Annette Gordon-Reed with Brent Staples: Jefferson on Race | LIVE from NYPL

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:01:04]Good evening and welcome. My name is Tony Marx and I'm the president of the New York Public Library. and it's my pleasure to be here and to be here with all of you. We are lucky tonight to be joined by the great Annette Gordon Reid.

[00:01:19]Annette is a beloved supporter and friend of the New York Public Library.

[00:01:23]She was a library is a library lion, a past fellow of the Coleman Center. She's uh also written a few books uh including uh the New York a number of New York Times bestsellers. Um, she has uh won the National Book Award, the Puliter Prize, she's a MacArthur Genius Prize winner, the National Humanities Medal. You get the idea.

[00:01:50]She is the Carl M. Lobe University professor at Harvard, and sits on the New York Public Libraries Board of Trustees.

[00:01:58]Let me just say that Annette singlehandedly has changed the way we think about certainly Thomas Jefferson, about our founders and our founding in a way that only a great historian can do.

[00:02:13]She's speaking tonight about Jefferson on race, which examines Jefferson's complicated and often contradictory views on race and slavery. She collects the founding father's most revealing writings on African-Americans slavery and indigenous peoples drawing from public and private papers letters and plantation records. The book is available for sale this evening. You can also check it out from the New York Public Library.

[00:02:44]She is joined by Brent Staples who is a member of the New York Times editorial board and author of numerous books. In 2019, he also won the Puliter Prize for his editorial writing. He is uh one of the nation's great commentators and thinkers and we're so honored to have him here with us tonight. His motto, history is the only education.

[00:03:07]Everything else is just training seems very resonant here in this building. And it's of course a good time for that motto and for Net's book. We are of course on the eve of an historic moment, the 250th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's most famous piece of writing, the Declaration of Independence and the birth of our country. This year, the New York Public Library joins our nation in celebrating and commemorating those 250 years and that founding moment as the one of the world's foremost institutions committed to the democratic access to knowledge and as the depository of some of our most founding documents. We are proud to be part of this celebration. On June 15th, we'll be opening exhibitions that will take over multiple galleries in this building entitled Declaring America 1776 and beyond, where we will seek to unpack the complex, diverse, and powerful stories of the American Revolution from its founding and for the next 250 years. And also looking forward starting this June we'll launch a new storytelling project powered by story cores entitled we the people reflections on America's 250th where we will ask all New Yorkers and all comers to add their stories to our I archive and to share with others to reflect on the nation's historic milestone on July 1st to 7th the actual uh week of the 250th we will put on display in this room one of two copies in the world of the Declaration in Jefferson's hand.

[00:04:59]It is one of our most prized uh treasures. It is also um a demonstration of history in the works since it's a sort of track change document from 1776.

[00:05:15]It includes amongst other things the first time united is capitalized. So the very idea of a single nation. It includes a reference to slaves not as slaves or chatt but as men capitalized.

[00:05:29]Very interesting for Jefferson. And it has an entire paragraph that was taken out of the declaration at the uh the request of his fellow southerners.

[00:05:40]That's a uh uh coming out against the slave trade. and a fervent rebuke of the slave trade. This from Thomas Jefferson.

[00:05:49]As I said and as we will hear more eloquently from Annette tonight, Jefferson had a complex relation with slavery and race. We'll also be releasing a special edition library card. There is really no better way to celebrate 250 years of American democracy than being part of these programs. There'll be others using our public library. If you would like to learn more, please go to nyppl.org us250th.

[00:06:19]At the end of the conversation, Annette will be glad to take some of your questions. You can write them down on the little cards on your note cards.

[00:06:27]Some of my colleagues will come by to pick them up. And if you're watching online, you can put them in the chat.

[00:06:34]Live from NYPL is made possible by the continuing generosity of Celeste Bartos, Manaz Espani Bartos, and Adam Bartos.

[00:06:42]And of course by all of you. Thank you for that support. And thank you for being here tonight. Please join me in welcoming Brent Sta Staples and Annette Gordon Reed.

[00:07:16]Welcome everyone. Am I coming through clearly?

[00:07:20]Welcome. Uh I want to say welcome to you in person. Welcome to our friends from across the pond in Britain. Welcome to our friends from the global south and a few from California.

[00:07:35]I I can't quite see you, but I feel you.

[00:07:39]Um, I have to say that I feel very privileged and honored to be here uh with the leading interpreter of Jeffersonian thought in America today.

[00:07:55]Uh and I also want to point out something that may not be obvious to you, but let me make it obvious that um even 40 years ago when I started my career at the New York Times um and uh there would not have been an event in which two Africanameans s will be sitting on stage in a venue like this evaluating the idea Jeffersonian ideas.

[00:08:35]The whole history of Jefferson was captive to a whole different group of people at that time. And so even that we're sitting here is something new I would say.

[00:08:55]and and that um I was thinking on the way over here um as I went through the book to make some notes. I was thinking on the way over here that the 250th we're experiencing um as we're experiencing 250th it's important to look out and see the context in which it arrives.

[00:09:15]Um, and for me, one of the most important parts of that context is what the Atlantic magazine called not long ago the great reegregation of America.

[00:09:29]Um, this administration and the MAGA people in fact are are bent on um resegregating to largest society. And this in this includes dispensing with civil rights laws, dispensing with measures of racial justice. It includes um driving highly placed African-Americans out of federal government. It includes also harassing institutions, non-government institutions who have anything more than a token presence of black people. um universities in particular harassing them into somehow redressing that and making things white again. Um the president himself before joining the White House and since to some extent has um has embraced the company embrace white supremacist ideas and and white supremacists themselves.

[00:10:38]But the one thing I was thinking about going through the book is that people who are pronouncing segregationist, neo segregationist, white supremacist ideas today could find solace in some of the things Jefferson wrote.

[00:10:56]Um, if we go back to my uh least favorite notes on the state of Virginia, I think it was 1781.

[00:11:07]Jefferson spent a great deal of time in that book saying that he believed black people were not really human or capable of thought comparable to white people at that time. Um he compared black women to uh orangutangs and apes and he was promoting an idea and throughout his life and in that book too he talked about believing that black people and white people could never live together in a multi-racial society. And throughout he advocated the plan of what historians call negro removal um of ex first getting black people to willfully leave the country and later talking about actually deporting them.

[00:11:58]So white supremacists who are running a lot of uh the government today I think would take solace in in those things that Jefferson said. Um, how do you square that with the fact with the with the central premises of the declaration and how do you square those two things?

[00:12:23]>> Well, I don't think you can square them.

[00:12:25]I don't think it's necessary to to square them because they're they exist as two parts of his thought that to my mind one of the things that makes him interesting is that is how much he mirrors the country the country's value the struggle between the idea of equality as as a creed and as Anthony mentioned before Tony mentioned before the exile part of the declaration in which he declares that African people are men in capital letters. He's not just talking about the slave trade. It's as bad. It's slavery is bad and refers to Africans as a distant people whose sacred rights to liberty have been violated. So on one hand there's this belief that black people are human or this expression this notion that black people are people but on the other hand a discomfort about living with black people and the possibility of and not thinking that there was a real possibility of blacks and whites living together in a multi-racial society. And so in studying his life, you study a lot about the United States of America because those two things are always exist there. And that's why we're sort of surprised when you talk about reegregation. Um, I think for a time people got the idea that because things had changed enough to have a black president or black people on television or whatever that that world that what 35 40 whatever percentage of people who believe those things had gone away and they never did go away. This has always been a part of it. And and I think what I try to do in the book is to show that even though he's saying, for example, you know, he in notes on the state of Virginia, he says that he never heard a black person utter anything beyond plain narration the way white people could reason. And yet, as you see from some of the documents in this, and when people tell him that they can't do it, he says, "Oh, of course they can do it. They'll figure that out." So, it's like there's like a catechism of white supremacy, things that you have to say, these are the agreed upon fictions that we're going to put out and say the these are the things that we believe.

[00:14:44]But when he needs to have stuff done, he doesn't abide by that. And so that is very American. I think is very much in the way. It's an interesting study of how race works. a person who saw himself as progressive.

[00:15:02]As a young man, he sort of adopted the ideals of the Enlightenment and that included skepticism about religion, belief in science, anti-slavery. Those were the kinds of things that he said he believed. Now, on two of those, he didn't he he he was comfortable with the anti-religion stuff or or the anti-religion, but the skepticism about religion and science. He could embrace the anti-slavery. he could say it and he made some effort he says as a young man to um put put forth a plan for emancipation uh but once it he got push back on that and he just wo that's the end of that and he just kind of walked away from it.

[00:15:41]So that the racial part of it is always the problem because it's a product of his own discomfort but also being a part of a community and I think that's you mentioned context before that's one of the things that kind of I I one of my pet peeves because people take him outside of the context of his community and and and when I say that you have to think about the way his neighbors and the society that he grew up in thought about race I think sometimes people think I'm apologizing for him, but I'm not. I think that they're apologizing for the white community in the 18th century, making them out to be better on this question than they actually were, saying, "Oh, but he didn't do this." If if he had just said these words, all these people would have said, "Ah, of course, you know, of course we accept black people. It's not a problem." And but it white supremacy was the order of the day. And if you think about it just in terms of individual people and their foibables and their failures and not thinking about the community, why he was so I mean he sort of understood and and was believed that his community would not go beyond certain air certain points in dealing with race because of his own feelings but what he had observed. So yeah, this is this is a mess. I mean I have what I try to do in the book is to talk about I divide it up into three sections and I have self-image which talks about what he thinks he's doing. I'm the progressive man of the future person and this is the legacy I want. He wants people to think of himself at think of him as anti-slavery even though he's not doing stuff. clear that, you know, he's not just making his, you know, he doesn't care as much about the neighbors thinking this and Virginiaians, fellow Virginiaians, whether they think he he's anti-slavery.

[00:17:36]He wants us because he he knows he's very arrogant and he knows that he's we're going to be talking about him. and we want him to be seen as anti-slavery, but for the time but but the time that he's living, he can't really he doesn't feel that he could do the things that would actually make that come to fruition. I think that the question of audience here when he writes notes of Virginia um um that audience I think was partly European.

[00:18:03]>> Mhm.

[00:18:04]>> He was trying to shape how the French in particular who had aided us thought of us as a he wanted us to think of us not as a black country >> you know something negative he he wanted he wanted us to think of he wanted them to think of us as culture.

[00:18:20]>> Yeah. And was part of that audience maneuver was that was suppressing or defaming black intellect. Was that part of that?

[00:18:31]>> Well, I think it was part of him part of the enlightenment. That's the the the downside of the enlightenment, a place a a movement that makes categorization very important. And so once you start categorizing everything scientifically, then you start categorizing races. He didn't think of this stuff. There was a chain of notion of a chain of being, right? All the things about the orangutang that's out of Edward Long. I mean, he's he's being Mr. Wizard. These are the things that I've gotten out of books >> and and and let you let me know I'm being letting you know that I'm being scientific here. I'm up on all the latest thoughts about this stuff. So, it is the audience. He's trying to impress other people. And the funny thing about it is that you know what he didn't want the notes published. And what he was frightened about was the part of the notes in which he criticized his slavery. And he was afraid that people in Virginia were going to see that. And that would just be one more bit of evidence that he he was crazy as as some people suggested on the question of of uh slavery and so forth. But what it he he would be I think stunned to think that the part that has really destroyed his reputation in a lot of ways has hurt his reputation is the part that you're talking about the racial stuff he that's those are throwaway lines >> for him >> for him those are throwaway lines for us but that's what we zero in on because those are the things that we're rightly I think rightly that we're interested in because we're trying to build a multi-racial society. So the fact that he is doing all these things at Montichello that contradict what he is saying, most people aren't going to know that, I mean, unless you're going through his stuff, it's really the the catechism of white supremacy that you see in the notes that matter.

[00:20:17]>> Let me let you all in for a second. If you haven't been to Montella, you must.

[00:20:23]I mean, you you must and go and go several times. Uh the last time I went uh I experienced um uh what was the the carpenter join was that John Hemings?

[00:20:37]>> John Hemings.

[00:20:38]>> Yeah. I experienced uh coming to understand that John Hemings uh who was carpenter and a joiner there was basically um the um the realizer of Jeffersonian ideas in in the physical environment when he wanted something built a chair, a cabinet, some kind of joint.

[00:21:05]This guy was the guy who went away and actualized it and came back and a voila, right? So you can see that the these people cuz Jefferson was a guy with his head in the clouds on who else would build a plantation on top of a mountain but who who basically relied on enslaved persons to make his dreams corporeal.

[00:21:35]Right.

[00:21:36]>> So there's that.

[00:21:37]>> But that and that and that is the the tragedy and the it shows you the tragedy of slavery that this person is basically an basically an artist who has to use his art. I'm talking about John Hemings now. Use his art under a system that doesn't recognize his humanity. It doesn't really sufficiently appreciate it. So the the the push I guess the push and pull between you know you're doing something under circumstances of unfreedom but you have pride in your work and you have the impulse to do things to make something beautiful and you do it but you're doing it in in a system that perverts everything.

[00:22:17]>> So now we've we've waited into the we're in the thick of it here, right?

[00:22:23]Jefferson's talking to the French. He's talking to the Europeans. He's hoping to raise the stature of the fledgling nation in the international community.

[00:22:32]He does that well, you know, by crushing the possibility of black intellect all the time, all the while exploiting it in his daily life for his comforts.

[00:22:44]Uh, also we have here the other problem, right? Um, if Jefferson is saying he's I Jefferson was earnest, I believe, when he said he thought black people and white people could not live together in a civil society. He was earnest when he said that and that affected all of his decisions when the size of the republic was doubled by the Louisiana purchase, >> right? His first incarnation was, we got to make that a white country. We got we got to try to stop slavery from going there. Uh because it'll be harder to get rid of black people in the country if we if we expand them there. He he had some other permutations on that thought. Now, all at the same time, right, all at the same time, Jefferson is living in a house with uh Sally Hemings, living in living with Sally Hemings at Montichello. and he he enslaves four of his own children.

[00:23:51]Now this you talk this book about the silences about that you know um and we can begin to deconstruct that silence but can we get into a minute what must he have been thinking? How was he resolving that? He's on one hand he's saying all these negroes got to leave the continental United States you know and then he has before him sees he's going around with them using one of them as his footman even uh he's go he how's he resolving that contradiction?

[00:24:31]>> Well I I don't think he is resolving it.

[00:24:33]I mean I think we want to resolve it because he's dead and we think that because the story is over we can now it's like a movie. can all wrap everything up. But living like that, he's even as he's saying they got to go, right? When he writes his will, he asks the legislature to allow the men that he is freeing to remain in Virginia.

[00:24:58]and they have to remain in Virginia because there there was a a law in 1806 that said that if you were anybody who was emancipated if they did not get permission from the government to remain in the state they would be reinsslaved after a year. So you had to get permission to do that. So he asks for permission for them to remain in the state and he explains the reason he wants to do that is because this is where their families and their connections are.

[00:25:24]So when you're talking about the policy, the problem of African-American people, you know, in the country, it's emancipation and expatriation, which by the way, I should say again, this was the liberal position. This was John Marshall's position, James Madison's positions, Harriet Beer Stowe position, Abraham Lincoln's position for a time that because they didn't believe that there could be an inter a multi-racial society. So he asks for them to stay here because their families and their connections, you know, are in Virginia and so that's why they should remain.

[00:26:00]But that's the answer to why all black people should stay here. He knew by 1826 that black people had been in this country, you know, from the the 1700s that that there had been generations of people and he was a lawyer and he understood the concept of prescription that after a certain point it's too late. you know, you can't you can't let somebody be on your land for, you know, a hundred years and then come back and say, "Oh, now you got to go. It's too late." So, he knew when he's talking about people that he knows and cares about, they get to stay because he's dealing with black the people that he's dealing with on a day-to-day basis, he understands what their families mean to them and he acts upon that. But when he's talking in the abstract about what should happen and he knows by the end of his life that that that's not you're not going to get black people out of the country. It's too many. It's too late to do that.

[00:26:59]There's one letter in which he's writing and he's talking about how much money it would take and how long it would take and it's just it's clear he doesn't know. He knows that this is not going to take place but he's saying this is what should happen even though he knows it's not going to happen.

[00:27:15]Um, I I've been um writing about Annette's work for a long time, probably at least 25 years.

[00:27:23]Um, and one thing I've never asked her, I said, >> "Oh god, this should be good."

[00:27:31]>> It's, you know, it's when you come along in the 1990s, right? you came along with your first book about um the relationship between Jefferson. You and Hington, you you flesh it out. And I remember my colleague at that time, William Sapphire, may he rest in peace, wrote a column about um your book and of course as a as a journalist, he said um what this shows is that calendar was right that the journalist was right from the very beginning.

[00:28:09]>> Yeah.

[00:28:09]>> The journalist who basically did the expose of Jefferson >> is it William Calendarer?

[00:28:15]>> Yeah. John James.

[00:28:16]>> James Calendarer. And I remember that uh um Sapphire wrote a comment about it. Um how has writing about Jefferson, immersing yourself in his work, how has it changed your conception of the nation and how has it changed you?

[00:28:38]Well, I think it's given me a clearer picture of the nation and I think he's extraordinary in lots of ways, but he's ordinary in other ways. And this attitude about race and the difficulty with dealing with the question of race is ordinary. is like an or I I recalled him I c I called him a sort of a garden variety white man uh some years ago who w who's dealing with this question of race and trying to figure out what to do about it and is uncomfortable about it sees himself strangely enough as not racist. I mean, I have a a there's a an interview with a well, a recollection of a man who visited Montichello when Jefferson was older. And Jefferson basically says, well, he's talking about Haiti. And he says, you know, I would I would have recognized Haiti, but the people, the white people are too prejudiced to do that. So, it's like he's he's always talking about other people's prejudices. Sometimes he re he he admits that he's prejudice, but it's always, you know, I'm don't have these feelings. These are the feelings of these other people, and I and I can't go beyond what these other people are doing. So, I think it's changed me because it makes me think more about how widespread these feelings are. The kind of it isn't just a matter of a of of sort of a blanket I hate black people or total discomfort with black people. It's people who think of themselves as reasonable, people who think of themselves as non-prejudiced even though they are and don't want to face it. And I think it's made me h I don't want to pessimist pessimistic is not the word much more realistic about how difficult it's going to be to change all of this that what a task it is to move beyond a question of of race or or to get to a point where we can get be comfortable in a multi-racial society. I thought we seem to be headed in that direction.

[00:30:51]>> Mhm.

[00:30:51]>> And sort of have hit an impass.

[00:30:55]>> I would say >> and I'm less surprised about that now because I think that this is foundational.

[00:31:00]>> Yes.

[00:31:01]>> It's it's there and it isn't. As I said before, it's not just about individual people. I think he is an example of how an individual person exists within a culture within a society that pushes him in a particular direction that he just he's not going to be able to escape from.

[00:31:21]>> Let me do can I do just a brief commercial for another dear departed um uh legal scholar Derek Bell?

[00:31:31]Derek, who was the first black law professor at Harvard, um was ridiculed in the 1970s at the height of optimism about the civil rights movement when he in fact said that he thought that racism was a permanent part of the American psyche and government and was going to reassert itself after every period of sort of civil rights progress. Um, and what Derek also said on the eve, um, I think that, um, Derek also said when Barack Obama was elected, they almost just elected um, or just before, he said he thought that the election of a black president would in fact usher in a period of of discord among whites that could possibly lead to the collapse of democracy.

[00:32:30]Let me just say that that's the end of the commercial.

[00:32:34]But but um but so about permanence. Um now I'm a Virginia, right? My family, the the house where my family was enslaved still stands in Bedford County, Virginia. It's been continuously occupied since roughly 1790.

[00:32:53]The slave quarters, the specific one where my family lived, still stands next to it. The guy who got it was a history buff and rebuilt it. So, I'm conscious of the fact and my white great greatgrandfather lived in that house, right? And my black great grandmother lived in those slave quarters and worked in that house. So, this is like a common arrangement. Yeah.

[00:33:23]>> throughout throughout the South. So I'm I've come to think that Jefferson's arrangement was Jefferson's sexual arrangement at Montichello was just a typical one of the South.

[00:33:36]>> When you asked me before, I was going to say that. I mean, how did he reconcile?

[00:33:39]He doesn't have to reconcile it. His father-in-law had six children with an enslaved African-American woman. Uh one of his best friends, Thomas Bell, lived there on Charlottesville in Charlottesville with Mary Hemmings, Sally Hemings's um halfsister.

[00:34:00]He this it was endemic to that to that area. So, and in any slave society that the that's the kind of thing that takes place. So I don't think he had to reconcile it that one of his friends um who wrote in one of his wrote in a diary at a couple of points talks about Jefferson uh this is long after Jefferson's dead and he makes reference to Jefferson and Mr. Jefferson's example of keeping an enslaved they kept a slave woman as he uses the phrase substitute for a wife and he said that's bachelor and widowed slave owners did that. So again, back to your community, this is something that's happening in the community. It's not it was written of when my first book, one of the things that's clear talking about the way historians presented this as if this were some sort of bizarre thing. And everybody would have gone, "Wow, you know, this is amazing. This is going on." When in fact, that's what they did in in that in that area of Virginia. And it was common, not just in Virginia, but all over the South. And you just you see it now in the DNA of African-American people where most African-American people have some sort of white ancestry that comes from that time period. It's it's essentially slavery was conquest.

[00:35:16]And in any society where a group one group conquers another, the DNA typically from males goes into females.

[00:35:25]Not usually the males of the conquered going the other way. It's always one way. And you see the same thing in the institution of slavery.

[00:35:33]>> So, so reading you over these decades now, I've been increasingly trying to put myself I mean I could put myself in Madison Hemings place, right? Because in my situation is the same as his. My great great-grandfather the only difference is my great great-grandfather was a president.

[00:35:52]>> Yeah.

[00:35:53]uh my great greatgrandfather's family in fact at the request of the king of England they had I don't know 10,000 acres you could see as far as far as I can see they were wealthy people um and um so I can put myself in Madison's place from the very beginning now I've been trying to put myself in Jefferson's place you know as an intellectual right a practicing intellectual did I mean he had to suppress that part of his life, right? That part of himself.

[00:36:25]Do you think Jefferson toward the end saw foresaw this most blessed of the patriarchs foresaw something like we'd be sitting here talking about him today? Did he see himself this way?

[00:36:41]>> Oh, abs. Would we be talking about him?

[00:36:43]Yeah. Because the thing that animated Jefferson, the most important thing for Jefferson was the American Revolution.

[00:36:49]He thought the American Revolution, the creation of the United States was something new under the sun. He says that when he's elected and he, you know, in 1800, he said you can no longer say there's nothing new under the sun. That was the most important thing to him. And he knew that creating a republic, throwing off a monarchy, going against a monarchy, ending for the American colonies, a form of government that was the predominant form of government in the world at that time, a monarchy that this was the wave of a future. And that's why when he's about to die when in his last letter what actually his last letter was about wine but his um then the one that they say is his last letter is when he dis declines an invitation to participate in um declaration of the 50th anniversary of the declaration of independence and he writes a letter to Roger Wakeman and he says essentially the words of the declaration apply to to the few now. one day it would apply to everybody in the world.

[00:37:55]And so I think he saw and he thought and I wrote that and I said that you know and I said that I mean he those and he says that he's expressing the he wasn't saying anything new he was just expressing the mind of America or something like that but he thought that he that they had done something not just him but all of the other Americans who had created the country that of course they would be talked about because America was supposed to be the beacon for the world and it was a new thing that would change the world. So he definitely knew that he would be remembered and he wanted to be remembered in a particular way and that's the I think the interesting thing as I I was saying before wanting to be remembered as this progressive person who uh was anti-slavery who had prejudices but he also said you know people in the future will be wiser than we are we are wiser than our ancestors and the people who come after us they will knew they will change. They will have different ideas about things. So he thought so he knew that the world was going to change and he wanted to be seen as a person who was a change agent, a person who was in favor of that. And so yeah, he definitely thought we'd be talking about it >> and that is that what that's reflects.

[00:39:13]You talk about um here and elsewhere you talk about the care he took in writing letters.

[00:39:19]>> Yeah.

[00:39:20]um that he was I I guess aware that that would be posterity would be looking at that.

[00:39:26]>> Uh I mean he was almost excruciatingly careful. Right.

[00:39:30]>> Yeah. And he had them sort of in order and then when his grandchildren get them together to sell them after he dies because they're they're broke and they want money. Uh they put them all out of order. I mean everything the his careful plans are just kind of gone to the gone with the wind. Um but yeah, he thought he had a that this was going to be his legacy and he wanted to be remembered a particular kind of way. He wanted to be a man of the future.

[00:39:57]One thing you you said earlier um I was reading um on today um Eric Foner's book um the the book on Lincoln uh was it called the fiery >> the fire fiery trial >> fire trial and uh which is a great book too and I was thinking Jefferson's you know had a rhetoric rhetorically he's a very powerful figure I mean he can right in a way that resounds and other people read, you know. Um, and he's all he's, you know, he's he's um he's some cases um ghosting legislation for people to carry, >> ghosting documents for people because he puts his >> because he doesn't want to he doesn't want to be >> he puts it in other people's >> Yeah. He doesn't want to be seen.

[00:40:48]>> He puts it in other people's hands. So, he's aware of the power of his writing.

[00:40:52]And this is just a point I wanted to meant to to bring up early, but when he gets into this um uh this deportation slashexile of black people, I you can one can see a line from his argument right through his contemporaries right up to Lincoln. I think Lincoln himself um would have accepted that idea. the idea. But the other thing, Lincoln, a little commercial for Lincoln, Lincoln, the first the first time Lincoln entertains um a collection of uh delegation of black pe dignitaries who come to the White House to state their case of Lincoln. Lincoln, you wags his finger at them and tells them, "I'm really sorry about the situation, but I really believe that, you know, black people and white people can't really live together." And the other the obvious solution is for you um to colonize to go elsewhere. So the ease with what Lincoln said that I don't think that came just out of Lincoln's experience. Right.

[00:42:02]>> I think I think that came because you know part of it was the most blessed of the patriarchs said it was the way to go. Right.

[00:42:09]>> Yeah. I but I don't think it's just the notes on the state of Virginia. I don't I don't I think >> I think it's throughout his l throughout Jefferson's work though.

[00:42:16]>> Oh no. throughout his work but it's throughout the works of other people as well. I think >> I think judging from the way people acted even in the north where they uh initiated gradual emancipation statutes black people were secondass citizens.

[00:42:34]>> Yes.

[00:42:34]>> I mean they they were here they were denisens. They were not really treated like real citizens. So I think the logic of black removal is a part of white supremacy and for people who came here for land and wanted to take you know dispossess indigenous people because I I should also say the indigenous people are in this as well >> right >> um it it's the logic of white supremacy of the idea of wanting to get rid of black people of moving away from black people and so I I don't I don't think it's just Jefferson I I do think that this is a part of the whole philosophy uh the notion of white supremacy.

[00:43:13]>> Okay, now we're sitt we're sitting here and I'm teasing we're teasing this apart >> and um my wife, God bless her, um because as as a Virginia, you know, I'm born and read Virginia, you know, back hundreds of years, you know, I still do I want too much from Jefferson? Am I am I wanting too much from him?

[00:43:37]>> Yeah.

[00:43:40]Yeah, I mean that's the thing and I and and you have a right to want something from him and I I will say you have a right to want something from him. You have a right to want something from him but as a person who studies him I should say I don't have those expectations.

[00:43:54]I mean if you say how I've changed that's been the expectation because somehow it it you know from judging from as a younger person studying an individual you do have these expectations but after time you come to understand what's important to him and what I said before the American Revolution and preserving what he thought was the American Revolution was his obsession. That is the thing that he cared about more than anything. It wasn't about race. It wasn't about slavery. It was if we don't if we aren't vigilant, Alexander Hamilton and those people, that federal party is going to initiate a counterrevolution and they're going to pull us back to a king.

[00:44:39]If we if you're not vigilant, people will drift towards that. And that's what I mean. He thought we he said, you know, we created something that was important here. And that's what he thought. Now the slavery thing he said that's going to solve itself because people will realize and blah blah blah blah blah that's copout but the enlightenment and this whole notion of scientific change and and progress it allows you to do that. That's the other downside of you know one of the weaknesses of the enlightenment but the revolution was what galvanized him and that's what he cared about. So I do think it's possible once you realize that what is important to people and what they see as secondary even if we know that slavery is going to be the thing that destroys the union right but it's like anything in your life you say well if I could just get this fixed then everything will be okay this other thing will take care of itself now we know that's wrong that that's not it and as a matter of fact the dispute about slavery and all of that broke the union broke his union apart. Um, and but that's so I I do think that you expect too much of him. And but I but I would also hasten to say that as an American citizen, he put these words in the declaration. He created these expectations. You have a right to do that. And I'm saying that I just don't have that kind of expectation because I've looked at too much and under, you know, to understand that this person is not capable of doing all the things that we all the things he did, but all the other other things that we want him to do, he was never going to do that. As we approach 250th, um it's significant and for me that um half the states have in some way or another uh pass legislation that limited uh uh the use of black history in schools.

[00:46:37]>> Uh and that the government is going around erasing evidence of slavery from historical sites. Um, and that books like this and books like yours who that talk about um the actual real life of Jefferson, the non the non sort of um the non sort of glossy life are going to be limited in a lot of places. You know, uh I think that we're in a dangerous time from that standpoint. uh that we're going to experience now, a period of celebration um which overlooks um the kinds of damage that Jefferson and others are part of and that continues to this very day. Um, and so your work itself is crucial because it illuminates and shows the true scope of what that world was like and how it was made and how our how modernity was made. Um, we're going to take questions now if they're if they have any and if your if your writing is clear.

[00:47:52]Okay.

[00:47:53]two sides.

[00:48:01]Which aspects of Jefferson's life and thought have not been sufficiently explored in your view? What might that neglect say about uh our current state, the current state of the field?

[00:48:16]>> Well, I I think there could be more about religion. I think that his attitude about religion, not just the separation of church and state, but the questioning of organized religion, he did create his own form of Bible.

[00:48:35]>> Uh, >> yeah. You know, exing out all the miracles, what he thought were miracles, the things that Jesus never said. I think talking honestly about that aspect because it's it's so key. I mean the separation of church and state and what he feared was the the role that churches could play the that an organized church could play in compromising democracy. I don't think we talk about that enough because there's a well was obvious because you don't people would see that as criticism and that there would be people who would be very upset about that. So I I would like to see more about that aspect of it and also more about his presidency. In a way, that's some of the things that um we talk a lot about, you know, the the embargo and we talk about Louisiana purchase and so forth, but I I don't think the his presidency and some of the things that he did on the question of the slave trade actually um haven't been sufficiently uh haven't been sufficiently covered.

[00:49:39]There's a new book that's coming out that is about that, but mainly religion I would say.

[00:49:44]>> Okay. Um, there's a simple question here that I'll take for myself. Uh, the read the the listener asks, "What did Thomas what did Mrs. Thomas Jefferson think?"

[00:49:56]Um, if you're asking about Sally Hemings, um, Mrs. Thomas Jefferson was dead by that point. In in many uh in many plantation homes, the the mistress of the house had to look on in humiliation as the master took a concubine from the slave quarters and produced filled the household with children who'd looked like the white children. But Mrs. Thomas Jefferson is your answer. She was dead.

[00:50:25]>> Um um there's another one. Which of his writings do you find most infuriating after all these years?

[00:50:36]>> Most infuriating? Well, I mean, of course, the notes the notes, I mean, are are pretty bad, but there's some letters um that are not that are not great. Um, the Negro's dogs must be killed.

[00:50:53]I think that that that's infuriating. I mean, it's Well, it's infur I mean, he the dogs would get rabies and also they killed some of his sheep. But it just it's painful for me to think about people who didn't have very much but had a companionship of a of a pet, >> right?

[00:51:14]>> Uh or you know that they hunted with them and so forth. So that that's I mean he had a utilitarian reason for it, but I like dogs and so I I I think I don't I that's infuriating to me. before um he writes a letter where after he's freed Robert Hemmings, Sally Hemings's brother, and he's complaining because Robert Hemmings wanted to be free essentially.

[00:51:41]>> And he's he's writing almost as if he thinks that Hemings has been ungrateful.

[00:51:46]>> Yes.

[00:51:46]>> For taking his freedom. And it's like why would this man he has a wife and a child why would he rather be >> in your service than to go to Richmond and live with your wife? So that's like what what are you thinking here that that that you know you think he's ungrateful because he wants to be >> which of his writings do you find the most inspiring?

[00:52:09]Well, the declaration declaration there's a letter to his daughter who is complaining because her father-in-law has married um a 17-year-old girl after, you know, and is who has a child and basically is going to give everything from that he'd given to her husband as the eldest son to this new child essentially. actually and she's very upset about it and Jefferson writes a letter to her and it's a very heartfelt letter. It it's it's um a lot of times you can tell when a person is writing from the heart versus writing and this is really from the heart and he's trying to explain to her why there's nothing she could do about this essentially and she you know that there's nothing to be done. he has he's going to get he was going to get always going to get married again blah blah blah blah blah but it's just the um the finesse the the the delicacy of dealing with the person you know writing to his daughter and as opposed to the other letters that you read that have the sort of intellectual it's sort of a coldness in them and it's very but this is like really from because and he could really write >> and to see the stylist >> uh in in that moment to try to convey this information to his daughter.

[00:53:35]>> Um, did Jefferson recognize Sally Hemings as black? If so, did he think that she and their children should be separated from whites, including himself?

[00:53:48]>> Um, well, that's a good question. People always ask me, well, what would you ask him? And I if I if he were alive, and one of them I would ask him, are you going to make white men send their children to Africa?

[00:53:59]You know, because what what is that about? I mean, how how are you going to do that? But, uh, did he think of her as black? Yes, he did. I mean, because she was by law. Now, his children by Virginia law were white because if you were 7/8 white, you were considered white in that time period.

[00:54:19]The one drop rule doesn't come into play in in Virginia until the 1920s.

[00:54:25]So, there were so if you were 7/8s, you legally. Now if people knew that you had ancestry that wouldn't mean that they would probably still treat you as a secondass citizen but legally you were supposed to be but she was not she had not crossed that threshold. The children are considered white. Also there is to to the writer of that question um uh the distinguished historian Winthrop Jordan uh who wrote about Jefferson and Hemings early on uh had a a look a usage that I found felicitus he said because you know Sally was his wife's halfsister right so Winthre said probably the commonality between Jefferson and Hemings was her diction and manner of speech that in fact she would have been culturally close to his wife.

[00:55:24]>> Well, that was the interesting thing about the movie Jefferson in Paris that uh I'm sure many of you may have seen.

[00:55:30]Uh it was out for maybe two or three weeks and uh then kind of went away. Um, but the actress who played her uh is engaging in this really sort of like gone with the windesque dialect and so forth. And James Ivory who Ivory and Merchant who did the movie, he did a memoir and he talks about the fact that I was very very critical of the movie because of, you know, because of the way the portrayal of Sally Hemings and he said, you know, we looked at the the the uh WPA slave narratives and that told us how Sally Hemings would have sounded.

[00:56:16]Well, WPA slave narratives. All right.

[00:56:19]1930s, right? Sally Hemings is born in 1773 and um most of the people who were interviewed for those things were children during slavery. And it was a completely different time. And so rather than looking at some of the letters, John Hemings's letters to Jefferson, I mean, he's a phonetic spelling speller, but the structure of his sentences are just normal. I mean, it's not it wouldn't be like Chrissy from Gone with the Wind, whatever. So rather than looking at her brother's letters to try to figure out what she sounded like or a person who raised three children who went off and as to live as white people, what she may have sounded like, they go to the WPA narratives and so forth. So, I I would think that the fact that she's connected to his wife >> was an important part of all of this >> and and probably looked like her, too.

[00:57:22]Um his only, you know, half sister. Um, from one of your other books, do you have any new evidence about what happened to Sally Hemmings and Jefferson's daughter Harriet and her descendants?

[00:57:37]>> No, I do not. I'm supposed to be writing I am writing another volume of the Hemings family story, and I've tried to figure that out. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those DNA database things or people who probably don't know that they're related to Harriet because the two older children, Beverly, a male and Harriet, left Montichello to live as white people and so they changed their name and everything. So there probably people out there walking around who don't even know that they're connected to these folks. But periodically someone shows up saying that they are descendant of Harriet, but we've never been able to confirm that like Anastasia, you know, in Charlottesville, the person who supposed to be the daughter of Thesar, that that turned out not to be right.

[00:58:23]But um um no, we don't know. You know, it it's interesting be >> because um Madison chastises her >> in his memoir. Yes.

[00:58:40]>> He he he says, what's he say? He says Harriet hasn't written to me for a while or something.

[00:58:47]>> Yeah. It's like, you know, she thought it in her interest. When people say someone thought it in their interest, that means they're not happy about what they do. She hadn't he hadn't heard from her in 10 years and she just sort of disappeared. She married a white man and disappeared off and and a white man of means and disappeared into that world.

[00:59:04]And that was the thing about passing because it means that you have to leave your family. And I'm sure that number of the people the fa people who are left don't feel great about that >> because you can't you can't show up because then people realize that you're related and that you're part black. So, >> right.

[00:59:20]>> Okay.

[00:59:22]>> Maybe one more. Given everything we know, do you think Jefferson deserves the reverence he still receives? Or has American culture simply decided the founding myth is more important than the man himself?

[00:59:39]>> Well, I don't think anybody should be hero woripped. I think that that's always a problem. But I do think that he did help start the country. And you can't I don't think we can just overlook that.

[00:59:55]Uh whether you revere people or hero worship I I'm not a hero worshipper type person. I think you have to take people as they actually are with their flaws and the good points as well. We can't you can't for you can't erase these things. You can't erase slavery. You can't erase the good things that took place. And it all has to be taken together because that's that's who we are essentially. So I'm not a hero worshipper of anybody and never been.

[01:00:28]But I also think I don't think that you can pretend that that he didn't do the things that he did. I mean he was a revolutionary. He was a governor. He was an ambassador. He was secretary of state. He was a vice president. He was a president. and he founded a university.

[01:00:46]I mean that's a lot of stuff. Um I mean it's a lot of stuff but do you but you say that but then you also say he enslaved people. So I I don't there has to be some way of a mature way of taking the the life the totality of a person's life into account and deciding how you're going to deal with that. It's like, you know, finding out that your parents or other people are are not perfect, right?

[01:01:16]>> And uh that doesn't mean that you revile them totally, but it doesn't mean that you worship them either, >> right? I had to testify at a trial in Virginia uh about um my family's plantation. And I say my family's plantation because I'm a product of the plantation. And there's a a burial ground on the plantation. And the town was gonna dig up the the the graves and turn it into like an Arby's or something >> a golf r >> and basically I >> out back >> I had to testify to that and I testify about why they shouldn't do that and I took the stand and the judge someone in the court the lawyer for the town said your honor why is this person on the stand you mean you know because obviously I'm not white and I basically had to tell the whole story >> of Jefferson and Hemings >> in my family about how common that was.

[01:02:16]And also I you when I asked you if I was expecting too much from him um I think I knew the answer. Yes, I probably am. But part of it is um as you say that the idea of the republic, right, is a soaring and inspiring idea, you know, and you think how could someone have had that idea, you know, and sort of not gone all the way with it kind of. And that's sort of emotional, >> right? But I I take your meaning and I'll stop that. Thank you all very much.