republicans, exactly. It's a party contest as well. So it's completely pituitive. And Jefferson's opponents, so Adams, Hamilton, all of that crew, they go all in trying to blacken Jefferson's name. They accuse him of being an atheist, of being a jack of air. So the kind of person who, if he wins, will set about guillotine his opponents. You know, they are casting Jefferson as a threat to the republic. But Jefferson is going in equally hard. You know, it's this Adams is a kind of crypto monochist. He's a British stooge. He wants to reintroduce monarchical flammery and all this kind of thing. And Jefferson's campaign works. And so already by December, he's confident that he has the election in the bag. But there is a twist. And Dominic, you hinted at this twist in the previous episode. So listen, this may recall that in the previous election, Adams and Jefferson had run on individual tickets. And that's how Jefferson ended up vice president to Adams. Yeah. And they are political opponents. And so it's a kind of very awkward cohabitation. In the 1800 election, this isn't going to happen because both the candidates for the presidency, Adams and Jefferson are running on a kind of joint ticket. They have selected someone who will run with them who are, you know, is slated to serve as their vice president. Should they win the election? And the man on Jefferson's ticket to serve as vice president is a lawyer from New York who earlier in the year, I'd shown himself such a wizard at electioneering that he had basically delivered the state to Jefferson. And the name of this man is Aaron Burr. Oh, brilliant to have him back on the show. So this is the guy who's going to go on to shoot Hamilton. Yeah. But four years before he guns down, Alexander Hamilton, he very nearly guns down the presidential hopes of Thomas Jefferson. And this is because when the votes from the electoral college are formally delivered on the 11th of February, 1801, there's an absolute disaster for Jefferson's handlers because Jefferson and Burr turn out to have the same number. So it's a tie. And this was not meant to happen. Yeah, because basically they've got they've elected the electoral college and one of the people in the electoral college, one of the Democratic Republican electors was meant to have cast his boat, his vote for Jefferson, but not for Burr. And forgets. Yeah, if we basically get no one really knows exactly why this happened. But Jefferson and Burr end up with the same number of votes, 73, 73 instead of 73, 72, which was the plan. So it's not clear which one of them is going to be president. And as we said last time, if Burr had been almost anybody else, but himself, he would have stepped aside and said, well, obviously there's been something's gone wrong. And Jefferson's meant to be president, so that's fine. Instead, Burr being Burr, he's like brilliant. Yeah, I can be president now. Well, he said he says of it. I've got, you know, he's gone into politics for fun and honor and profit, which is very upfront. Yeah. So he's not going to lay down. And so the election goes to the House of Representatives. And there are now 16 states, so three new states. And each of those have an individual vote. And there is massive scope for kind of anti Jefferson mischief here. People can see that Burr is not ideal presidential material. But at the same time, it is precisely the fact that Jefferson is so obviously brilliant and such a kind of incredibly effective political operator, which means that Hamilton and Adams and the Federalists, you know, they don't want anything to do with him. And so, the Federalists vote against Jefferson and in favour of Burr again and again and again. And these votes are being held in the capital, in Washington, and there are snowstorms raging outside, people have to be brought in on stretches, it's incredible drama. And day after day, the ballots are tied, the day slept by, there's no result. And then finally, on the 16th of February, there have been 35 tied ballots. At last, the deadlock is broken and it's broken spectacularly. Jefferson wins the 36th ballot, 10-4, two states obtain. So it has always been a presumption, then as now that there was a deal, I mean, it's pretty clear that there must have been the details of it remain murky. But I think also it does come down to principle, because at the end of the day, as you said, in the last episode, even Alexander Hamilton has to acknowledge that Jefferson is the better candidate. So at Hamilton's set of Jefferson, there is no doubt that upon every virtuous and prudent calculation, Jefferson is to be preferred. He is by far not so dangerous a man, and he has pretensions to character. Pretensions to character, I love that. Yeah. Downing with fake praise. So Thomas Jefferson becomes the third president of the United States and it's a key moment in the history, not just of America, but of democracy more generally, because it demonstrates that a peaceful transfer of power from one party to another is possible. So it is, I think, a great moment in the history of democracy. And Jefferson does not set about guillotine his enemies. You know, he doesn't raise a jibbit, yes, in Washington. And at his inauguration, he affirms what is a kind of, I think, fundamental principle of effective functioning democracy. That politics can't be a zero sum game. And Jefferson at his inauguration, I mean, he kind of affirms what he describes as a sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable, that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect and to violate would be oppression. So you can't go fully in Jacoba, you know, just because you want, you can't guillotine everybody. Yeah, the principle of pluralism, I suppose, that the other side have a legitimate interest, which must be respected. So I think that's an admirable, admirable expression of sentiment. And he manages to repair the breach in his friendship with John Adams, though not with Abigail Adams. And even Hamilton, after Hamilton's death, he acknowledges as a worthy rival. So in his whole way of his private residence, he has a bust of himself. That's a poor, very Jefferson. But facing it, facing it, he has a bust of Hamilton. And so this is conventionally treated as a gesture of respect. I mean, you could perhaps see it as a gesture of triumph. It's like putting up the head of a moose that you shot or something. I don't know. It's probably both. Do you know what, though, Bonaparte had a bust of Nelson? Yes. So I think there's a kind of element of that, isn't there? Respect towards a rival, I suppose. So Jefferson, president, and he goes on to serve two terms as Washington had done and as Adams had failed to do. And the longevity of his presidency combines with the death of Hamilton in that duel with Burr, effectively to destroy the federalists as a coherent force. And I think you could say that if, you know, aptitude for politics is to be measured by success in the winning and the keeping of power, then Jefferson is the great political genius among the founding fathers because he serves these two terms. But he then is succeeded by his great ally, James Madison. And then three of the four presidents who succeed Madison in turn are also self-proclaimed Jeffersonians and the only one who isn't is John Adams, son, John Quincy Adams. So there's a sense there of two rival political dynasties, but I don't think there's any question that Jefferson's is, I'm far the most formidable. Yeah. So Jefferson, as a model for presidents, lasts the right the way up to the Civil War, I think. Oh, completely. Yeah. He's a very, very effective figure, a dominant figure, as a president. Well, the tradition of Jeffersonian democracy, the idea that the small government, that the United States is ultimately a country of human farmers, the tradition of the sort of the slightly nostalgic view of the South, I mean, that's all bound up with Jeffersonianism, I think. Yeah. And this reflects the fact that Jefferson, as well as obtaining power is very good at using it. So it's Jefferson, more than any other president who makes possible the emergence of the United States, not just as an Atlantic power, but as a continental power and his most striking and celebrated achievement. And there is a case, I think, for saying it's perhaps the most consequential act made by any U.S. president is the purchase in 1803 of Louisiana from Napoleon. And, kind of typically, this is actually illegal under the Constitution, you know, it doesn't say anything about the right of the federal government to purchase foreign territory, but Jefferson goes ahead and does it anyway. Because ultimately, I think when self-interest is up against ideals, Jefferson is a good enough politician to lay down his principles in favor of the end result that he wants. And you can absolutely see why he would have seized every opportunity to obtain Louisiana because it's much, much, a block of territory is much larger than the current state. So it's about 16 times. It's basically the whole of Middle America. It's the flyover states. I'm looking at a map. I mean, it's not just Louisiana. It's Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, much Colorado, Wyoming, Montana. I mean, it's basically the middle third of the United States. Well, it's basically doubling the size of the United States when that, when the Louisiana purchase goes through. So it adds over 800,000 square miles to the US. So that is an incredible achievement. But even with the Louisiana purchase, Jefferson's gaze is fixed even further westwards. And so one year after the Louisiana purchase, he commissions an expedition to explore not just that this new territory that the United States has obtained, but to go even further west as far as the Pacific. And this is the Lewis and Clark expedition named after the two men who led it. And it's an incredible, you know, it's at a kind of key moment in establishing American's sense of what the continent is that their state has been founded on. So in part, it's a scientific expedition. It brings back lots of new plants and flowers and Jefferson's a great gardener. He adds lots of these to his flower beds. And so he brings back some fossils, which I love and Jefferson again keeps some of these. And in fact, is Jefferson's only real disappointment is that they don't find mastodons. So these kind of prehistoric elephants that Jefferson had been hoping were roaming the grasslands of California, but they're not found. So it's a scientific expedition, but you know, Jefferson is always about power as well as about kind of intellectual exploration. So it is an expedition in large part to scout out the possibility of a westward's expansion towards the specific. And Jefferson calls this an empire of liberty. I mean, whether the Native Americans would see it in quite those terms is a moot point. But as you said, his vision is the United States populated by yeoman farmers rather than kind of, I don't know, an urban proletariat. And his feeling is that this is what will keep the US virtuous. And if the American people are to expand and keep their farms, then they need land. And if they need land, then they have to go basically go and grab California. That's the logic. So it's simultaneously virtuous and self aggrandizing that Jefferson, yeah, very, very Jeffersonian. And although Jefferson sense that America's destiny is that of a Commonwealth of yeoman farmers, I mean, this obviously doesn't turn out. Hamilton is right. America's future is capitalist, it is industrial. On the other hand, Jefferson is effectively the godfather of the notion of manifest destiny, a phrase that is coined decades later, but this sense that Americans have a god-given right to expand westwards and to claim this land. This also is part of Jefferson's legacy. And it's why in the 1930s, when the carvings of on Mount Rushmore were begun, Jefferson was chosen to be one of the four presidents represented on Mount Rushmore with Washington and Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. And Jefferson serves on Mount Rushmore as the symbol of American expansion. And it's an amazing thought. I remember reading about years ago about what would imagine humans does vanish in the blink of an eye. What would remain of the workings of humanity over the course of the centuries and the millennia that follow, and apparently Mount Rushmore is the work of a human art that would survive the longest. Really? The granite is so hard, it's been estimated that Jefferson's face will endure for seven million years. Wow. So there's a thought. And you would say, I guess, if you're an American historian in the 20th century, that Jefferson's reputation as one of the most, not just most consequential, but admirable men in U.S. history would be kind of similarly enduring because this is, you know, he's written the Declaration of Independence. He's this great hero of the Enlightenment, the universal man as Kenneth Clark called him, the Godfather of the American West. Yeah. And this is never better articulated than by John F. Kennedy in 1962, who hosted a dinner at the White House for all the living recipients of the Nobel Prize. And he welcomed them by saying, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." Oh, it's cheesy. This is the great hero on the nickel. This is the great hero on the $2 bill, which you want to get rid of. But today Dominic, what would you say his reputation is? Well, this is an interesting thing, so since I would say certainly the 1990s, Jefferson's reputation has become a little bit. It's not exactly tarnished, but it's contested, isn't it? So to many people in America, including I would imagine a large proportion of our own American listeners, he remains a great hero for all the reasons that you've described. And yet there are others, including perhaps some people who may listen to this show, who say, "No, actually the way we should look at Thomas Jefferson is as the personification of the greatest plot on America's record. In fact, to go further, he is the embodiment of America's founding sin. It's a original sin that has tainted our experiment since the very first. And he's been the center, hasn't he, of what could only be described as a culture war that has raged for at least 30 years, and probably is not going away anytime soon." Yeah, of all the founding fathers, I think he is now the most controversial, the great lightning rod for so many of the debates about American history. And so we will be looking at those when we come back after the break. Hello everybody. Now, as those of you who are good to children will know, here in Britain, on the 21st of June, it's Father's Day, but not just here in Britain. It's also Father's Day on the 21st of June in the United States in Canada and in the Republic of Ireland. So those are four countries that are united by dads who love to listen to the rest of history. And that is why we are offering an amazing 25% Father's Day discount on the subscription price to the rest of his history club because we are all hard. 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It's well known that the man whom it delighteth the people to honour keeps and for many years past has kept as his concubine one of his own slaves. Her name is Sally. The name of her eldest son is Tom. His features are said to bear a striking, although seable resemblance to those of the president himself. So this is a shocking story. And it appeared on the 1st of September, 1802 in the Richmond recorder. And it was written as you can obviously tell by a Scottish emigrate, a journalist called James Callender. Now Callender, you could argue was very party pre-tom because the recorder was a Federalist paper, wasn't it? And Callender had originally been a kind of Jeffersonian attack dog. But then he'd been turned down for a job that he was hoping to get. And he had turned on Jefferson and basically become a Federalist. If it's you, a Federalist writer instead. So what's going on with this story is there's just title title, room among ring, or is it something more serious? Well, for a long time, it's been presented as a kind of fabricated attack on the author of the Declaration of Independence. You know, this is the work of an embittered, acid tongueed hack. And this was how Jefferson himself responded to it. So he, I mean, when I say responded, he never actually responded to the allegation personally. You know, as ever, he played the role of philosopher above the phrase, not worth it, not going to dignify such a title tattle by even engaging with it. And so he leaves it to people lower down the Jeffersonian food chain to kind of launch a campaign of defamation against Callender to cast him as a kind of miserable wretched drunk. And actually, you know, Callender clearly did have problems with drink. And one year after he ran that story about this mysterious woman Sally, he was seen staggering through the streets of Richmond in Virginia. And then later that evening, he was found drowned in three feet of water in the James River. Oh, this is, this is very murky. This is very JFK. Well, so there was an inquest, a very hurried inquest. And it definitively discovered that there was no evidence of foul play. Okay. Well, that's a massive red flag. So case closed, you know, was it just kind of fabrication? And I think the answer to that is no. Because Callender in that article was simply making public rumours that had been circulating among those in the know for several years. And would continue to circulate long after Callender had drowned or been drowned, I mean, depending on your perspective. Here is he's writing many many years later after Jefferson's death, I think. So just before the outbreak of the Civil War, and it's a guy who'd known Jefferson well, he would like Jefferson. He was a Virginian planter. But this guy was an abolitionist. And so not as favorable to Jefferson as most Virginian planters tended to be. And it was a guy called John Hartwell Cock. And he wrote all bachelors or a large majority at least, he was a substitute for a wife, some individual of their own slaves. In Virginia, this damnable practice prevails as much as anywhere. And probably more as Mr. Jefferson's example can be pleaded for its defense. He is taking that allegation absolutely for granted. And he's situating it in a kind of very specific cultural milieu, which other tobacco plantations of Virginia, on which slavery, you know, it's not just common, it is completely taken for granted. And Jefferson had grown up on exactly such an estate, and it's an estate that was called Shadwell, after the London parish in the East End, where his mother had been christened before she came to America. So this takes us back to Jefferson's boyhood. Yes. And the context of 1750s, 1760s, Virginia, and it takes us to the heart of this whole question about Jefferson's slavery. So, I mean, our obvious example of Jefferson's relationship with slavery, as a little boy, he had his own personal slave, didn't he? Who typically he calls Jupiter? Right. So a kind of classical reference there. And his father dies in 1757 when Jefferson is 14. And Jefferson inherits the slaves as well as the land. And he keeps both of them for the whole of his life. The house that he comes to build on the Shadwell estate is his great pride, his great joy. And he began building it in 1767 when he was 24. And it's a mansion on the summit of what Jefferson described as a steep and savage hill. So it's kind of 900 feet. So rice is quite high. And because of this, he called it Monticello Little Mountain in Italian. And he loves it. He spends all his life building, rebuilding, renovating, tinkering with it. And it is a great, neoclassical architectural masterpiece. It's palladium, so deriving from the neoclassicism of in Italy, but perfectly fused with the new world. So it is, in architectural terms, it is the first great fusion of European architectural style with something that is recognisably American. And even Kenneth Clark in Civilization when he's talking about Jefferson. I mean, he's a bit sniffy about it because Clark has got a massive snob and a specialist in the Renaissance. But he says it's not bad. I mean, he says, you know, Jefferson's done pretty well here. And this is featured on the nickel. I think it's still there, isn't it? I think it's one of the most celebrated American buildings of all, isn't it? But there is a dark side, right? Because it's built as a plantation house. Yes. So Clark and his documentary, which was made, I think, in 1970. 69. He doesn't mention this. It doesn't mention the fact that there are slaves. And this, according to calendar, so the Scottish guy who's mysteriously drowned, this is where this mysterious concubine Sally was being kept. So one of the hundreds of slaves that Jefferson owned across his various properties, and Monticelli wasn't his only property. And Monticello alone, I'm just looking at it up, that the plantation was about 5,000 acres, and there are about 150 African Americans working in slavery on those plantations. And one of these is Sally, so to quote calendar again in his article, the African Venus is said to officiate as housekeeper at Monticello. Now this seems not to have been entirely accurate. Sally seems to have served Maria, who's Jefferson's daughter, living at Monticello as her maid, and then into cause to have evolved to become kind of Jefferson's personal servant, taking care of his chamber and wardrobe, so a kind of female valet. And the reason that we know this is because we have written evidence from her son, who was a slave on Jefferson's estate, like his mother Sally. And this is a guy called Madison Hemings, and he's called Madison after James Madison. So again, this kind of bizarre confluence between the high ideals, the high politics of the American Republic, and the kind of squalid circumstances of the slavery on Jefferson's estate. And Madison Hemings wrote up a history of his mother and his family more generally, with the result that the details of her life and her ancestry have been preserved to a degree that is very, very unusual. Most slaves, obviously the details of their lives have been completely lost. We know who Sally's mother was and who her grandmother was, and you couldn't say that, I guess, of most slaves who lived in the early years of the American Republic. So both Sally's grandmother and mother had been made pregnant by their white owners. And obviously, neither women as slaves would have had any right of refusal whatsoever. So by our standards, you would say they were the victims of rape. We don't know the name of Sally's grandmother. Madison Hemings specifies that she was a full-blooded African. So had no white blood in her. And there is a session with blood in the American South. But he reports that the grandfather, so the owner who had forced himself on the grandmother, had been in English sea captain named Hemings. So this is where the surname Hemings comes from. And they had had a daughter, Betty Hemings. And she had therefore been in the racist terminology of the time, a malato, meaning half black, half white. Betty comes into the possession of a recently widowed planter called John Wiles, who, like the head of Gohanger, Tony Pastor, was a Lankasterian. But unlike Tony Pastor, this was a very sinister man. I'm glad you made that point. Yeah, I'm making that absolutely clear. So he's not just the planter. He's also a slave trader and a debt collector. Okay. And so that makes him a figure of dread among the planters of Virginia, because huge numbers of the plantations are in debt. And so to have this guy John Wiles turn up, I mean, it's a very, very bad sign. So we think of Washington, I mean, Washington's plantation is in debt. Yeah, tobacco price has gone into a deep decline in the 1760s, 1770s. Yeah. So this guy Wiles is, you know, you don't want to see him knocking at your door if you're a a Virginia planter. And he keeps Betty as his concubine and he's father six children on her. And Sally, who's born in 1773, is the last of these children. So again, just to dwell on the race of this, because this is something incredibly important to the story. She is seven parts white to one part black, which qualifies her in the language of the time as an octa-rune. So an eighth black. And yet she is just as much a slave as her mother had been, just as much a slave as her grandmother had been. And the reason for this is because Virginia law is modeled on the law of ancient Rome, which specified that the legal status of a child is determined by that of the mother, rather than the father, which in turn means that any children who are born to Betty by John Wiles will end up as John Wiles' slaves. So this includes Sally, obviously. How does Sally end up at Monticello? Does she go, do they all go to Monticello? Is that how it works? So what happens is that in 1773, Wiles dies. Right. And this means that all his slaves pass into the hands of his heir. And his heir is his only surviving legitimate child, who is very smart, clever, sassy, very, very beautiful woman called Martha, but is known to her friends as patty. And patty in 1771 had married Thomas Jefferson. And this means that when the Heming's family pass into patty's possession, ultimately they pass into Jefferson's possession as well. So just to make clear what this means for the dynamics of Jefferson's marital household, Sally is the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, patty. You know, she's decades younger, but she is the half-sister. Because she has, they have the same father. They have the same father. John Wiles, whatever. Yes. And so when Jefferson and patty come to have children, they have the succession of daughters, Sally is their aunt. It's not just about owners and slaves. This is also a kind of family matrix as well. So how does patty feel about the Heming's is who are the family of her father's concubine? Well, she's clearly not fond enough of them to set them free. You know, these are her half-sisters, Sally is her half-sister. She's not setting her free. But what she doesn't do is break the family up and sell them on her father's death, which she could have done. That would have been entirely within her rights. Instead, she keeps them together as a family. And when they move to Monticello, she employs them in the house. So she doesn't send them out into the fields. Yeah. And that, by the standards of the time, it is a mercy. I mean, you would rather be employed as a slave in the house than, you know, out on the tobacco fields. Yes. She seems to have been quite close to Betty. So in 1782, she's kind of basically been worn out by childbirth. She's fallen very sick from TB. And Jefferson is distraught. He tends to hurt her for months. But so also does Betty Hemings. And on the 6th of September, patty can feel that her end is very close. She extracts an oath from Jefferson. She could not die happy if she thought her children were ever to have a stepmother brought in over them. And so Jefferson very solemnly promises not to remarry. And he does so in front of witnesses. And among these witnesses gathered around patty's bed to hear this oath, Betty Hemings. But also patty's nine-year-old half-sister, the daughter of Betty Hemings, Sally Hemings. And patty dies the same day. And Jefferson is left completely prostrated by grief. And then two years later, he leaves for France to serve there as ambassador in succession to Franklin. And he takes his elder daughter, Martha with him. But he leaves his younger daughter, Maria behind. And then three years after that in 1787, when Jefferson is still in France, he sends for Maria. And Maria is only eight years old at this point. So she clearly needs an attendant. And the person who is sent Maria as her kind of maid, nanny, whatever is her 14-year-old aunt, Sally Hemings. So let me just repeat one thing. Sally Hemings at this point is 14 years old. She is 14 years old. So first of all, they go to London where John Adams is the ambassador, the first American ambassador to the court of St James. And Abigail Adams is with him. And she hosts Maria and Sally. And she thinks Sally is hopeless that she's an absolutely terrible kind of attendant. She's all over the place. But she assumes that Sally is kind of 17 or 18. She's also, we're told, light colored. And so there's a description of her, very handsome with long straight hair down her back. And she evidently bears a family resemblance to her dead half-sister Patty who had been Jefferson's wife. I mean, so she looks a bit like Jefferson's wife. Yeah. And she looks slightly older than she is. I mean, you know where this is going. Everyone knows where this is going. Right. So Maria and Sally cross the channel. They go to Paris, you know, they're with Jefferson. And by September 1789, when Jefferson is preparing for his return to America, Sally is pregnant. So by that point, she is what she's 16. So our source for what happens next, it derives exclusively from Madison Hemings, her son. Okay. He writes up this story. And he reports that Jefferson takes for granted that he's going to be taking Sally back with him to Virginia and that Sally in Madison Hemings words, demours, you know, she's not going to go with him. She says, "No, I'm not going to." And there are various reasons why she might feel able to do this. She has learned French by this point. So it's perfectly possible that she could stay in France and flourish there. She's not alone. She has her elder brother, James, who's been taken by Jefferson to to Paris, to be trained as a chef. - As a chef, boom. Yeah. - So she could, she could live with James, they could run a restaurant together or something. - Truly. - But the key thing is that in France, there are no slaves. So Sally is not legally a slave in France. She's free to do what she wants. There is no legal requirement for her to go back to America. - Imagine, yeah, the shock of being told you had to go back to America, back to slavery. - So she says, no, I'm not going to. The 16 year old girl, and Jefferson is absolutely stunned. I mean, I don't think anyone has ever spoken to him like this before. In the end, Sally does opt to go back to Virginia with Jefferson. And Madison Hemings writes about this, to induce her to do so, he, Jefferson, promised her extraordinary privileges and made a solemn pledge that her children should be freed at the age of 21 years. You know, not just her children, his children as well, including Madison Hemings. And for Sally, you know, she's got this promise, but to go back to Virginia, she is returning to servitude. And she will formally remain a slave until the end of her days. Having said that, and whether this counts as rehabilitation, I don't know, but Jefferson does keep his word to her. So by the terms of his will, when he dies, her children by him are emancipated and Sally herself for complicated legal reasons, she can't be emancipated, but she's kind of granted an informal freedom. So effectively, she does become free herself, not legally, but effectively. De facto but not de jure, basically. And she ends up leaving Monticello after Jefferson's death. And she lives with two of her sons in Charlottesville, which is the nearest town, about two miles away. And she died there in 1835. She was 62, and the sight of her grave is unknown. So a very, a kind of dark and largely occluded story, apart from that reference to it in these papers. There are only hints about what we know, right? In the sources, anyway, we'll come to other sources. Just one last thing we should make clear, when Sally arrived in Paris, she was 14 years old, though you say she looked a year or two older, Jefferson was 44 at that point. So quite a sizeable age gap, even by the standards of the rest of history. And so because it is a story that has dwelt in the shadows, there are kind of questions to be asked. So first of all, is Madison Hemings right? Can we trust him? Was Jefferson really his father? And that of Sally's other children? I mean, we can't take it for granted. You could say, well, Madison Hemings would say this. I mean, it's much better to have Jefferson as your father than someone else. Yeah, of course. And throughout the 20th century, most biographies of Jefferson didn't believe it. So as a representative, let me quote, "Dumass Malone." [LAUGHTER] He was author of a six, don't throw it that away. His name is what? We see the Dumass or Dumass, whether he was named after the author of Three Musketeers, and whether the S was added, I'm not sure. I imagine it probably was. Dumass Malone. And he wrote a six-volume biography of Jefferson, who won the Pulitzer Prize, just for good measure. So there's no question where Dumass Malone is coming from. He was the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia, which had been founded by Thomas Jefferson. He definitely doesn't have a dog in this fight. So Malone, in the fourth volume of his biography, he touches on calendar's accusations, his accusations about Jefferson's relationship with Sally. And he abines. They are distinctly out of character. Being virtually unthinkable in a man of Jefferson's morals, standards, and habitual conduct. Well, that's so telling, isn't it? Virtually unthinkable. I mean, this is a point, 1970, when Jefferson's moral status so great that it is, I mean, to most American historians, it probably is unthinkable that Thomas Jefferson could lower himself to this depravity. Right. So what changes? Well, the key development comes in 1999 when DNA tests proved that the father of Sally's children had been a member of the Jefferson male line. Doesn't prove that it was Thomas Jefferson, but I mean, very strong likelihood that it was. And then there's been very detailed research by the great scholar of the Hemings family and of the relationship of Sally Hemings to Thomas Jefferson and at Gordon Reed. And she did detailed analysis of the Jefferson archives, which are very copious. And she demonstrated that Jefferson had been present at Monticello nine months before the birth of every one of Sally Hemings' children. So again, that's quite substantive evidence. And then in 2017, archaeologist working at Monticello excavated Sally's room complete with original half, fireplace, and floors, and it's directly adjacent to Jefferson's bedroom. Right. So there are still Jefferson scholars who doubt it, but I would say the overwhelming consensus now of historians is that Jefferson had kept Sally Hemings' as his mistress, that Madison Hemings and her other children, were Jefferson's children. And this has been accepted by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which runs Monticello. So I think effectively, I think, is case proven. So let's get into their relationship. So obviously, there's so much-- I mean, it's impossible to ever know the truth about anybody's relationship, I suppose. Even your own. But their relationship is surely-- I mean, the fact that they are, as it were, master and slave, can never be separated from the reality of their relationship. No, it is obviously massively coercive. I mean, Jefferson owns Sally as property. And as you said, he's in his mid-forties when they begin their affair, and she's in her mid teens. So in every way, there is a colossal power imbalance there. So I suppose the question that can't be answered, which people must be wondering, is why Sally agreed to go back with Jefferson to Virginia and to slavery? So was it homesickness for the place that she grown up in for her mother, for the rest of her family? Nervousness at starting a new life in France. I mean, maybe she'd been in France a few years. But I mean, a big ask, perhaps. Yeah, she's still a teenager, right? Yeah. I mean, do many 16-year-olds or whatever choose to start an entirely new life, cut off from there? I mean, we know from sports people who do that, that they find it very daunting and overwhelming, and that's when they have support around them. So you can imagine, this is a big ask for her to stay in Paris, even though it means freedom. But to repeat, I mean, she's going back to a condition of servitude. Yeah, of course. I mean, of course. And I think you have to ask, and there may be people who feel that this is an entirely inappropriate question. But I think you can't avoid asking it. Does she have personal feelings for Jefferson, who is a man of immense charm and good looks and fame? I mean, he's one of the most famous men in the world. So I mean, we can't know. But I would say Sam or all of those reasons probably offer a sufficient explanation. As for Jefferson, I think it is easier to fathom what might have motivated him in risking so much by having this affair. I mean, it was so, you know, he knew how damaging it would be if the full details of it came out. One one question, though, actually, you say he's risking so much, and he knows how damaging it would be. The allegations do come out. Thanks to this guy, Calender, but they don't stop him becoming president. Plus, you made the point yourself, you know, that's quite rightly, I think, that master's slave owners raping their slaves or sleeping with their slaves is extremely common in the American South. So in other words, if it came out, you know, a lot of people might say, huh, Jefferson's not the saint that he pretends to be, but they wouldn't necessarily be surprised or shocked to that this had happened. And it might not be, well, as we know, it wasn't terminal for his political career. So is he risking that much? That's my question. I think he is, for reasons that we will come to. OK. I think he is risking a lot by having this affair with Sally Hammings. I mean, we will come to that in due course. OK. But when it comes to his motivation, why might he have run this risk? I think it is because when you look at his life, it is clear that this is a man who is given to Titanic and enduring erotic passions. And this, again, is something that many of his biographers in the 20th century didn't really want to acknowledge. So there is a brilliant biography of Jefferson that was published as late as 1998 by Joseph Ellis, American's finks. I mean, it's really, really good. But Ellis doubted the Hammings affair. And he famously wrote of Jefferson that he preferred to meet his lovers in the rarefied region of his mind, rather than the physical world. Oh, that has been nice for them. So, you know, in France, he has these kind of very elegant salal-based affairs. Right. But to give Ellis credit, when the DNA evidence came out, he changed his mind. You know, when the evidence changes, what do you do? You change your mind. He does. Yeah. And I think it's clear that when you look at Jefferson's great romantic passions, which kind of mark the length of his life, he's definitely a man whose principles are capable of being overridden by his desires. So, at Case in Point, his first great erotic obsession, - He's 25 and he goes after his best friend's wife. Dominic, have you ever watched love? Actually, I can imagine that you never have. - I have seen them actually, yeah. It's the Kira Knightley thing, right? - So you remember Andrew Lincoln who will go on to a glittering career fighting zombies. He's in love with Kira Knightley, who's just married his best friend. And Andrew Lincoln turns up with a load of cue cards. - Christmas. - Yeah, Christmas and plays some carols on a tape recorder. And it proclaims his love. And then he walks away and Kira follows him and gives them a little kiss. And then they run back. And that's the end of it. Because Andrew Lincoln is a very decent man and obviously isn't going to pester his best friend's wife. Thomas Jefferson, however, a very different story. He pursues this poor woman for years and he's always kind of surprising her when she's getting dressed. He's slipping love letters into the cuffs of her sleeves. - Does he get anywhere? - No, he doesn't. - Good for her. - She stands firm and obviously the best friend is no longer the best friend when he finds out. - No, yeah. - There is a similar sense of kind of intense, erotic emotional obsession in his marriage. So when his wife dies, he, you know, this is the middle of the war of independence. Jefferson has a kind of key role. He's meant to be organizing the defense. If he chucks them all in, goes back to Monticello, spends months kind of nursing her, mobbing her fever, brow, all of this. And remember that oath that he'd given never to marry again. I mean, he keeps it. He, he clearly sees it as a sacred pledge. And I think that the, the lightest explanation for his relationship with Sally is that she is the third and the most enduring of the three great passions of his life. And just to reiterate, she probably looks like his dead wife. - Yeah, I mean, as we say, there are some very, very deep waters here. - It's not unheard of for men in, it's kind of middle age to form these obsessive attachments to much younger women, after all. - Indeed. And are we not right and saying that people describe to the French court and said she was very good looking, very handsome woman with the hair down her back and all that kind of thing? - All of that. - Yes, she's clearly very good looking. And she's clearly very smart as well. - Yeah. - And very strong will. I mean, you know, she stood up to Jefferson, one of the most famous men in the world when she was a 16 year old. I mean, she's clearly a very impressive person in her own right. But there is this massive question, why does he keep her as a slave? Why doesn't he just free her? And this is a question that in turn only scratches the surface of the biggest mystery of all, which you were kind of alluding to earlier on. How could Jefferson of all people have kept not only Sally Hemings, whom he clearly loved, but some 130 people on the Monticello estate in bondage and even more on his other estates? So yes, when Jefferson dies, he sets free his children by Sally, but not the other slaves, they are all sold on the block. Families are scattered to, you know, different parts of the South. - I mean, that itself, the breaking up of families by that being sold off is just unpart breaking. - Yeah, it's terrible. And there's a contrast there with Washington, who by the terms of his will, he wasn't able to free all his slaves because they were, you know, owned by his wife, but he laid down measures for them to be set free. Jefferson did not do this. And what makes the hypocrisy seem even more glaring? And this is why I think the story of him having Sally as his vertically as concubine would have been damaging. Jefferson in his original draft of the declaration had famously lambasted slavery as, and I quote, "A cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberties." And the other members of the Congress, most of them from the South, and therefore from slave-owning states, had edited these passages out. And Jefferson had been absolutely furious about this. He'd felt that this was kind of morally unconscionable. So there can be no doubting that as a young man, he had a passionate commitment to abolitionism. Nor, I think, when you look at his political career, his writings, the framing of his political principles, the ideal of liberty, I think, did absolutely serve him as the great guiding light of everything that he wanted to achieve and to do. - But can I just press you on this before? I know you want to move on, but just on this, his commitment to the idea of liberty. It's very common in American history, certainly in the first, let's say, 100 years or 150 years or so, for people to feel that they are genuinely committed to the idea of liberty, but they perceive it as having limits. And that limit means it extends to white men largely, but not to people beyond that. Does Jefferson want of those people? - No. Jefferson is much more committed to an ideal of liberty, such as I think we would understand it today. - Okay. - He is a man of his time, but he is at the cutting edge. He is a committed abolitionist. He's not just written the decoration of independence. He had put in huge passages saying that slavery should be abolished. - Yeah, so you're not giving him a pass, as it were, by saying, "Well, he's a product of 18th century Virginia, so you'd expect him to be. " - No, okay, fine. - This is why I think it's so for at my risk of Jefferson. It's so upsetting because to say he's merely hypocrite, that all along his devotion to liberty was a front, a show. Isn't true, Jefferson is in his writings and in many of his political actions. He is committed to all kinds of ideals, and these ideals have many wellspring, so he has a very idiosyncratic understanding of Jesus as a kind of non-divine moralist, but he draws from the teachings of the gospels, a sense that all human beings should be free. He's got this kind of humanist understanding of the gospels. He's also a committed admirer of the more radical end of the enlightenment. So he's read the philosophers of liberty. He's a massively anglophobic, it has to be said, but he's a great admirer of John Locke and the English philosophers of personal liberty, many of which feed into the abolitionist arguments in Britain. And I think, above all, I said he's a great classist at the start of this show. He has a passionate devotion to ancient Greece and Rome that goes far beyond that of even the other founding fathers. And in particular, he is devoted to the great Roman historian Tassitus, whom he described as the first writer in the world without exception. And Jefferson finds in Tassitus an inspiration that is moral as well as political. And that inspiration leads him to enshrine liberty as the great principle that should guide human beings in leading a good life. So there are two books by Tassitus in particular that influence him. And the first of these is called Gamania. It's a portrait of ancient Germany, which of course hadn't been conquered by the Romans. And Tassitus, or rather Jefferson's understanding of Tassitus, Germany is the womb of liberty. And Tassitus has counterpointed it to the corruption and decadence of Rome under the Caesar's. And so Jefferson sees the Anglo-Saxons who come from Germany, Unconquer Germany to Britain. And then the English settlers who had traveled from Britain to America as the bearers of this ancient flame of German liberty. And in 1776, Jefferson had proposed putting Hengstenhorcer the legendary leaders of the Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain, putting them on the reverse of the great seal as illustration of this ideal that the course of liberty is heading westwards from Germany to Britain to America. And then the counterpoint to all this is Jefferson's portrayal of the lives of the Caesar's Tiberius and through to Nero. And this is the monarchy that obviously emerged amid the rubble of the Roman Republic. And it's a murderous and tyrannical as portrayed by Tassitus. And this is again a huge influence on Jefferson's politics. And it's a massive part of what fills him with dread that the American Republic will succumb to a new Caesar. And he, there are various kind of potential Caesars in Jefferson's demonology. And one is George III. And Jefferson's Anglophobia is founded in the sense he has of Britain as a new imperial Rome with George III as a very improbable kind of collicular or Nero. I mean, it's kind of amiable buffoon. He's absolutely not collicular. But Jefferson is completely sincere in seeing Britain as the kind of the new Rome, murderous and tyrannical. And that, of course, is what informs his hatred of the Federalists and of their projects, right? Yes, completely. I mean, it's insane as it may sound. Did you think John Adams was going to become a new Caesar as well? Yes. Well, he sees John Adams as a potential Caesar, I think. And he definitely sees Hamilton as a new Caesar. And Hamilton, who's clearly a massive wag. Jefferson, they're having dinner together. And Jefferson is talking about his heroes. And it's all bacon and lark. And Hamilton said, oh, my God, it's Jesus. He was the greatest man that ever lived. Jefferson takes this completely seriously. And it's confirmed in his darkest views. There's stuff some great sense of humor. I don't think Jefferson had a great sense of humor, though. No, I don't. But it is Jefferson's kind of great overriding ambition for the United States to avoid the fate of both ancient Rome and of George and Britain. And it's this that explains his hostility to Britain, his sympathy with Republican France. his enthusiasm for yeoman farmers, these are a kind of bulwark against the emergence of tyranny and decadence, and this drive westwards, this empire of liberty. You plant an empire of liberty in the west, and that will enable America to stand proof against the corrupting effects of luxury and decadence. Part of this is obviously a little bit antiquarian, but Jefferson is not primarily antiquarian. He believes in the lessons that can be drawn from the classical past, but he does kind of blend it with the ideals of the Enlightenment, which he's also committed, and to his very hard-nosed understanding of the contemporary political realities of America. And his dream essentially is a country that can serve as simultaneously an embodiment of the best of ancient Greece and Rome, that can be true to the ideals of the Enlightenment, and can also be something novel, something that the world has never seen before, and therefore appropriate to a new world. And this ideal is evident, I think, not just in his record as president, but also in the place that he loved more than anywhere in the world, and this, of course, is Monticello. And this is a place that is classical, but it is also where he is anticipating the future of American ingenuity by experimenting with tomatoes and installing automatic double doors and inventing a kind of a revolving chair and recording meteorological data that is so meticulously kept that it's still being used by climate scientists to this day. So all of that is all kind of very scientific, it's all very progressive, it's all very Enlightenment. But at the same time, you know, he does have this great love of the classics, and his dream since he was a young man is to live essentially like Cicero. And as a young man, he had filled, he had this commonplace book, he'd filled it with quotes illustrating what Cicero had called dignified leisure. And Cicero enjoys this dignified leisure on his country estate, but you can't have a country estate if you're a Roman Grandee without slaves. And as it turns out, Norkin Jefferson, because to free his slaves would have destroyed the idyll that he had created for himself at Monticello. And this isn't just because he would lose the labour that the slaves provided, but because Jefferson, like so many of the tobacco farmers in Virginia, is massively in debt, and he needs the slaves as collateral against this debt. And remember that his father-in-law had been a debt collector. And so Jefferson knows better than anyone what financial ruin might mean. He will lose everything. And I think that ultimately Monticello is dearer to him than Sally, dearer to him than his ideals of liberty, dearer than his reputation even. So when he was in France, he'd visited Neem, and he'd gazed at an incredibly well-preserved Roman temple, great kind of gem of Roman architecture. And he wrote in a letter that he'd gazed at it like a lover at his mistress. And perhaps at the end of the day, he loved Monticello more even than Sally, than his wife, than his best friend's wife, more than his principles, more even than how posterity would judge him. To the extent that I can explain this, you know, the paradox that is Thomas Jefferson, this I think is the explanation. You know, he is that the president of the United States, who articulated the principles of America more boldly and more stirringly and more inspirationally than any other. But I think for that reason, he is also the United States president who came to betray them the most grievously. He knew what he was doing. We joke and say, Thomas Jefferson, history is great monster. He wasn't a monster. He was a man of genuine principle. But it's for that reason that his portrayal of those principles are all the more shameful, I think. You're right. Yeah, because you're sort of distinguishing. I mean, there's a difference between somebody who basically has been bred in the world of the 18th century. Right. Cannot think themselves outside it. Doesn't question the established practices at the time. And therefore, you know, own slaves, bison cell slaves, and is completely implicated in what we would now regard as a horrendous institution. And you're effectively saying, this is somebody who basically thinks it's wrong. He knows it's wrong. To the depths of his heart in his marrow. knows it's wrong, but his own pastoral, classical fantasy world, as it were, means more to him than doing what he believes to be right. And presumably, he told himself, the slaves are much better living with me on my plantation and working for me. I think he probably did tell himself that, but I don't think that's a justification that he would have accepted. Right. You know, and that's why I think he, if he were alive now, he would accept the force of the arguments made by his critics. He would be on their side in his gut. Yeah. In saying that he did wrong. And I think that if the definition of a tragedy is that, you know, someone who is destroyed by their own best qualities, Jefferson is the great tragic president. Because the very thing that people admire, that millions of tourists go to see every year, which is Monticello, you're arguing, is the thing that basically subverts his moral compass. Monticello is the architectural embodiment of all Jefferson's ideals. You know, his love of ancient Greece and Rome, his commitment to enlightenment principles, his investment in all the kind of incredible ingenuity that will be characteristic of America over the course of her existence. And that's why Americans instinctively feel this. It's why it's one of the great kind of monuments, great centers of pilgrimage in the United States. But ultimately, that house could not have functioned without slaves. And had Jefferson sold his slate, he would have lost the house. He would have lost the estate. He would have been ruined. Yeah. And he couldn't bring himself to do it. He couldn't bear to do it. Okay. Well, fascinating story brilliantly told. Thank you, Tom. So that brings to an end our founding fathers series. But Jefferson himself would be delighted to hear, because he loved Greece and Rome, that we're actually returning next week with a proper classical subject. Because of course, Christopher Nolan's film The Odyssey is about to hit the cinemas. And we will be venturing back to Homeric Greece to the world of gods and monsters, to dig deep into the Odyssey and tease out what it's all about and what it means. And those episodes will be out for Resta's History Club members on Monday. So if you want to hear both episodes straight away, go to the Resta's History.com sign up. And Tom, I believe there's all kinds of other benefits, aren't there? Oh, massive supplementary benefits, supplementary benefits, I think it's the tentacle town. Incredible supplementary benefits. You only get them if you sign up at the website. And of course, there is our SuperSoraway newsletter every Friday, which will have loads more about all of this kind of stuff. So I advise people to sign up for the newsletter. And yeah, thank you very much, Tom. And we will return next week with The Odyssey. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Hi, everybody. It's Dominic here from The Resta's History. I just wanted to let you all know that on our sister podcast, The Book Club, we have just released an episode digging deep into George R.R. Martins, a game of thrones. The first book in his Song of Ice and Fire sequence. We go deep into the history behind Game of Thrones. So we go into the Wars of the Roses, Hadrian's Wall. We talk about the influence of Jera Tolkien and comparisons with the Lord of the Rings. We talk about the violence of the books, but Tabby, we also talk, don't we, about George R.R. Martins apparent stagnation, and whether he's actually ever going to finish the books. We investigate why it is that he has battle to finish them at all, and whether he will ever be able to. If you want to hear lots more about the history behind some of the greatest novels of all time, Fear Not, because coming up on The Book Club, we have The Lepid by Giuseppe Tomassi de Lampedusa, which is all about Italian unification. We talk about Cersei, where we delve into a particular part of the Odyssey. And then after that, we are doing the 39 steps, which is, I know, dominant U-Chose and U-Love. Please join us at The Book Club. It's loads of fun, and you will never find a better way to spend your life. Bye-bye.