Thomas Jefferson’s Character and Legacy with Andrew Burstein | BRI Scholar Talks

0:05 For this episode of Scholar Talks,

0:07 we will be discussing an intimate history of Thomas Jefferson.

0:12 Our guest, Andrew Burstein, is the Charles Phillips

0:14 Manship Professor of History at LSU.

0:18 He’s the author of 13 books, including The Passions of Andrew Jackson,

0:24 The Problem of Democracy, The Presidents

0:27 Adams Confronts the Cult of Personality.

0:31 And his new book.

0:32 Being Thomas Jefferson An Intimate History,

0:36 which is the subject of today’s conversation.

0:38 I am Tony Williams, senior fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute,

0:41 and I want to welcome you to another episode of

0:44 Scholar Talks in our America 250 series.

0:48 And Andy, thank you very much for joining me.

0:51 I’ve been looking forward to the conversation.

0:52 Tony.

0:53 I love your book, and I really want to hear the backstory on this one.

0:58 It’s a really unique approach.

1:00 And so let’s start how you came up with the idea for the book,

1:04 and maybe explain your approach to our viewers about,

1:08 what an intimate history of Thomas Jefferson looks like.

1:12 Sure.

1:14 I am a student

1:15 of 18th century American English,

1:18 and that’s if this is the consummation of a career

1:22 studying the life of the mind and early America.

1:27 Language was an intoxicating field of study.

1:32 The nuances, metaphor, rhetoric, going back to the ancients.

1:37 And so in trying to situate,

1:44 Thomas Jefferson in his world

1:47 and, and construct the boundaries of that world

1:53 to, to get inside his head,

1:56 requires an understanding

1:58 of the whole enlightenment picture.

2:02 We think of the enlightenment as a,

2:08 moral philosophy,

2:10 the language of rights, political rights.

2:13 And it is that.

2:15 But there’s so much more going on that involves the human condition.

2:20 And that’s how I get to intimate history.

2:24 There’s the medical enlightenment, which was just as important.

2:27 It was the language of passions, the language of appetites.

2:32 And it was as

2:34 critical as the moral philosophy.

2:38 So you can’t just look at the Age of Enlightenment

2:42 and the American Enlightenment, which gave birth to this country,

2:47 the language that we still hold dear,

2:50 particularly the Declaration of Independence.

2:53 We need to tease out emotional states in order to understand

2:58 how the people of the time received

3:02 those words of Jefferson that live on.

3:05 He had a seductive way with words.

3:10 That is the reason why

3:13 we still relate to Jefferson

3:16 or can quote Jefferson,

3:20 and we can’t quote George Washington

3:22 or even John Adams Hamilton Madison.

3:26 They didn’t have that power, that emotive power

3:30 that Jefferson did.

3:33 I’ll give you an example, a couple of examples.

3:37 Let those who flatter fear.

3:39 It is not an American art that he wrote that

3:45 boldly.

3:46 In a Summary View of the Rights of British America in 1774,

3:50 which preceded the declaration by two years.

3:54 His ability, the cadence, the rhythm,

3:59 as well as the emotional content.

4:02 He’s going up against the king

4:05 in a most particular way.

4:08 Let those who flatter fear it is not an American art.

4:12 He’s injecting the colonial pride

4:16 in a way that the standard documents of the time did not.

4:21 This is poetic, and this is the way

4:25 his language transcended

4:30 what we normally feel is the kind

4:33 of stilted language of the 18th century.

4:38 And that’s, that’s my entry

4:40 into or the window into the study

4:43 of what made Thomas Jefferson.

4:48 Write.

4:49 Yeah I really love that.

4:50 And so, talking about making

4:54 Thomas Jefferson, let’s go ahead and dig into those factors.

4:57 So what were some of those.

4:59 What are some of the most formative experiences?

5:02 There were a lot in, in in making Jefferson who he was.

5:08 Well, the College of William and Mary,

5:10 which he attended at the age of 17 and remained

5:13 in Williamsburg,

5:16 other than vacations, he did return home to the

5:20 what was then the western frontier of Virginia, Albemarle County,

5:25 where he began to build

5:27 at the top of the mountain,

5:29 the National Historic Site of Monticello in the end of the 1760s.

5:34 But from the beginning of the 1760s until he,

5:39 excuse me, became a lawyer,

5:42 where he studied with George with

5:45 who was also signed over the Declaration

5:47 of Independence, and Jefferson’s surrogate father.

5:50 In a lot of ways,

5:53 he lived with, with

5:55 and he held him up as

6:02 a moral exemplar.

6:04 And I say this as a way of of previewing

6:07 the very controversial

6:10 or hypocritical Jefferson on race and slavery,

6:15 because this was an early and ardent abolitionist,

6:19 and Jefferson had him as, as I say, a moral exemplar, mentor,

6:26 so that he never lost

6:28 the ability to see

6:31 that he was

6:33 in a difficult position as one who inherited

6:37 slaves from his father, from his father in law.

6:42 His father died when he was 14, and his father,

6:47 best, who was a member of the House of Burgesses,

6:52 really was very much the reason why Jefferson

6:56 was a member of the House of Burgesses from his mid 20s.

7:01 They were part of the elite class,

7:03 the political ruling class, the planter class.

7:08 But Jefferson

7:11 learned a lot on his own from his teachers.

7:14 And he before before George with there was,

7:19 he lived with other boys,

7:23 at the home several miles from where he grew up.

7:27 Of James Maury, who also figures, importantly,

7:31 because Jefferson’s interest in geography, in mathematics,

7:37 in history and language began there

7:41 when he’s a young teen, his father, the most we know

7:46 is that his father gave him a gun at the age of 14, age of ten.

7:50 And to go out in the mountains and, and hunt and, you know, go out on your own.

7:54 So there was an independent spirit that his father,

8:00 bequeathed to him.

8:02 But they were very infrequently in the same place at the same time. So

8:09 I don’t think Peter Jefferson’s influence on his son,

8:14 there was pride there.

8:18 Peter Jefferson combined

8:20 with a professor from William and Mary.

8:25 Named fry.

8:27 The Jefferson frying map of Virginia

8:31 and its borders

8:34 required that Peter Jefferson

8:37 travel for months at a time in the wilderness,

8:42 and he didn’t have

8:46 that much to do with his son’s education.

8:49 He owned about

8:51 40 or so books, which at that time was a considerable library,

8:55 especially out on the what was then the frontier.

8:59 And maybe that influenced

9:03 Jefferson’s lifelong, bibliophile,

9:08 practices.

9:10 But on the other hand, his mother

9:14 survived,

9:17 well into his adult years.

9:21 Yet at the cemetery that Jefferson constructed at Monticello,

9:30 he places his mother, and he’s a micromanager.

9:33 He’s controlling of his environment.

9:35 That’s one of his chief traits

9:38 as a human being.

9:42 Calculating,

9:44 he placed his mother’s grave

9:47 at some distance from the intimate,

9:52 square where he’s in the center,

9:55 surrounded by his wife, his best friend,

9:59 his two daughters.

10:02 He’s got this all planned out,

10:04 and he buries his mother

10:08 a good

10:10 ten, 15ft away, next to

10:16 distant cousins with whom

10:17 neither of them had much of a relationship.

10:21 I don’t want to over analyze,

10:25 you know, I’m not placing Jefferson

10:27 on the couch in this book.

10:30 But I do analyze his language for clues.

10:33 What he wrote, what he didn’t write, what he said, what he didn’t say.

10:38 And so, in terms of his,

10:42 foundational period,

10:46 he’s a self-taught architect

10:48 who decides to build on the top of a mountain,

10:51 which is not the most practical thing to do.

10:53 It’s his dream world.

10:55 It’s his fantasy world.

10:57 And he wants to bring people to the mountain

11:03 to engage with him

11:06 in a kind of, amusement.

11:10 That is both intellectual and nature loving.

11:16 You know, he to to hold up his telescope and say,

11:20 look out there at the Blue Mountains, and he’ll see a sort of phenomenon

11:26 like looming, he calls it,

11:28 where a distant mountain is.

11:32 It seems to have,

11:36 unusual characteristics,

11:39 like it fades in and out and

11:43 he’s an amateur scientist.

11:45 He’s an amateur linguist.

11:47 He he teaches himself languages.

11:50 And he does all this in this library

11:53 that by 1776 was already 1500

11:57 volumes

11:58 and contain the medical enlightenment.

12:01 So, as I mentioned that earlier, the ancients

12:05 modern poetry, literature,

12:09 just runs the gamut.

12:12 Right?

12:12 So so you mentioned George with and and the more, you know, more philosophy,

12:17 the moral sense.

12:18 So so my next question leads right into there.

12:20 So, so hand is, the Scottish Enlightenment in particular,

12:25 other forces of the enlightenment shaped Jefferson’s

12:28 drafting of the Declaration of Independence.

12:31 Yes, I, I do examine the role

12:36 of the Scottish philosophers

12:39 like Adam Smith,

12:42 and the theory of moral Sentiments is,

12:45 is a marvelous book that that still,

12:49 reads,

12:50 with,

12:52 with an emotive power.

12:54 And it’s about fellow feeling and Jefferson’s mantra, as it were.

12:59 And he injects this into his first inaugural address is,

13:04 harmony and affection in the in his in his,

13:09 it’s friendship, personal friendship and moral community as well.

13:13 And this is part of the declaration as much as it’s part

13:17 of his first inaugural address when he becomes president in 1801.

13:22 Harmony and affection.

13:23 He he writes it in that first inaugural without voyage,

13:27 without which liberty and even life itself are

13:31 but dreary things again,

13:34 finding a way of injecting,

13:37 understanding who his audience is or his reader, and injecting a kind of

13:42 not just cadence, but an emotional sensibility

13:49 in the Declaration of Independence,

13:54 he goes to the flip side of the moral philosophers

14:00 in creating

14:03 a legal statement.

14:06 Aside from the beautiful language.

14:11 It’s a divorce decree.

14:13 It’s a divorce instrument.

14:15 And the King George the Third is unfeeling,

14:20 in Jefferson’s words, he’s abusive.

14:24 And if you read the declaration

14:26 from this perspective, you see that

14:29 he feminized the colonies in a way

14:34 that the king has abandoned his colonies like a

14:38 like a bad husband would abandon his family

14:42 so that the emotionally abandoned

14:44 colonies acquiesce again using Jefferson’s word,

14:48 acquiesce to the self saving separation from Britain,

14:54 he writes,

14:57 after the whole list of

15:00 I think that were 27,

15:03 paragraphs that that list all of the reasons

15:06 why America is forced into this situation to save itself

15:11 from abuse.

15:15 And it was the last stab

15:18 to agonizing affection.

15:21 And I, I write in the book that his,

15:27 context for

15:30 for Washington’s ear

15:32 when he and Hamilton are up against one another in the 1790s,

15:36 when Jefferson’s secretary of state and Hamilton’s secretary of the Treasury

15:41 and Washington is listening to both of his

15:45 top advisors in the cabinet,

15:49 Hamilton accuses Jefferson here.

15:51 He he,

15:54 combines Jefferson and Madison.

15:55 He says they have

15:58 a womanish resentment of England,

16:03 and a

16:03 womanish attachment to France during the French Revolution.

16:07 Well when

16:10 when Washington sides with Hamilton,

16:15 Jefferson has to justify this.

16:18 So he he does a medical diagnosis of

16:23 Washington and thinks that Washington is senile.

16:28 He’s in his early 60s,

16:31 which from my perspective is it’s not.

16:33 Yeah.

16:36 But this is this is his way of justifying

16:40 his whole grammar of politics.

16:45 I write that Hamilton

16:48 and Jefferson were both Machiavellian,

16:51 and that Hamilton proved himself the better Machiavellian,

16:55 and Jefferson typical of him.

17:01 Runs from when he sees his.

17:04 He no longer can influence Washington.

17:07 He runs.

17:08 He runs back to Monticello, where he’s healthy,

17:11 where he’s in control of the environment, where he’s the boss

17:16 and can write letters justifying his positions.

17:23 He also wants the men

17:26 in political life

17:29 who have been reading the newspapers, who see what’s going on.

17:33 He writes to Madison, the motion of my blood

17:36 no longer keeps time with the tumult of the world.

17:40 He puts it in this again, this

17:44 this kind of neurological,

17:49 you know, medicalized language

17:52 to to state that he can only feel,

17:58 once he’s removed from political context

18:01 from, from the,

18:04 the disruptive world of there.

18:08 It was Philadelphia.

18:10 Only then can

18:12 he restore that proper balance.

18:16 And then he went about trying

18:18 to find biographers,

18:21 who would utilize his vast collection of every scrap he ever wrote on.

18:27 He, he kept and filed in, in a very orderly manner.

18:32 And, in the end,

18:37 he relied on his loving family, his grandchildren,

18:42 to see to it that, Jefferson’s,

18:48 message to posterity was preserved and,

18:51 that he won the war

18:56 against Hamilton

18:58 and against John Marshall, who was

19:01 multi-volume biography of,

19:04 Washington using Washington’s papers which were

19:09 given to him alone.

19:12 Jefferson bested his enemies in the end, but he didn’t live to see it.

19:17 He went to his grave fearing,

19:20 a return to monotheism

19:22 or a moneyed aristocracy that would rule America,

19:26 and that his democratic dream would be in unfulfilled.

19:32 All right.

19:33 So excellent.

19:36 On, on and with, give a little peek at the 1790s.

19:40 So maybe step back a little bit, in, in the 1780s.

19:45 So, so what did Jefferson’s years in Paris as a diplomat

19:49 reveal about him?

19:53 I find that these years, 1784 to 1789,

19:58 were the most consequential

20:01 in Jefferson’s evolution as a human being.

20:04 Because he became a cosmopolitan,

20:10 he was welcomed into the salon culture.

20:14 He saw intelligent women

20:19 who were not the domestic goddesses that he preferred.

20:24 Women should be in his provincial Virginia,

20:29 mindset.

20:33 He inherited, in a way,

20:34 not just Benjamin Franklin’s position as minister to France.

20:39 Essentially Ambassador

20:42 at a critical time when France, the liberal nobility,

20:45 was in charge of the direction

20:50 of the state,

20:52 and Jefferson was there long enough to see the fall

20:56 of the Bastille and the rise of men like Lafayette.

20:59 And another, more key, the marquee to Condorcet,

21:05 who figures heavily in my book as an influence

21:08 on Jefferson.

21:12 Of all the people in France that I think

21:15 had the most impact on him, and that introduced him

21:19 to the progressive values that he could have embodied, and then

21:25 come down to us today as a true progressive.

21:31 He understood

21:34 from Condorcet

21:37 how this could be possible in their world,

21:42 but he didn’t have the guts to go up against

21:47 traditionalists

21:49 and became

21:51 socially more conservative as he aged.

21:54 Whereas Condor Say, who lost his life

21:58 during the terror in 1794

22:02 but left the world with books

22:07 that Jefferson read thoroughly.

22:09 In fact, Condor essays work.

22:14 Reflections on Negro Slavery.

22:16 That’s an English translation Jefferson proposed to translate

22:20 and did the first chapter.

22:23 He wanted others

22:26 to pick up the torch.

22:30 He was,

22:31 as I described him, a timid abolitionist.

22:34 But there was a very strong

22:38 anti-slavery,

22:41 movement.

22:42 And among thinkers in France

22:45 and England at that time,

22:48 and Jefferson had to defend Virginia,

22:53 but at the same time recognized

22:57 the superior logic.

23:00 He just didn’t think that it could

23:03 be effectively,

23:08 you know, read that, you know,

23:10 put into, put put into legislation in America.

23:14 So he had thought that Condor essays,

23:19 Reflections on Negro Slavery.

23:23 Would have an impact, just as I mean.

23:27 And he would certainly mention George with as an example of someone who could help,

23:32 carry those ideas into

23:36 the political circles

23:38 that that they traveled in the political elite of Virginia.

23:43 There was another man in England,

23:46 Richard Price, who

23:49 is, we would say liberal progressive.

23:54 And he, too, was in close contact

23:56 with Jefferson and his anti-slavery

24:01 pieces.

24:02 He was afraid, he thought

24:04 that the Virginians were, most

24:08 favorably

24:10 bent on doing away with slavery. So.

24:17 And Condorcet,

24:18 by the way, was also an ardent feminist.

24:22 I mean, this is even before Mary Wollstonecraft,

24:25 in 1792, vindication of the Rights of Women.

24:28 He was way ahead of his time.

24:31 And so

24:31 Jefferson and he were very close for those years.

24:34 Jefferson was in Paris.

24:38 I think

24:41 that.

24:43 Jefferson didn’t have

24:47 there was something I mean, he was he was a mild

24:50 mannered individual.

24:53 He didn’t confront or argue face to face.

24:59 He like to work through other people.

25:01 He liked in politics.

25:03 Throughout his,

25:06 adult career, but especially in his presidency.

25:09 And he worked through younger the rising generation of politicos

25:15 whom he could influence and keep my name out of the papers.

25:19 But that’s the way he practiced

25:24 that sort of political Machiavellianism.

25:29 So I say France was was critical.

25:32 It was critical because he saw a way of being bold,

25:38 as bold as he was in 1776 when he wanted to,

25:46 have the Declaration of Independence.

25:50 Attacked the king

25:52 for the persistence of slavery in America.

25:55 Or the at least the slave trade.

25:57 The Atlantic slave trade.

26:01 So that wasn’t

26:03 in the final version, of course,

26:05 because the southern states protested.

26:08 And this was about

26:11 harmony or not just a military alliance in the revolution, but

26:15 but harmonizing, speaking with one voice.

26:19 But Jefferson gave up on that. And.

26:25 To the end of his days,

26:26 he and Lafayette exchanged letters back and forth, back and forth.

26:31 Remember, Lafayette would say,

26:33 you know, we talked about this in 88, 89.

26:37 And, you know, you you have such an influence.

26:40 You could still do something to end slavery.

26:44 So on this level,

26:48 I think Jefferson.

26:54 He becomes, a dissatisfying figure.

26:57 He’s someone who gives us such beautiful language.

27:03 And yet doesn’t live up to

27:05 what he knows is morally just,

27:10 I have sworn on the altar of God.

27:13 It might,

27:15 eternal hostility, hug

27:17 every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

27:20 Right.

27:21 So I think covered, this the 1790s party war and so forth.

27:26 So maybe jumping a little bit ahead.

27:29 So, so why is a man of Jefferson sort of a common man,

27:34 virtuous yeoman farmer, Republican ideology?

27:39 Here’s a really energetic president as, as you describe it.

27:43 So so how does that come about that seeming contradiction?

27:47 Yeah.

27:50 Part of it is that he is a micromanager.

27:54 He is a man for whom control

27:57 is central to his being.

28:01 And. He’s

28:05 also a man who, in spite of his common man rhetoric,

28:10 is keenly aware

28:12 of class privilege, of his own class privilege.

28:15 He does believe

28:18 in meritocracy, in

28:21 the ability of ordinary Americans,

28:24 and he works toward that.

28:28 He’s he’s willing to democratize for the sake of education.

28:34 I mean, his his retirement project was the University of Virginia,

28:39 but the common Man Association,

28:43 I mean, Jefferson does consciously wish to be

28:48 not just a celebrity, but a America’s

28:51 first man of the people

28:54 that he should appear, at least in print,

28:58 as, someone who

29:01 who warmed up to the common man.

29:04 But that’s really a later association in American history.

29:09 It, a projection of Jefferson

29:13 more than the aristocrat that he

29:16 that he actually was.

29:20 So as a legislator.

29:25 From early on, from his 20s,

29:28 he was.

29:32 Easygoing,

29:34 desirous of contributing to,

29:40 the result to

29:41 to legislation that would do good things, like the rights of conscience,

29:46 the Virginia statute for Religious freedom.

29:52 He had his pet issues.

29:57 As president.

30:01 He easily

30:02 justified his actions or rationalized his actions

30:06 when it came to, for example, the Louisiana Purchase.

30:10 Not consulting Congress.

30:14 But consulting Madison, his secretary of state,

30:17 recognizing that he should have consulted

30:22 Congress, but fearing.

30:26 Napoleon’s,

30:29 fitness

30:31 that he would change his mind.

30:33 And it took three months, a month and a half each way for any communications

30:39 to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

30:43 So here.

30:46 That’s that’s

30:47 a good example of Jefferson asserting executive control.

30:52 But it’s also an example, an understandable example

30:56 of his nationalism, of his faith in

31:03 America’s expansion.

31:07 So as to remove the European powers

31:10 from the entire North American continent.

31:14 It wasn’t just his dream,

31:16 but he did what he could to further it along.

31:22 And the Louisiana Purchase obviously doubling the

31:25 the length and breadth of the continent up to the Rocky Mountains,

31:28 which then were not even known.

31:32 And sending out Lewis and Clark,

31:34 these kinds of things.

31:38 I would say

31:39 I have said that that Jefferson really introduces

31:42 the idea of American exceptionalism into the vocabulary.

31:46 He didn’t call it that, but effectively,

31:49 his nationalism.

31:53 His belief

31:54 that America had this bright

31:56 future, that it would avoid the pitfalls,

32:00 the urban squalor of London or the parts of Paris.

32:05 He thought that this agrarian republic,

32:09 without,

32:12 European competition

32:14 was America’s future and, that his purpose

32:20 was to,

32:22 see that, that he helped move it along.

32:28 I would say

32:30 that he considered himself the savior of the American Republic,

32:34 that he wanted to go down in history

32:37 accepting even the

32:39 Washington went to his grave, despising Jefferson,

32:43 that Washington was to be given the crown.

32:49 Well, perhaps the monarchical metaphor is inappropriate here,

32:53 but give Washington the responsibility

32:57 and the plaudits for having secured

33:01 America’s victory in the revolution,

33:04 but that the Republic itself

33:07 owed its very existence

33:11 and its character to Jefferson.

33:15 So that tells you something about his ambition.

33:18 It’s a national ambition for the country,

33:22 but it’s the country in his image.

33:24 And when in retirement he refers to his election

33:28 as the revolution of 1800.

33:33 That tells you a lot

33:34 about his sense of self-importance

33:38 and his basic impulse to control the narrative

33:42 of how American history is told to future generations.

33:48 Right? Right.

33:49 Yeah. Really fascinating.

33:50 So, so a big question,

33:53 Jefferson and slavery, right?

33:56 It’s a big topic.

33:57 But what is really the essential takeaway,

34:00 if you can can narrow it, focus.

34:04 Well. Yeah, there are so many,

34:07 great, great books on on this subject.

34:12 What I, what I’ve added here

34:15 in this book is. Yes.

34:18 Jefferson began as a staunch critic as I said earlier,

34:22 of the Atlantic slave trade, but he was unable to confront

34:28 the the his friends, the,

34:32 the political elite, the members of the southern planter class

34:37 he always had as justification for

34:41 for his involved lifelong involvement in slavery.

34:45 He used the justification of the debts he incurred

34:50 on inheriting the debts of his,

34:55 imprudent Improvident

34:58 father in law, John Wales, who died in 1773, I believe just a year

35:05 after Jefferson, married his daughter

35:09 and he was in

35:13 debt to British bankers,

35:15 and the interest kept rising.

35:19 And, Jefferson, you know, spent

35:21 his presidential salary on entertainment.

35:25 He wasn’t exactly a good money manager.

35:29 As important as balancing the budget was,

35:33 for him as president in his personal life.

35:36 He was like so many of the others of his ilk

35:40 who felt that they needed,

35:45 this this unfree labor,

35:48 in order to bail themselves out.

35:52 It’s really the saddest story that,

35:59 they knew

36:01 slavery would had to have to come to an end,

36:05 but they weren’t prepared

36:08 to make the personal sacrifices.

36:11 And and Washington, who didn’t owe money,

36:15 who was one, one of the wealthiest landowners.

36:19 Washington

36:21 had arguably even greater impact

36:25 on the American populace.

36:30 And he did not,

36:32 as president for eight years, lift a finger

36:35 or bring up the subject of slavery

36:39 and abolition.

36:42 So and even after, you know, he’s sometimes forgiven

36:47 because when in Washington’s final will

36:52 he. Emancipated the slaves

36:57 at Mount Vernon, but only after

37:00 his widow died.

37:03 She. Martha Washington died a few years later.

37:08 One of the individuals

37:09 that he owned they owned was Martha Jefferson,

37:13 Martha Washington’s half sister, who was enslaved on the plantation.

37:18 So to single out Jefferson is wrong

37:23 because he’s part of,

37:27 a society that

37:32 I mean, we should be we should be critical of of

37:36 so many of these

37:39 Southerners who.

37:44 Who were smart enough

37:46 and practical enough

37:49 to find ways to introduce legislation for a

37:54 compensated,

37:56 emancipation.

37:57 You know, the that that the, the, their human property,

38:01 they wouldn’t it wouldn’t just be a loss that, you know, but of course,

38:05 Jefferson and again, this is his scientific racism believed

38:11 that the only way black, black and white could,

38:16 enjoy their natural rights

38:20 was for the to

38:24 races to be separated

38:27 geographically separated and that,

38:32 and Madison too was a

38:36 a colonization ist

38:38 that that the blacks should be emancipated and then re colonize back to Africa

38:44 from West Africa, from whence they were kidnaped.

38:51 Jefferson didn’t believe

38:54 that African-Americans were

38:58 inherently,

39:01 intellectually culturally

39:05 equal to whites, and that this was part of the reason

39:08 why they weren’t welcomed into white society.

39:12 And he never changed.

39:13 He never

39:15 he was presented with evidence

39:18 to the contrary.

39:22 But he refused

39:24 to admit new evidence into his thinking.

39:29 In notes on Virginia,

39:33 published in the mid 1780s, he

39:37 famously,

39:40 attacked.

39:44 Phillis Wheatley, the revolutionary poet,

39:47 saying oh yes well

39:49 you know, her poetry reveals

39:52 religiosity, but not,

39:54 you know, but she’s she’s a copyist or, Benjamin Banneker,

39:59 whom he, he wrote to say about

40:03 saying,

40:05 maybe you’re right.

40:08 I’ve found a black mathematician.

40:12 And I’ve appointed him

40:14 to, the, the project of the building

40:17 the federal city and,

40:23 this maybe

40:24 I can reevaluate how I, how I feel now, you were right about,

40:30 the intellectual abilities.

40:33 Regardless of, of race of all people.

40:39 And that’s the conversation.

40:40 But he didn’t really mean it because a few years later he’s writing to,

40:46 a political ally.

40:51 And he says to him, you know,

40:54 Banneker,

40:56 I’m sure he had help from a white man.

41:00 So there’s that cold bloodedness in Jefferson

41:03 when it comes to his,

41:08 racial science pseudoscience.

41:13 That is, again, a major disappointment.

41:18 All right, so, final question.

41:23 Jefferson, a man of complexity, a man of contradictions, a man, perhaps,

41:28 I think as as you write in the book, a man of mystery,

41:31 who is the Jefferson in a nutshell?

41:34 You want to leave readers with?

41:38 Well,

41:40 he’s a sensitive human being.

41:44 He’s an extremely talented,

41:48 multifaceted man.

41:53 He rationalizes everyone, rationalizes.

41:56 No one goes through life without lying about one thing or another.

42:02 But you find in this book

42:04 that he resists being found wrong.

42:12 He has an unusual need to control his

42:17 physical

42:19 and psychological environment.

42:23 And to justify his vision for the future of America.

42:28 That harmony, affection

42:31 that he frequently invokes,

42:36 is his legacy.

42:37 But so is his persecution

42:41 of his vice president, Aaron Burr.

42:44 So is the vindictiveness

42:47 he showed toward Federalists.

42:54 Saying on

42:55 the one hand that, you know, the moderate Federalists could,

42:59 be forgiven their erring ways.

43:03 And we can all work together.

43:08 But only this is parenthetical.

43:11 Only, if they become

43:15 Jeffersonian Republicans.

43:19 So he fought against those who painted him as weak and cowardly.

43:28 And it didn’t matter if they had dogs.

43:29 Patrick Henry is a good example.

43:31 All tongue without head or heart.

43:33 You know, he he didn’t want the charismatic Patrick

43:37 Henry to be remembered as an important member

43:40 of the founding generation, but to see him as,

43:46 money hungry.

43:47 And he goes,

43:50 he, he does all he can to minimize

43:55 the importance of those whom he didn’t like

44:01 or to find them wanting in some way.

44:05 And as much as he fantasizes

44:10 an America of harmony and affection.

44:14 Where

44:16 we would never become so industrialized,

44:22 as to surrender the

44:26 the basic decency that’s exhibited

44:28 by the farming community,

44:35 So he, in a way,

44:38 is fantasizing from his view,

44:42 his telescopic view from Monticello,

44:45 an America that doesn’t grow old and America that.

44:49 And he says, you know, it would take

44:51 a thousand generations before the country is fully populated.

44:55 He does have this

44:59 giant imagination

45:01 that seeps into his political principles.

45:06 Which, again, is why it’s so

45:11 fascinating

45:13 to forensically examine

45:18 what he writes,

45:20 who he’s writing to, and why he’s writing the way he does.

45:24 He saved so many letters that in draft form.

45:30 So you can just see his cross outs and insertions

45:35 and exactly how his mind

45:38 worked moment by moment,

45:41 to make sure that when he sent off a letter to someone

45:45 that was important to him, either personally or politically, he knew

45:51 he knew exactly how he wanted to frame it or phrase it.

45:55 With that music musicality,

45:58 that emotional potency.

46:02 You know, I can’t think.

46:04 I mean, this is why I’ve written multiple books about

46:07 Jefferson and his times, and,

46:11 how he’s remembered.

46:13 Because in this vast

46:16 corpus, this vast body of literature that he left us,

46:20 he shows a multifaceted person

46:24 with very positive and very negative attributes.

46:29 And it’s the job of the modern historian

46:32 or the modern reader

46:35 to understand before we judge.

46:40 And that process is ongoing.

46:42 And that’s what

46:45 this study of history is and should be about

46:49 always learning.

46:52 Well put

46:53 on that note, Andrew Burstein, I want to

46:56 thank you very much for joining us to discuss your latest book.

46:59 It’s Magnificent, Thomas Jefferson, an intimate History As We Celebrate America.

47:04 250 great.

47:07 Thank you. Thanks.

47:10 And thank you all for joining us on this episode of Scholar Talks.

47:13 Please check out the other interviews in our America

47:17 250 series on our channel and press subscribe.