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Documentary, Thomas Jefferson - Part 2-Ken Burns American Lives PBS
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00:00:00Jefferson was, I think, the man of this millennium.
00:00:22The story of this millennium is the gradual expansion of freedom
00:00:28and the expanding inclusion of variously excluded groups.
00:00:33He exemplified in his life what a free person ought to look like,
00:00:38that is, someone restless and questing through a long life
00:00:42under the rigorous discipline of freedom.
00:00:45Freedom is not the absence of rigor.
00:00:49It's the absence of restraints imposed by others.
00:00:53But it also, if it's going to be successful,
00:00:55it is going to be lived the way Jefferson lived it,
00:00:58this life of freedom,
00:00:59under severe restraints imposed on yourself.
00:01:03The severe restraints of scholarship and learning
00:01:08and the quest to get better and better,
00:01:12which Jefferson kept up right to the end.
00:01:16We are drawn to Thomas Jefferson because in an age
00:01:22when America's Republican experiment was new, untested,
00:01:27and many people, including George Washington,
00:01:30felt that he didn't have a great chance of success,
00:01:33Thomas Jefferson embodied a spirit of optimism
00:01:37and a belief in the promise of America's future.
00:01:40This, I hope, will be the age of experiments in government,
00:01:58and that their basis will be founded on principles of honesty,
00:02:03not of mere force.
00:02:07If ever the morals of a people
00:02:09could be made the basis of their own government,
00:02:13it is our case.
00:02:15Thomas Jefferson.
00:02:17During the five long years Thomas Jefferson had been in France,
00:02:36a constitution had been framed and ratified,
00:02:39and a new government established in the United States.
00:02:43New York was now the American capital,
00:02:47and Jefferson was summoned there.
00:02:50He had been appointed the very first secretary of state,
00:02:54head of a newly created department
00:02:57that had precisely five employees.
00:03:00George Washington was president,
00:03:03but Jefferson came to believe his new government
00:03:06was headed in the wrong direction,
00:03:09that the spirit of the American Revolution
00:03:12was being betrayed.
00:03:17When I arrived at New York in 1790
00:03:19to take a part in the administration,
00:03:22being fresh from the French Revolution
00:03:25while in its first and pure stage,
00:03:27and consequently somewhat wetted up
00:03:30in my own republican principles,
00:03:32I found a state of things
00:03:34which I could not have supposed possible.
00:03:36I was astonished to find the general prevalence
00:03:39of monarchical sentiments.
00:03:45France deepened his radicalism.
00:03:48He came back from France realizing
00:03:51that this isn't about ideas,
00:03:53this is about the fate of humanity,
00:03:55and that he had to give himself
00:03:57in an absolute commitment
00:03:58to the creation of something like
00:04:00a democratic social structure in the United States.
00:04:03and that prepared him psychically
00:04:07for the long struggle against Hamilton and federalism
00:04:10and what amounts to a counter-revolution
00:04:12that occurred when he returned to this country.
00:04:15Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury,
00:04:20was a hero of the revolution,
00:04:22a favorite of Washington's,
00:04:25and had helped draft and win ratification
00:04:28of the Constitution.
00:04:30He saw his country's future
00:04:32as commercial, urban, industrial.
00:04:36To bring it all about,
00:04:38he championed a strong central government
00:04:40with a strong chief executive.
00:04:43Jefferson envisioned an entirely different country.
00:04:50He hated crowded cities where, he said,
00:04:54the people ate each other.
00:04:56He distrusted mere money-making,
00:04:59loathed centralized government of any kind.
00:05:03The president's powers should be strictly limited, he said.
00:05:08Most power must remain with the states.
00:05:12Hamilton and myself, Jefferson said,
00:05:16were daily pitted in the cabinet like two cocks.
00:05:20And as their conflict continued,
00:05:22each began to gather like-minded supporters.
00:05:26Hamilton's followers called themselves Federalists.
00:05:30Jefferson's became known as Democratic Republicans.
00:05:34It was the beginning of party politics in America.
00:05:39Hamilton launched a newspaper which vilified Jefferson
00:05:44and his allies without letter.
00:05:47And he warned Washington that Jefferson was,
00:05:50in his judgment, dangerous to the union, peace,
00:05:53and happiness of the country.
00:05:56Jefferson responded by helping to start a newspaper of his own,
00:06:00in which Hamilton, his friend John Adams,
00:06:03and even the president were all viciously attacked.
00:06:06For God's sake, he told Madison,
00:06:09take up your pen, select the most striking heresies,
00:06:12and cut Hamilton to pieces in the face of the public.
00:06:16Washington tried desperately to steer a middle course
00:06:21between his two favorite lieutenants.
00:06:25I believe the views of both of you to be pure and well-met,
00:06:30he told Jefferson.
00:06:31I have a great regard for you both,
00:06:34and ardently wish that some line could be marked out
00:06:38by which both of you could walk.
00:06:41No such line was ever marked out.
00:06:48By 1793, Jefferson was convinced
00:06:52he had lost the contest for Washington's mind.
00:06:55Politics, he told a friend, had become everything I hate.
00:07:01He resigned from the cabinet,
00:07:04and went home, he said, for good.
00:07:08Jefferson thinks by this step
00:07:11to get a reputation as a humble, modest, meek man,
00:07:16wholly without ambition or vanity.
00:07:19He may even have deceived himself into this belief.
00:07:23But if the prospect opens, the world will see,
00:07:29and he will feel, that he is as ambitious as Oliver Cromwell.
00:07:36John Adams.
00:07:47The motion of my blood no longer keeps time
00:07:50with the tumult of the world.
00:07:52It leads me to seek for happiness in the lap and love of my family,
00:07:57in the society of my farm and my affairs,
00:08:02in an interest or affection in every bud that opens,
00:08:06in every breath that blows around me.
00:08:09At first, Jefferson gloried in being back on his hilltop.
00:08:16He would not leave it again, he told James Madison,
00:08:20for the empire of the universe.
00:08:23He cancelled his newspaper subscriptions,
00:08:28and threw himself happily into rebuilding Monticello.
00:08:33Though I had been prepared to see an unfinished house,
00:08:37still I could not help being much struck with the uncommon appearance.
00:08:42Mr. Jefferson has pulled down and built up again so often,
00:08:48that nothing is completed.
00:08:51Nor do I think ever will be.
00:08:54Mrs. William Thornton.
00:08:56When Mrs. Thornton came, and rain was coming in from the open roof,
00:09:01and bricks were falling, and there were planks on the floors,
00:09:05and Jefferson was wandering around in his slippers serenely with tea,
00:09:08pretending that he was living in complete order.
00:09:11So here's a man who had a rage for order almost unprecedented in American history,
00:09:17and yet he was willing to live in a state of almost deplorable dilapidation much of the time.
00:09:24Nothing was ever finished for Jefferson.
00:09:26Monticello was a laboratory of continuing architectural design.
00:09:41Jefferson's perpetually incomplete house remained a joyous obsession.
00:10:00Come, he told a friend who hoped to visit,
00:10:03with your ears stuffed full of cotton
00:10:06to fortify them against the noise of hammers, saws, planes, etc.
00:10:11which assail us in every direction.
00:10:18He was a tireless and ingenious tinkerer,
00:10:22devising or adapting apparatus to add to the efficiency and comfort
00:10:27of nearly every aspect of his daily life.
00:10:31A four-sided stand that could accommodate several open books at once.
00:10:36An elaborate and improbable calendar clock that marked off the days of the week with cannonballs.
00:10:47And a machine called a polygraph that made a copy of every letter as he wrote it.
00:10:53Old Master had abundance of books.
00:11:03Sometimes would have twenty of them down on the floor at once.
00:11:06Read first one, then another.
00:11:07I've often wondered how Old Master came to have such a mighty head.
00:11:13Read so many of them books.
00:11:15And when they'd go to him to ask him anything,
00:11:18he'd go right straight to the book and tell you all about it.
00:11:22Isaac.
00:11:23Everything interested Jefferson.
00:11:27He corresponded with scientists on both sides of the Atlantic.
00:11:32Studied medicine, astronomy, and philosophy.
00:11:37He played Mozart, sang Scottish ballads,
00:11:42and supervised the first archaeological excavation in America.
00:11:47And he emphatically said yes to life in all its capacities.
00:11:57In a way that in an era of specialization and intellectual compartmentalization,
00:12:03no one has the self-confidence to do in the late 20th century.
00:12:07In the late 18th century, a man could say,
00:12:15basically I have brought into my compass all of human endeavor.
00:12:21A wonderful sense of serenity and confidence and power he must have had.
00:12:33Monticello is a museum.
00:12:34It's a private residence.
00:12:36It's a receiving room for a famous statesman.
00:12:42But most of all, Monticello is, I think, a kind of metaphor for Jefferson's soul.
00:12:49This is the heart of Jefferson, the man of science.
00:12:55He always considered himself a scientist first, a farmer second,
00:12:59and a statesman only reluctantly and well down the list.
00:13:04For the years, if he was being a ghost who, Carl Briggs would display
00:13:09and has been Hinterachronica, he would find more important firsthand.
00:13:12Take a look and see about people flying around the streets.
00:13:15June 2021
00:13:17μ‘ of Everything
00:13:19I leave to others the sublime delights of riding in the storm,
00:13:38better pleased with the society of neighbors, friends, and fellow laborers of the earth
00:13:43than of spies and sycophants.
00:13:46I have no ambition to govern men.
00:13:51It is a painful and thankless office.
00:13:56In the 18th century, it was required of all political figures to pretend that they didn't
00:14:00want the office.
00:14:02General Washington did it, Adams did it.
00:14:04They all spoke about Cincinnatus and the reluctance of inner republic to hold office.
00:14:09But they, of course, all wanted office very badly, and Jefferson was no different from
00:14:12the others.
00:14:13In fact, in some regards, Jefferson was more ambitious than the others, but more crafty.
00:14:18And so he quite successfully pretended all of his life that he would have been happy
00:14:22to live quietly at Monticello as a farmer scientist.
00:14:24But the emergencies of the times in which he lived had thrust power upon him.
00:14:28In 1796, George Washington refused to run for a third term, and the Federalists named
00:14:39John Adams as their candidate for president.
00:14:44Jefferson was concerned that Adams would betray the promise of the revolution, that he, like
00:14:51Hamilton, wanted to create a European-style aristocracy in America.
00:14:58And Adams had grown suspicious of Jefferson.
00:15:01He considered him a demagogue, irresponsible in his flirtation with revolution, infatuated with
00:15:09democracy.
00:15:10By the fall, Jefferson agreed to stand against his former friend for the presidency.
00:15:21He lost by just three electoral votes.
00:15:25And according to the rules then in place, Jefferson became the vice president.
00:15:31But he soon found himself an outcast.
00:15:34He and Adams were growing further and further apart.
00:15:39Since they differed on virtually everything now, Jefferson was rarely consulted, even in times
00:15:46of crisis.
00:15:48In 1798, French warships seized American vessels trading with England.
00:15:56Frightened by the possibility of invasion, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts.
00:16:04To Jefferson's horror, the new laws claimed for government the power to arrest or deport any
00:16:10alien, and made citizens who criticized the government liable to arrest.
00:16:1924 men were seized, mostly anti-federalist newspaper editors who supported Jefferson's cause.
00:16:2724 men were found guilty of sedition and sent to jail.
00:16:33These and successive acts of the same character, unless arrested on the threshold, may tend to
00:16:41drive these states into revolution and blood.
00:16:45And will furnish new pretexts for those who wish it to be believed, that man cannot be governed,
00:16:52but by a rod of iron.
00:16:59Frustrated and powerless, he retreated to Monticello again, convinced now that the Federalists were
00:17:06enemies of the Constitution, that a fresh revolution might be necessary.
00:17:13Jefferson secretly began to draft legislation to be passed by individual states, asserting
00:17:19their supremacy over Congress.
00:17:24Since the states had created the federal government, he argued, they had the right to challenge any
00:17:29federal law they thought unconstitutional.
00:17:40As the presidential contest of 1800 approached, the Federalist Party was split between supporters
00:17:47of President Adams and Hamilton's hand-picked candidate, Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina.
00:17:55Now Jefferson changed tactics.
00:17:59He turned from orchestrating resistance behind the scenes, and stood again for president.
00:18:06An ambitious but erratic young New York lawyer, named Aaron Burr, ran with him.
00:18:13It was one of the dirtiest elections in American history.
00:18:18The Federalists savaged Jefferson wherever and whenever they could.
00:18:23The election of any man avowing the principles of Mr. Jefferson would destroy religion, introduce
00:18:31immorality, and loosen all the bonds of society.
00:18:34To vote for Jefferson is no less than a rebellion against God.
00:18:40Jefferson gave as good as he got, and paid money himself to a drunken editor named James Callender, who
00:18:55attacked John Adams and spread gossip about Alexander Hamilton's private life.
00:19:02Jefferson's mind, Adams said, had been soured and eaten to a honeycomb with ambition.
00:19:17In early 1801, the Electoral College met in the new capital to pick the next president.
00:19:27When the votes were counted, it was clear that neither of the Federalists, Adams or Pinckney,
00:19:33would ever have enough votes to win.
00:19:37Jefferson now found himself battling for the presidency with his one-time ally, Aaron Burr.
00:19:44Each man had 73 votes.
00:19:48The House of Representatives would have to settle things.
00:19:54Congressional voting began on February the 11th, 1801, and went on for six contentious
00:20:00days and 36 separate ballots.
00:20:06The scene was now ludicrous.
00:20:09Many had sent home for nightcaps and pillows, and wrapped in shawls and greatcoats, lay a
00:20:14way about the floor of the committee rooms, or sat sleeping in their seats.
00:20:20At one and two and half past two, the tellers roused the members from their slumbers, and
00:20:27took the same ballot as before.
00:20:32They were hopelessly deadlocked.
00:20:36When rumors spread that the Federalists might refuse to accept a Jefferson victory, the Republican
00:20:42governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia vowed to send their militia to seize the capital.
00:20:50Many feared the American experiment was failing.
00:20:56One man held the key.
00:20:59He alone could persuade his fellow Federalists to break the deadlock.
00:21:05Alexander Hamilton disliked Jefferson, but he despised Aaron Burr, whom he thought a most
00:21:13unfit and dangerous man.
00:21:16To him, the survival of the new republic was at stake.
00:21:21Finally, at Hamilton's urging, the Federalists gave up.
00:21:32The exhausted legislators elected Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States.
00:21:43The revolution of 1800 was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that
00:21:50of 1776 was in its form.
00:21:55We can no longer say there is nothing new under the sun.
00:22:00For this whole chapter in the history of man is new.
00:22:06The great extent of our republic is new.
00:22:10Its sparse habitation is new.
00:22:14The mighty wave of public opinion which has rolled over it is new.
00:22:21The order and good sense displayed in this recovery from delusion and in the momentous crisis which
00:22:28lately arose bespeak a strength of character in our nation which augurs well for the duration
00:22:34of our republic.
00:22:39And I am much better satisfied now of its stability than I was before it was tried.
00:22:47Just before noon on March 4th, 1801, Thomas Jefferson, a month shy of his 58th birthday, strolled
00:23:06into the Senate chamber, the only part of the brand new Capitol building to have been completed,
00:23:13to take the oath as president.
00:23:19Feelings against Jefferson among the displaced Federalists still ran high.
00:23:25A bitter John Adams had appointed Federal judges sure to oppose everything Jefferson wanted,
00:23:33and then left town at dawn rather than take part in the inauguration of the man who had
00:23:38once been his friend.
00:23:42Jefferson moved into the president's house and declared it big enough for two emperors,
00:23:48one pope, and the Grand Llama in the bargain.
00:23:53He did all he could to end any confusion between presidents and kings.
00:23:59He barred the use of his face on coins, forbade any official celebration of his birthday,
00:24:07threw open the doors of the executive mansion to anyone who wanted to see him.
00:24:12In a few moments after our arrival, a tall, high-boned man came into the room.
00:24:20He was dressed, or rather undressed, in an old brown coat, red waistcoat, old corduroy,
00:24:27with small clothes, much soiled, woolen hose, and slippers without heels.
00:24:32Jefferson acted quickly to undo what he considered the excesses of his predecessor.
00:24:46He pardoned everyone locked up under the Sedition Act, returned monies paid in fines, even wrote letters of apology on behalf of the government.
00:24:57He cut spending, shrank the navy, abolished federal jobs he thought unnecessary, and battled stubbornly with the chief justice of the Supreme Court, his cousin John Marshall, over whose vision of the Constitution would prevail.
00:25:15He came to power in what he called the Second American Revolution, and people wondered whether he would actually recreate the nation on a much more democratic line than his predecessors had been comfortable with.
00:25:33In fact, Jefferson was a very moderate president.
00:25:37He didn't alter the foundations of the Hamiltonian system.
00:25:41He merely attempted to put it on a Republican tack.
00:25:46A noiseless course, not meddling in the affairs of others, is a mark that society is going on in happiness.
00:25:57If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretext of taking care of them, they must be happy.
00:26:09Thomas Jefferson.
00:26:11July 5th, 1803. Washington.
00:26:34Yesterday was a day of joy to our citizens, and of pride to our president.
00:26:41The news of the session of Louisiana only arrived about eight o'clock of the night preceding.
00:26:49This mighty event forms an era in our history, and of itself must render the administration of Jefferson immortal.
00:27:01In 1803, Jefferson bought Louisiana, the vast territory between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from France for $15 million.
00:27:16It was a sum nearly twice the federal budget.
00:27:21Though Congress had not authorized that amount, and his enemies accused him of abusing the Constitution's powers, Jefferson agreed to pay it.
00:27:35It was the greatest land deal in history.
00:27:40The Louisiana Purchase is, in a sense, the making moment of American history.
00:27:45Because by buying Louisiana, Jefferson not only doubled the size of the country with a single stroke of the pen.
00:27:50I mean, it was unprecedented in human history to buy an empire.
00:27:57But by buying this territory, he essentially removed Britain, France, Russia, and Spain from serious contention on this continent.
00:28:09Even before Jefferson bought Louisiana, he had quietly fitted out a government expedition to explore it, headed by two young army officers, his private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark, the brother of a revolutionary hero.
00:28:30He called the expedition the core of discovery.
00:28:36Jefferson loved the notion of discovery.
00:28:41He loved the idea that this continent was a treasure house of the unprecedented, and we were going to describe it and fall in love with it.
00:28:51But behind the facade of the philosoph, inventorying the West, Jefferson was a quite true geopolitician.
00:28:58And he was able to give different messages to different constituents to enable what for him was partly a practical matter of making sure that this continent was going to belong to us.
00:29:10And then secondarily, and more interestingly, his enlightenment program, which was to say, let's go see if the woolly mammoth is still roaming on the Great Plains somewhere.
00:29:21What does the source of the Missouri really look like?
00:29:24What kinds of Indians are those, and what can they teach us about human relations?
00:29:28From the newest section of the nation, Lewis and Clark sent him boxes full of their discoveries.
00:29:38Animal skeletons and buffalo robes.
00:29:42Maps and minerals samples.
00:29:47Jefferson planted Indian corn from the Great Plains on his farm and proudly displayed elk antlers in his front hall at Monticello.
00:29:57However, our present interests may restrain us within our own limits.
00:30:02It is impossible not to look forward to distant times when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits
00:30:11and cover the whole continent with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms and by similar laws.
00:30:22But despite his lifelong interest in native culture, Jefferson believed that white settlement was more important,
00:30:32and encouraged the removal of nearly all the eastern Indians from their homelands to the west.
00:30:39It is well known that the man whom it delighteth the people to honor keeps and for many years has kept as his concubine one of his slaves.
00:30:56Her name is Sally. The name of her eldest son is Tom.
00:31:02His features are said to bear a striking though sable resemblance to those of the president himself.
00:31:09There is not an individual in the neighborhood of Charlottesville who does not believe the story.
00:31:15And not a few who know it.
00:31:18James Callender.
00:31:21On September 1st, 1802, a Federalist sheet called The Recorder published a sensational attack on Jefferson's character.
00:31:31The author was James Callender, the same erratic newspaper man Jefferson had once paid to malign the Federalists,
00:31:40who had now gone over to the enemy's camp.
00:31:44He charged that one of the president's young slaves, Sally Hemings, was also his mistress,
00:31:51and that Jefferson was the father of her children.
00:31:56My grandfather told me about it when I was ten years old.
00:32:01He called me into his living room, and he said,
00:32:05Son, it's time for you to learn about your heritage.
00:32:11And he said, you are a special person, and you're part of a special family.
00:32:17You, through your mother and me and my mother and so on, are a descendant of Thomas Jefferson,
00:32:23the third president of the United States.
00:32:27Sally Hemings remains the notorious mystery of Jefferson's sexual life.
00:32:34We don't know. The evidence is slender.
00:32:38What we know is this, that Jefferson was at Monticello about nine months before Sally Hemings' children were born,
00:32:44that her children were certainly mulattoes, that they had a white father,
00:32:48that Jefferson may have been their father.
00:32:51Her youngest son, Madison Hemings, late in his life, gave a newspaper interview in Ohio
00:32:56saying that his mother, Sally, had told him, Madison Hemings, on her deathbed,
00:33:01that Jefferson was his father and the father of his siblings.
00:33:04I think we must consider who Thomas Jefferson was.
00:33:15The idea that Thomas Jefferson could have had a young mulatto mistress
00:33:23in a house overflowing with young children whom he adored
00:33:29is inconsistent with everything we know about the real Thomas Jefferson.
00:33:34His granddaughter, Ellen, said,
00:33:37there are such things as moral impossibilities.
00:33:42The historians who say all that couldn't have happened,
00:33:46they really didn't know Jefferson as well as they think.
00:33:50I have the benefit of 200 years of consistent, solid oral history.
00:34:01Sally was, without a doubt,
00:34:03Thomas Jefferson's mistress, lover, substitute wife for 38 years.
00:34:12No question about it.
00:34:15Jefferson never specifically responded to Callender's charges.
00:34:22The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies, he said.
00:34:28John Adams said he did not believe the charges,
00:34:33but, he told his wife,
00:34:35they were nonetheless a natural and unavoidable consequence
00:34:39of that foul contagion in the human character, Negro slavery.
00:34:44This has been dragged through the pages of history.
00:34:51It's like a tin can that's been tied to Thomas Jefferson's tail
00:34:54and has rattled through the pages of history.
00:34:59If it were a legal case brought before a dispassionate group of jurors,
00:35:05the evidence would now be such that Jefferson would be found not guilty.
00:35:13It doesn't really matter whether he slept with her or not.
00:35:20He could have.
00:35:22After all, he owned her.
00:35:25She was subject to his exploitation in every conceivable way.
00:35:31It was he who brought her to Paris.
00:35:35It was he who sent her home from Paris.
00:35:38He had complete control of her destiny.
00:35:41And he might have fathered the several children,
00:35:46to which we sometimes give him blame or credit.
00:35:52But, when we see the countryside at Monticello and all over Virginia
00:36:00and South Carolina and North Carolina and other places,
00:36:03littered with mulattas of every conceivable description,
00:36:07red hair, green eyes, freckled faces and all the rest,
00:36:11we know that someone is busy sleeping with their slaves.
00:36:18And I see no reason why Thomas Jefferson should be excused from that.
00:36:26Monticello, April 13, 1804.
00:36:39Our spring is remarkably uncheery.
00:36:41A northwest wind has been blowing three days.
00:36:47Our peach trees blossomed the first day of this month.
00:36:50The poplar began to leaf so as to be sensible at a distance, about the seventh.
00:36:58Asparagus showed itself about five days ago.
00:37:01Perhaps we may have a dish today or tomorrow.
00:37:05But my flower beds are in a total neglect
00:37:08and therefore not a fair measure of the season.
00:37:13My daughter exhibits little change.
00:37:16Her fever is small and constant.
00:37:26When Congress ended its session in the spring of 1804,
00:37:31Jefferson hurried home to Monticello,
00:37:34where Polly lay desperately ill from an abscess in the breast.
00:37:40She died on April 17.
00:37:45His father and mother, his best friend and beloved sister,
00:37:50his wife and all but one of his children were dead.
00:37:55Only his married daughter Martha remained.
00:38:00Others may lose of their abundance, but I of my want have lost even the half of all I had.
00:38:10My evening prospects now hang on the slender thread of a single life.
00:38:15Perhaps I may be destined to see even this last cord of parental affection broken.
00:38:23But whatever is to be our destiny,
00:38:27wisdom as well as duty,
00:38:29dictates that we should acquiesce in the will of him
00:38:32whose it is to give and take away,
00:38:35and be contented in the enjoyment of those who are still permitted to be with us.
00:38:39In the autumn of 1804, still grieving over his daughter's death,
00:38:53Jefferson was overwhelmingly re-elected to a second term as president,
00:38:58winning all but two of the seventeen states.
00:39:02But events overseas, along with his own stubbornness,
00:39:07ensured that his second term would be marked by few successes.
00:39:12Britain and France were at war once again.
00:39:19Both sides preyed on American shipping,
00:39:24impressing American sailors into their navies and seizing valuable cargo.
00:39:29Because he had reduced his own navy to nearly nothing,
00:39:34Jefferson was powerless to retaliate.
00:39:37Instead, he imposed an embargo on the exporting of all American goods.
00:39:44It was a disaster.
00:39:48It did nothing to discourage the British and French from attacking American ships.
00:39:54And it devastated the economy,
00:39:57provoking outrage at Jefferson throughout the country.
00:40:0130,000 seamen lost their jobs.
00:40:05The price of cotton and tobacco plummeted.
00:40:09And smuggling was rampant,
00:40:11as many ignored the new law altogether.
00:40:16The president stuck with the embargo in the face of all the evidence.
00:40:21He was sure that it would keep the country out of war.
00:40:25But when desperate American merchantmen continued to defy him,
00:40:30he ordered them arrested and their ships searched without warrants.
00:40:35Congress, he said, must legalize all means which may be necessary.
00:40:42Instead, Congress ended Jefferson's embargo.
00:40:47His enemies delighted in his troubles,
00:40:51and the Federalist press stepped up their attacks,
00:40:54calling him an imperial conqueror and a despot.
00:41:00Jefferson was a tormented president because, like so many subsequent presidents,
00:41:09he found that foreign policy took far more attention than he wanted.
00:41:14Being a good American, he wanted to look west, not east across the Atlantic.
00:41:19And he was drawn into worrying about the old world and its troubles and tumults and prejudices and superstitions
00:41:25and all the things we were supposed to transcend.
00:41:31By 1808, he was anguished and exhausted,
00:41:35still unwilling to admit that his embargo had been a failure.
00:41:40But as the end of his second term approached,
00:41:44expressions of appreciation poured in from all across the United States.
00:41:49His countrymen hated his embargo, but they did not hate him.
00:41:55He was heavily petitioned to seek a third term and said,
00:42:00no, that one of the great legacies of George Washington
00:42:04is the tradition of walking away from power,
00:42:07of not doing all you can do,
00:42:10of knowing when to stop.
00:42:12It's a sign of political genius to know when to stop, and Jefferson did.
00:42:19Never did a prisoner released from his chains feel such relief
00:42:23as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power.
00:42:27Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science,
00:42:32by rendering them my supreme delight.
00:42:40Jefferson left office on the 4th of March, 1809.
00:42:46Seven days later, he rode out of Washington
00:42:50and lived 17 full years after that
00:42:54and never again came back to Washington.
00:42:59Soundfellow.
00:43:20I am retired to Monticello,
00:43:37where in the bosom of my family and surrounded by my books,
00:43:41I enjoy a repose to which I have long been a stranger.
00:43:45My health is perfect,
00:43:49and my strength considerably reinforced
00:43:51by the activity of the course I pursue.
00:43:55I talk of plows and harrows,
00:43:57off seeding and harvesting with my neighbors,
00:44:00and of politics, too, if they choose,
00:44:03with as little reserve as the rest of my fellow citizens,
00:44:06and feel, at length,
00:44:09the blessing of being free to say and do what I please,
00:44:12without being responsible to any mortal.
00:44:18The phrase pursuit of happiness comes from John Locke.
00:44:21It was a widely used phrase in the 18th century
00:44:24in Enlightenment circles,
00:44:25and it essentially means the pursuit of public happiness,
00:44:28the creation of a republic which enables humans to thrive.
00:44:33But for Jefferson, of course, it means much more than that.
00:44:36A life of friendship, a life of love and family,
00:44:40grandchildren, gardening, good food, good wine,
00:44:45good conversation, correspondence with absent friends,
00:44:49a love of the arts, music, architecture, dance, literature.
00:44:53In a sense, happiness for Jefferson means finding the art of living
00:44:57without intrusions by institutions that might get in the way of that.
00:45:03Jefferson would remain at Monticello for the rest of his long life.
00:45:08He told friends that he could now, at last, take things easy.
00:45:13But he was soon as busy, he admitted, as a bee in a molasses barrel.
00:45:19Mr. Jefferson was always an early riser,
00:45:31arose at daybreak or before.
00:45:34The sun never found him in bed.
00:45:37I used sometimes to think when I went up there very early in the morning
00:45:41that I would find him in bed.
00:45:44But there he would be before me, walking on the terrace.
00:45:48Edmund Bacon.
00:45:51Jefferson said he got up before the sun every day of his adulthood.
00:45:57He bathed his feet in ice water,
00:45:59and then, according to his testimony, went straight to his writing table
00:46:02and worked assiduously for five or six hours answering letters.
00:46:08And Jefferson complained that letter writing was sheer drudgery.
00:46:11He said, compared to this, the life of a cabbage is paradise.
00:46:16No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth,
00:46:21and no culture comparable to that of the garden.
00:46:25But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.
00:46:31Jefferson took gardening as seriously as he took government,
00:46:36and nothing gave him more pleasure.
00:46:40The greatest service which can be rendered any country, he said,
00:46:43is to add a useful plant to its culture.
00:46:48His gardens were his laboratory.
00:46:51He grafted peach wood, sowed cabbage seeds with his daughter and his granddaughters,
00:46:57grew 250 kinds of vegetables, and set out 1,200 fruit trees.
00:47:04.
00:47:13.
00:47:23My dear granddaughter,
00:47:49nothing new has happened in our neighborhood.
00:47:51The houses and the trees stand where they did.
00:47:58The flowers come forth like the bells of the day, have their short reign of beauty and
00:48:04splendor, and retire, like them, to the more interesting office of reproducing their like.
00:48:13The hyacinths and tulips are on the stage.
00:48:17The irises are giving place to the belladonnas, as these will to the tuberoses, and so on.
00:48:25As your mama has done to you, my dear Anne, as you will do to the sisters of little John,
00:48:32as I shall soon and cheerfully do to you all, in wishing you a long, long good night.
00:48:45His daughter Patsy was nearly always at his side, entertaining guests, hosting dinners,
00:48:51and helping to run the household.
00:48:55Dear Mrs. Cosway, my daughter, whom you knew in Paris as a young girl, is now the mother
00:49:03of eleven living children, and the grandmother of about half a dozen others.
00:49:10Among these, I lived like a patriarch of old.
00:49:16My Bible came from him, my Shakespeare, my first writing table, my first handsome writing
00:49:23desk, my first leghorn hat, my first silk dress.
00:49:29What in short of all my treasures did not come from him?
00:49:36There were sometimes twelve grandchildren in residence at Monticello, swarming over the
00:49:42grounds, playing games, and running races under their grandfather's fond direction.
00:49:51About one o'clock, my grandfather rode out, and was absent, perhaps two hours, when he returned
00:49:59to prepare for his dinner, which was about half past three o'clock.
00:50:06Jefferson never turned away a visitor, and he often had a dozen friends and acquaintances
00:50:12dining with him.
00:50:15And only after the tablecloth was removed would there be any wine.
00:50:21And then Jefferson would drink two or three glasses of wine.
00:50:24The glasses were much smaller than they are today.
00:50:27And often he diluted his wine with water.
00:50:33Then he would take some tea a little bit later, gather with his grandchildren in one of the
00:50:38parlors, conduct an amateur seminar in ideas and in reading.
00:50:46When the candles were brought, all was quiet immediately, for he took up his book to read.
00:50:54But we would not speak out of a whisper, lest we should disturb him.
00:50:59And generally we followed his example, and took a book.
00:51:05And I have seen him raise his eyes from his own book, and look round on the little circle
00:51:10of readers, and smile, and make some remark to Mama about it.
00:51:16And then the rest of the evening would be Jefferson's private time when he would retreat to his sanctum
00:51:24sanctorum, what he called his cabinet, and read and study until perhaps 10 pm, and then sleep.
00:51:31If full occupation of mind, heart, and hands is happiness, surely he is happy.
00:51:44One day in 1812, a package postmarked Quincy, Massachusetts, arrived.
00:52:00In it was a book by John Quincy Adams.
00:52:05A note from the author's proud father, Jefferson's old personal friend and political foe, John Adams,
00:52:13followed.
00:52:15They had not spoken or written to one another for a dozen years.
00:52:22Dear sir, a letter from you calls up recollections very dear to my mind.
00:52:29It carries me back to times when, beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow laborers
00:52:36in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right of self-government.
00:52:45Laboring always on the same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us and
00:52:52yet passing harmless under our bark.
00:52:56We knew not how, we rode through the storm with heart and hand and made a happy port.
00:53:03Never mind it, my dear sir, if I write four letters to your one.
00:53:11Yours is worth more than my four.
00:53:14You and I have ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.
00:53:23They are a kind of odd couple who recognize in each other the values that are lacking in
00:53:31themselves and the correspondence that they maintained between 1812 and 1826 is probably the greatest
00:53:41correspondence between public figures in American history.
00:53:46It's a kind of elegiac correspondence in the twilight years of their respective lives.
00:53:51It becomes clear what they have in common is a recognition that each of them is not complete without the other.
00:54:06That Adams is a realist who is sometimes cynical and needs Jefferson's idealism to redeem him from that cynicism.
00:54:15And in the same way, Jefferson can float away into a somewhat unrealistic set of assertions, but he's got Adams there to ground him.
00:54:29In their last days, they were the last survivors of the founding fathers.
00:54:33And suddenly, they've struck up a correspondence, which is one of the most moving in American literature.
00:54:42And they're talking about their invention, the United States.
00:54:46Some things disturb them, some things they're rather proud of.
00:54:51It was to John Adams that Jefferson wrote,
00:54:54I believe in the dreams of the future more than the history of the past.
00:54:58It was to John Adams that Jefferson looked to for a sense of history.
00:55:04It was to John Adams that Jefferson could express his profound appreciation for the spirit of 76, which lived in him until his dying day.
00:55:16I rejoice in the correspondence a mutual friend had told Adams when he heard that he and Jefferson had begun to write one another again.
00:55:25I consider you and him as the North and South Poles of the American Revolution.
00:55:34Some talked, some wrote, and some fought to promote and establish it.
00:55:39But you and Mr. Jefferson thought for us all.
00:55:43And so we have gone on, and so we shall go on, puzzled and prospering beyond example in the history of man.
00:55:59And I do believe we shall continue to grow, to multiply and prosper, until we exhibit an association, powerful, wise, and happy, beyond what has yet been seen by man.
00:56:15I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
00:56:23So good night.
00:56:24I will dream on, always fancying that Mrs. Adams and yourself are by my side, marking our progress.
00:56:32I went to old Davy Isaac's store and got a ball of twine, and Dinsmore found some shingles and made some pegs, and we all went on to the old field together.
00:56:52Mr. Jefferson looked over the ground sometime and then stuck down a peg, then directed me where to carry the line, and I stuck the second.
00:57:02He carried one end of the line, and I the other, in laying off the foundation of the university.
00:57:10Edmund Bacon
00:57:11Our university is the last of my mortal cares, and the last service I can render my country.
00:57:23This institution of my native state, the hobby of my old age, will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind, to explore and to expose every subject susceptible of its contemplation.
00:57:40Mr. Jefferson still had one great task ahead of him.
00:57:48He wanted to build a new university of Virginia.
00:57:53He would list it as one of the three greatest accomplishments of his life.
00:57:58His three achievements were all intellectual ones, the Declaration of Independence, which enabled us to be a free people, the Virginia Statute, which said that the mind is utterly free and uncoercible, and then to make sure that that tradition of free exchange of ideas had perpetuity in American culture, he designed the University of Virginia.
00:58:19It was meant to be a kind of temple of continuing revolution and enlightenment rationality.
00:58:27It was an experimental college.
00:58:28It was the first college in the history of the world that was not a divinity school, that was not founded by a religious organization.
00:58:34Jefferson had some ideas that weren't in the end adopted, but for example, he didn't want degrees to be given.
00:58:40He didn't want matriculation.
00:58:41He simply wanted people to come when they felt like it, to study what they pleased and leave when they felt educated.
00:58:46And it was meant to be what he called an academical village.
00:58:51We can see Jefferson walking on the north terrace with a telescope looking at the campus as it came into being.
00:58:59We can follow Jefferson on a horse riding down to inspect as the pavilions began to be constructed.
00:59:05We can see Jefferson attending the early meetings of the board of visitors.
00:59:13We can see Jefferson and the correspondents hoping to get the best professors from Europe to come to this new school.
00:59:19And beyond all of that is a radical notion.
00:59:22This is public education.
00:59:24It's not a school controlled by a religious group.
00:59:27It's a school in which a generation would be trained for leadership roles.
00:59:31It's a school that would be attended by the natural aristocracy, and that is, people who were just bright,
00:59:39and not by the artificial people who were born into certain families.
00:59:44Instead of one blockish building like the College of William and Mary at Williamsburg,
00:59:49he designed a campus, the first American campus.
00:59:52It consists of what he called the lawn, which had the rotunda at one end and an open prospect of the blue ridge at the other end,
01:00:00and then barracks or dormitories along the way.
01:00:05Jefferson saw this as a hobby in his old age, but I think its purpose was much more serious than that.
01:00:12He was afraid that the revolutionary edge of the founding generation would not be recapitulated in the younger generations.
01:00:23And so he wanted to create a temple to the Enlightenment in his old age, and he did.
01:00:33Come to and see our incipient university, which has advanced with great activity this year.
01:00:41By the end of the next, we shall have elegant accommodations for seven professors,
01:00:47and the year following, the professors themselves.
01:00:51No secondary characters will be received among them,
01:00:56either the ablest which America or Europe can furnish, or none at all.
01:01:01Quincy, Massachusetts, March 2nd, 1816.
01:01:14My dear Mr. Jefferson,
01:01:17would you go back to your cradle and live over again your 70 years?
01:01:23John Adams
01:01:24You ask if I would agree to live my 70, or rather 73, years over again,
01:01:33to which I say, yay.
01:01:35I think with you that it is a good world on the whole,
01:01:39that it has been framed on a principle of benevolence,
01:01:42and more pleasure than pain dealt out to us.
01:01:47There are indeed who might say nay,
01:01:49gloomy and hypochondriac minds despairing of the future.
01:01:53To these I say,
01:01:55how much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.
01:02:01My temperament is sanguine.
01:02:04I steer my bark with hope in the head,
01:02:08leaving fear astern.
01:02:13Throughout his long life,
01:02:15Jefferson had endured more than his share of grief,
01:02:19and his old age saw still more of it.
01:02:25Patsy's husband went bankrupt
01:02:27and grew apart from his family.
01:02:30She moved permanently to Monticello with her children.
01:02:35His favorite grandson was stabbed by his drunken brother-in-law.
01:02:39A granddaughter died.
01:02:43Two of his nephews killed a slave
01:02:46whose only crime had been to break a teacup
01:02:49that had belonged to their mother.
01:02:55Jefferson reflects back upon his time with his wife
01:02:59and the losses that he had sustained
01:03:01in a wonderful letter to John Adams.
01:03:03And he says,
01:03:05I can accept all of the economy of life
01:03:08and all of human activities and human nature
01:03:10except one thing.
01:03:12What is the use of grief?
01:03:15I think that's
01:03:16one of Jefferson's
01:03:18unresolved concerns.
01:03:19He believed in a providential universe.
01:03:23He believed in a deistic God.
01:03:25He believed that life was good.
01:03:27He was a happy man,
01:03:28indeed an optimist.
01:03:29But he could never come to terms with grief.
01:03:33In 1815,
01:03:36Jefferson was forced to sell his entire library
01:03:39of 6,487 books
01:03:42to help pay his bills.
01:03:46The United States government bought them
01:03:48and they became the nucleus
01:03:50of the new Library of Congress.
01:03:55But Jefferson could not resist
01:03:58buying himself another library.
01:04:01I cannot live without books,
01:04:04he told John Adams.
01:04:06His bills continued to mount.
01:04:10He now owed creditors
01:04:12nearly $100,000.
01:04:17Monticello remained unfinished.
01:04:20In about 1815,
01:04:25when Jefferson realized
01:04:27that he was insolvent,
01:04:29he had to choose between
01:04:30living the life of a patrician
01:04:32and doing something about slavery,
01:04:35which he had always said
01:04:36that he wanted to do.
01:04:39And Jefferson,
01:04:41having looked in the face
01:04:42of that dilemma,
01:04:44chose to buy more Bordeaux wine
01:04:46and more books
01:04:47and more scientific instruments
01:04:49and to live
01:04:50in his comfortable way
01:04:52and not to emancipate.
01:04:5836 years earlier,
01:05:01Jefferson had himself
01:05:02tried to have slavery forever barred
01:05:05from any new Western territories.
01:05:08He had lost then
01:05:10by only one vote.
01:05:14Thus we see the fate
01:05:15of millions unborn
01:05:17hanging on the tongue
01:05:18of one man,
01:05:19he'd said then.
01:05:21And heaven was silent
01:05:23in that awful moment.
01:05:27He believed that we invited
01:05:29providential judgment
01:05:31because of our ownership
01:05:32of slaves.
01:05:34And late in life,
01:05:36about the time
01:05:37of the Missouri Compromise,
01:05:38he said it's like having
01:05:39the wolf by the ears.
01:05:41We can neither hang on
01:05:42nor let go,
01:05:44that we're trapped.
01:05:45We're stuck with slavery
01:05:46and slavery is a poison
01:05:48which is getting at the heart
01:05:50of the American experiment.
01:05:54And Jefferson,
01:05:55who recognizes that slavery
01:05:57is a threat
01:05:58to the stability
01:06:00of this new nation,
01:06:02also is prepared
01:06:03to acknowledge
01:06:04the right of slavery
01:06:05to spread into the territories.
01:06:08He says that
01:06:11by spreading
01:06:12it will diffuse.
01:06:15To which John Adams says,
01:06:17my God,
01:06:17if a cancer diffuses,
01:06:19it kills.
01:06:24A good cause
01:06:26is often injured
01:06:28more by ill-timed efforts
01:06:30of its friends
01:06:31than by the arguments
01:06:33of its enemies.
01:06:34The revolution
01:06:37in public opinion
01:06:39which this cause requires
01:06:40is not to be expected
01:06:43in a day
01:06:44or perhaps
01:06:45in an age.
01:06:47But time,
01:06:50which outlives
01:06:51all things,
01:06:53will outlive
01:06:54this evil also.
01:06:57My sentiments
01:06:59have been 40 years
01:07:00before the public.
01:07:01had I repeated
01:07:03them 40 times,
01:07:05they would only
01:07:06have become
01:07:07the more stale
01:07:08and threadbare.
01:07:11Although I shall not live
01:07:12to see them consummated,
01:07:14they will not die with me.
01:07:19But living or dying,
01:07:22they will ever be
01:07:23in my most fervent prayer.
01:07:25Meanwhile,
01:07:34Jefferson's debts
01:07:35continued to pile up.
01:07:38A scheme
01:07:38to raise funds
01:07:39by selling off
01:07:40some of his lands
01:07:41by public lottery
01:07:43failed
01:07:43and humiliated him.
01:07:46He grew
01:07:47increasingly deaf.
01:07:49He fell
01:07:50at age 78
01:07:52and broke
01:07:53his left wrist
01:07:54and arm.
01:07:56Heaven,
01:07:57he told one grandson,
01:07:59seems to be
01:08:00overwhelming us
01:08:01with every form
01:08:02of misfortune.
01:08:06Dear sir,
01:08:08I may rationally hope
01:08:10to be the first
01:08:11to depart.
01:08:13And as you are
01:08:14the youngest
01:08:14and the most energetic
01:08:16in mind and body,
01:08:18you may therefore
01:08:19rationally hope
01:08:20to be the last
01:08:21to take your flight.
01:08:23John Adams.
01:08:26Dear sir,
01:08:29crippled wrists
01:08:30and fingers
01:08:31make writing
01:08:32slow and laborious.
01:08:34But while writing
01:08:35to you,
01:08:36I lose the sense
01:08:37of these things
01:08:38in the recollection
01:08:40of ancient times
01:08:41when youth
01:08:42and health
01:08:42made happiness
01:08:44out of everything.
01:08:47I forget for a while
01:08:48the hoary winter
01:08:49of age
01:08:50when we can think
01:08:51of nothing
01:08:52but how to keep
01:08:53ourselves warm
01:08:54and how to get rid
01:08:56of our heavy hours
01:08:58until the friendly
01:08:58hand of death
01:08:59shall rid us
01:09:01all at once.
01:09:04By the spring
01:09:06of 1826,
01:09:08the flood
01:09:08of letters
01:09:09between Jefferson
01:09:10and Adams
01:09:11had slowed
01:09:12to a trickle.
01:09:14Adams was so ill
01:09:16he could no longer
01:09:17hold a pen
01:09:18and had to dictate
01:09:19his letters.
01:09:22Jefferson was 83
01:09:24and also
01:09:25failing badly.
01:09:28On May 22nd,
01:09:30he made his final
01:09:31notation
01:09:32in his day book.
01:09:33A gallon lamp oil
01:09:37costing $1.25
01:09:40has lighted
01:09:42my chamber
01:09:42highly 25 nights
01:09:43for six hours
01:09:45a night,
01:09:46which is five cents
01:09:47a night
01:09:47for 150 hours.
01:09:53You would think
01:09:54that the death
01:09:55of Jefferson
01:09:55would have been
01:09:56a melancholy event.
01:09:58Slavery had spread
01:09:59into the American West.
01:10:01We were now
01:10:01in a sectional
01:10:02tit-for-tat relationship
01:10:03with the bringing in
01:10:04of new states
01:10:05in the West,
01:10:06which Jefferson said
01:10:07might be the death
01:10:08knell of the nation.
01:10:09He was personally
01:10:10bankrupt and had been
01:10:11for a number of years
01:10:12and barely survived
01:10:13being thrown out
01:10:14of Monticello
01:10:14merely because
01:10:15his creditors
01:10:16didn't have the heart
01:10:16to do it.
01:10:18His family was
01:10:19in some disarray.
01:10:20He knew he wasn't
01:10:20going to be able
01:10:21to emancipate more
01:10:22than a handful
01:10:23of his slaves.
01:10:25In many respects,
01:10:26the younger generation
01:10:27that was rising,
01:10:28represented, for example,
01:10:29by Andrew Jackson,
01:10:30did not fulfill
01:10:31Jefferson's aspirations
01:10:32of an enlightened
01:10:33citizenry,
01:10:34which would be going
01:10:35about mild-mannered
01:10:36government.
01:10:38And the farmers
01:10:39of the West,
01:10:39Jefferson's chosen
01:10:40people of God,
01:10:41were clearing the forests
01:10:43as fast as they could
01:10:44of trees and Indians.
01:10:47And then, finally,
01:10:48Jefferson's agrarian
01:10:49paradise was being
01:10:50changed into a
01:10:51manufacturing industrial
01:10:52nation.
01:10:55So one might expect
01:10:56that Jefferson would die
01:10:57in deep disappointment.
01:10:58Not so.
01:11:01Jefferson remained
01:11:02optimistic until the end.
01:11:08When a letter came
01:11:10asking him to come
01:11:11to Washington
01:11:12to speak on July 4th
01:11:14at the 50th anniversary
01:11:16of his declaration
01:11:17of independence,
01:11:19he gently declined.
01:11:20But he remained proud
01:11:24of what he had written
01:11:26in Philadelphia
01:11:27half a century before.
01:11:31May it be to the world
01:11:32what I believe it will be,
01:11:34to some parts sooner,
01:11:36to others later,
01:11:37but finally to all,
01:11:39the signal of arousing men
01:11:41to burst the chains
01:11:42under which monkish
01:11:43ignorance and superstition
01:11:45had persuaded them
01:11:46to bind themselves
01:11:47themselves and to assume
01:11:49the blessings and security
01:11:51of self-government.
01:11:54All eyes are opened
01:11:56or opening
01:11:57to the rights of man.
01:12:02The general spread
01:12:03of the light of science
01:12:04has already laid open
01:12:06to every view
01:12:07the palpable truth
01:12:08that the mass of mankind
01:12:10has not been born
01:12:12with saddles on their backs,
01:12:13nor a favored few
01:12:16booted and spurred
01:12:17ready to ride them
01:12:18legitimately
01:12:19by the grace of God.
01:12:23These are grounds
01:12:24of hope for others.
01:12:28For ourselves,
01:12:29let the annual return
01:12:31of this day
01:12:32forever refresh
01:12:34our recollection
01:12:35of these rights
01:12:36and an undiminished
01:12:39devotion to them.
01:12:43Jefferson and Adams
01:12:59were both dying
01:13:00as the anniversary
01:13:01approached,
01:13:03but each hoped
01:13:04to live long enough
01:13:06to see it.
01:13:08He has been dying
01:13:10since yesterday morning
01:13:11until 12 o'clock
01:13:14last night
01:13:14we were in fear
01:13:16that he would not live
01:13:17as he desired
01:13:18to see his own
01:13:20glorious fourth.
01:13:23Jefferson fell
01:13:24in and out
01:13:25of consciousness.
01:13:28Shortly before midnight
01:13:29on the third
01:13:30he stirred
01:13:31and called out
01:13:32is this the fourth?
01:13:36But he would
01:13:37come out of it
01:13:38and then in a kind
01:13:38of a whisper
01:13:39he would ask
01:13:39the same question
01:13:40is it the fourth?
01:13:43And he was told
01:13:44no Mr. Jefferson
01:13:45it is not the fourth.
01:13:48And then finally
01:13:49when the question
01:13:50was asked
01:13:50in a whispery voice
01:13:51the answer
01:13:52was affirmative
01:13:53yes Mr. Jefferson
01:13:54it is the fourth.
01:13:57In Quincy, Massachusetts
01:13:59at five in the afternoon
01:14:01on the fourth of July
01:14:03John Adams
01:14:04finally died.
01:14:07His last words were
01:14:08Thomas Jefferson
01:14:10still lives.
01:14:13But Adams
01:14:15was wrong.
01:14:16Jefferson had died
01:14:18a few hours earlier
01:14:19in his alcove bed
01:14:21in his downstairs room
01:14:23at the heart
01:14:25of the great house
01:14:26he had never managed
01:14:28quite to finish.
01:14:29American history
01:14:33is replete
01:14:34with miraculous moments
01:14:36that convince you
01:14:37that there's something
01:14:38really quite special
01:14:39about the American project
01:14:40and one of them
01:14:41is the simultaneous death.
01:14:45Fifty years to the day
01:14:47after the signing
01:14:47of the Declaration
01:14:48of Independence
01:14:49of John Adams
01:14:50and Thomas Jefferson
01:14:51these great rivals
01:14:53the crusty
01:14:55awkward
01:14:55not very lovable
01:14:57frankly
01:14:57New England federalists
01:14:58and the graceful
01:15:00Virginia gentleman
01:15:01striking up
01:15:03this wonderful correspondence
01:15:04that becomes
01:15:05one of the treasures
01:15:06of American letters.
01:15:11Dying simultaneously
01:15:13July 4th
01:15:151826
01:15:16and John Adams
01:15:19last words were
01:15:20Jefferson still survives
01:15:22indeed he does.
01:15:27he remains in the end
01:15:56of mystery
01:15:57and many a historian
01:16:00who's pursued him
01:16:01has discovered
01:16:02that the pursuit
01:16:03of the historical
01:16:04Jefferson
01:16:04is much like
01:16:05the pursuit
01:16:05of the historical
01:16:06Jesus.
01:16:10There's a simple
01:16:11but extraordinarily
01:16:12resonant message
01:16:13that Jefferson
01:16:14somehow symbolizes
01:16:15namely
01:16:16the future
01:16:17is going to be
01:16:18better than the past.
01:16:20I think the thing
01:16:23to remember
01:16:24from Jefferson
01:16:25is the power
01:16:26of the word
01:16:27that ideas matter
01:16:29that words
01:16:31beautifully shaped
01:16:32reshape lives
01:16:34that a person
01:16:35who has certain
01:16:37disadvantages
01:16:38and flaws
01:16:39and even crimes
01:16:40like holding slaves
01:16:42can transcend
01:16:44his imprisonment
01:16:47imprisonment
01:16:48within reality
01:16:48by casting out
01:16:51words that take
01:16:52you into a new reality.
01:16:56Jefferson is
01:16:57the enigma
01:16:57of American history.
01:16:59He's indispensable.
01:17:01It's often said
01:17:02that Washington
01:17:03was the indispensable
01:17:04man
01:17:04but it's Jefferson
01:17:05who's indispensable
01:17:06because he
01:17:07is mysterious
01:17:09idealistic
01:17:10pragmatic
01:17:11misunderstood
01:17:12complicated
01:17:14paradoxical
01:17:15hypocritical
01:17:16he's the stuff
01:17:19of America
01:17:19and that's
01:17:20who we are
01:17:21and that's
01:17:22why Jefferson
01:17:22has to be
01:17:23the center
01:17:23of our national
01:17:24discourse.
01:17:29The legacy
01:17:30of Thomas Jefferson
01:17:31is both
01:17:33a gift
01:17:33and a curse.
01:17:37He's
01:17:38a blessing
01:17:40in one way
01:17:41for he gives
01:17:43us
01:17:43many important
01:17:45things
01:17:46that we can
01:17:46hold up
01:17:47as ideals
01:17:48but
01:17:50he cursed
01:17:53us
01:17:53with a
01:17:55practice
01:17:56of
01:17:57inequality
01:17:58and of
01:18:00slavery
01:18:01and the
01:18:03denial
01:18:03of justice
01:18:04that can
01:18:07scarcely
01:18:07be erased
01:18:08by anything
01:18:09we could
01:18:10think of.
01:18:11after his
01:18:14death
01:18:14Jefferson's
01:18:15family
01:18:16was forced
01:18:16to leave
01:18:17the property
01:18:18his slaves
01:18:19were sold
01:18:20and sent
01:18:20to other
01:18:21plantations
01:18:22his furniture
01:18:23and French
01:18:24wines
01:18:24his scientific
01:18:26instruments
01:18:27and his
01:18:27beloved books
01:18:28auctioned
01:18:30to the
01:18:30highest bidder
01:18:31Monticello
01:18:33itself
01:18:34was neglected
01:18:35for a time
01:18:36then bought
01:18:37by a Jewish
01:18:38family
01:18:39who struggled
01:18:40to preserve
01:18:41it
01:18:41in gratitude
01:18:42for Jefferson's
01:18:43bill
01:18:44establishing
01:18:45religious
01:18:46freedom
01:18:46in the years
01:18:49to come
01:18:49his country
01:18:50lurched
01:18:51inevitably
01:18:52towards civil
01:18:53war
01:18:53each side
01:18:55claiming the
01:18:56master of
01:18:57Monticello
01:18:57as its
01:18:58mentor
01:18:59his words
01:19:01would arm
01:19:02the pro-slavery
01:19:03arguments
01:19:04of secessionists
01:19:05and give
01:19:06comfort
01:19:07to the armies
01:19:08of Jefferson Davis
01:19:09but his words
01:19:12would also
01:19:13inspire
01:19:14Abraham Lincoln
01:19:15a generation
01:19:17of abolitionists
01:19:18and thousands
01:19:20of runaway
01:19:22slaves
01:19:22we should
01:19:31remember
01:19:32Thomas Jefferson
01:19:33as a man
01:19:34who loved
01:19:35his country
01:19:35deeply
01:19:36who believed
01:19:38in the inherent
01:19:39wisdom of the
01:19:40people
01:19:40and the
01:19:40educability
01:19:41of ordinary
01:19:41citizens
01:19:42but I don't
01:19:46think he was
01:19:46convinced
01:19:47that
01:19:48America
01:19:49would be able
01:19:50to advance
01:19:51without fits
01:19:53and seizures
01:19:54and numerous
01:19:55torments
01:19:56he didn't know
01:19:58how to hold
01:19:59the union
01:19:59together
01:20:00but in the end
01:20:03I'm sure
01:20:04he felt
01:20:04that he had
01:20:05done his best
01:20:05that he had
01:20:07lived up
01:20:08to his
01:20:08own dreams
01:20:09that
01:20:11the decency
01:20:12which he felt
01:20:13in his dealings
01:20:14with other human
01:20:14beings
01:20:15would be a legacy
01:20:18that Americans
01:20:19could hold
01:20:20I don't know
01:20:23if Thomas Jefferson
01:20:26is a figure
01:20:26that's easy
01:20:28to hold
01:20:29to one's heart
01:20:29as it were
01:20:30in the way
01:20:32some people
01:20:32have managed
01:20:33to hold
01:20:34Franklin Roosevelt
01:20:35or Abraham Lincoln
01:20:37but I think
01:20:40that
01:20:40you can
01:20:42with all his
01:20:43faults
01:20:43and contradictions
01:20:44that you can
01:20:45hold him
01:20:45very close
01:20:46to your mind
01:20:48and if there
01:20:51is such a thing
01:20:52as an American
01:20:54spirit
01:20:54then he is it
01:20:58Jefferson
01:21:01essentially tells us
01:21:03that we cannot
01:21:05be complacent
01:21:06until two conditions
01:21:07are met
01:21:07every human being
01:21:12born on this
01:21:12continent
01:21:13has a right
01:21:13to equal
01:21:14indeed identical
01:21:15treatment
01:21:16in the machine
01:21:16of the law
01:21:17irrespective
01:21:19of race
01:21:19gender
01:21:20creed
01:21:21or class
01:21:22of origin
01:21:22and secondly
01:21:25everyone born
01:21:27on this continent
01:21:27has a right
01:21:28to roughly
01:21:29equal opportunity
01:21:30at modest
01:21:31prosperity
01:21:32and until those
01:21:37conditions are met
01:21:38we cannot rest
01:21:40when those
01:21:42conditions are met
01:21:43we may say
01:21:44as Jefferson
01:21:45said he would
01:21:45nunc dimittis
01:21:48now you may
01:21:49dismiss me
01:21:50my work is done
01:21:52I will not
01:21:57believe
01:21:57our labors
01:21:58are lost
01:21:59I shall not
01:22:01die without
01:22:02a hope
01:22:02that light
01:22:03and liberty
01:22:03are on
01:22:04steady advance
01:22:06and even
01:22:08should the cloud
01:22:09of barbarism
01:22:10and despotism
01:22:11again obscure
01:22:13the science
01:22:13and liberties
01:22:14of Europe
01:22:15this country
01:22:17remains
01:22:18to preserve
01:22:20and restore
01:22:21light
01:22:22and liberty
01:22:23to them
01:22:23in short
01:22:26the flames
01:22:27kindled
01:22:28on the 4th
01:22:29of July
01:22:291776
01:22:31have spread
01:22:33over too
01:22:33much
01:22:34of the globe
01:22:34to be
01:22:35extinguished
01:22:36by the feeble
01:22:37engines
01:22:38of despotism
01:22:39Thomas Jefferson
01:22:41and that
01:22:44and that
01:22:45is
01:22:46the
01:22:47thing
01:22:49is
01:22:53to be
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