Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice Gibson. Joint Today is always by staff
Speaker 1: writer Josh Clark, who is very tanned and rested from
Speaker 1: his vacation in Malta. Very rested, very relaxed. I'm feeling
Speaker 1: pretty good. I'm glad to be back to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: Miss Malta terribly, but yeah, I'm pretty I'm pretty happy
Speaker 1: to be here. Well, we missed you, and we really couldn't,
Speaker 1: um hold down the fort people had to go ahead
Speaker 1: and pick vice presidents while you were gone. You know.
Speaker 1: I was a little disappointed to find out. I figured
Speaker 1: they'd wait until I got back. Um, the Clinton's called
Speaker 1: me and they alerted me to what was going on,
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, just go for it. I
Speaker 1: was in the Malta mindset, you know, two hour lunches,
Speaker 1: three hour dinners, just you kids, have at it kind thing,
Speaker 1: and have had it. They did. There's some pretty interesting
Speaker 1: choices today. Um, And as in every good presidential election year,
Speaker 1: there's always a lot of good fodder for scandals, and
Speaker 1: there's more than usual this year. Well, people are really
Speaker 1: anxious for change, I guess, or or more anxious for
Speaker 1: things to stay the same. And everyone's all Twitter. I
Speaker 1: think everybody's um pretty anxious for hope as well as changed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree. I think it's going to be
Speaker 1: pretty interesting the next couple of months. I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to the debates for probably the first time in my
Speaker 1: entire life. What about you. I'm just curious to know
Speaker 1: how Sarah Palin is going to wear her hair up
Speaker 1: or down that I would predict up. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, I've put a significant amount of money on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll have to finish this wager later. You know. I
Speaker 1: was thinking about presidents and there are private lives, and
Speaker 1: how especially in today's modern age and media rampage, they're
Speaker 1: not really entitled to private lives, at least the public
Speaker 1: wouldn't want them to be, you know, no more than
Speaker 1: celebrities get to have their private lives. And even though
Speaker 1: you have very surly Brad and Angelina, you know, threatening
Speaker 1: lawsuits on people who invade their homes. People want to
Speaker 1: know what's going on behind the sort of glossy facade
Speaker 1: of public appearances. Well, yeah, well there's a there's a
Speaker 1: law actually in the US called right to publicity, which um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've heard about the whole fifty
Speaker 1: cent taco bell scandal. Uh, he was able to you know,
Speaker 1: threatening lawsuit, probably when I've been out of the country,
Speaker 1: so I don't know what came of it. Um. But
Speaker 1: because of the right to publicity, he is um his
Speaker 1: image and his name, and that's what is his career.
Speaker 1: Is that same courtesy isn't extended to public figures, elected officials,
Speaker 1: people who throw their hats in the ring. Um. But
Speaker 1: I agree. I think, you know, back in the day,
Speaker 1: private life and public life were too totally separate things.
Speaker 1: I don't think politicians were judged by their private lives
Speaker 1: until we became kind of caught up in this cult
Speaker 1: of celebrity, don't you don't you think modern occurrence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think to a certain extent it is fair
Speaker 1: because when people say things and the public sphere, but
Speaker 1: then their behavior and their personal time betrays that they
Speaker 1: perhaps feel the opposite way. You know, maybe people do
Speaker 1: have a right to know, you know, who's being hypocritical,
Speaker 1: who's being straightforward. But as sharp a lens as we
Speaker 1: place on current political figures, you know, our current president
Speaker 1: or the current presidential candidates are vice presidents. I wonder
Speaker 1: if we apply as critical lens to former presidents. And
Speaker 1: I think that there are some whose administrations certainly merit,
Speaker 1: you know, praise for all that they've accomplished. But to
Speaker 1: look back at some of our founding fathers, they let
Speaker 1: some pretty sordid lives, and one in particular, today, scholars
Speaker 1: you know, tear him apart every day examining him, Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: a real study in contrast. Well, yeah, he's a he's
Speaker 1: a really good example of what you're talking about. He
Speaker 1: was about as accomplished as any American has ever been,
Speaker 1: probably rivaled only by Benjamin Franklin. To tell you the truth. Um,
Speaker 1: he was a mild inventor, he had a couple of inventions,
Speaker 1: plantation owner, obviously, a drafter of the Constitution, he was
Speaker 1: a member of both of the Continental Congresses. Um. And
Speaker 1: he just accomplished so much in his lifetime. But at
Speaker 1: the same time he had this, um, this wildly scandalous
Speaker 1: personal life in a lot of ways. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: think when you put him under a modern lens, uh,
Speaker 1: it is very easy to tear him apart, and you
Speaker 1: kind of have to walk this really precarious tightrope, like
Speaker 1: how do you judge Jefferson by his private life by
Speaker 1: his public life and accomplishments or were a combination of
Speaker 1: the boat And it gets even more complicated when the
Speaker 1: private and public parts intersecked. For instance, we all know
Speaker 1: that he read the Declaration of Independence, but the man
Speaker 1: had nearly two slaves and his private possession, and he
Speaker 1: never could settle the matter of slavery, whether it was
Speaker 1: right or wrong. And I think he hoped, in his
Speaker 1: heart of heart, said eventually I would just phase itself out.
Speaker 1: And that's sort of strange because I don't think it's
Speaker 1: an institution that was ever going to, you know, subtenly
Speaker 1: go away. That is a bit strange. Plus also, um
Speaker 1: he uh, well, he inherited most of his slaves from
Speaker 1: his father in law, John Wales, right um. And ironically,
Speaker 1: the the house slaves, the house servants, um, were thought
Speaker 1: to have been sired by Wales himself with a woman
Speaker 1: named Betty Hemmings. And one of the kids um out
Speaker 1: of that, uh that affair was Sally Hemmings, who, as
Speaker 1: I'm sure you already know, Um, Jefferson had an affair
Speaker 1: and had at least one child um, which again, I mean,
Speaker 1: can you imagine that being on the cover of US
Speaker 1: Weekly or People magazine today. I mean, we're very close
Speaker 1: right now in the two thousand and eight election, but
Speaker 1: you know, not not that close. That's that's pretty scandalous stuff.
Speaker 1: It is. The blow might have been solten by the
Speaker 1: fact that Jefferson was a widower, so it wasn't as
Speaker 1: though he were cheating on a wife with this particular slave.
Speaker 1: But you know, slaves were considered property. And one of
Speaker 1: the very interesting things about Jefferson is that, in his
Speaker 1: advocation of the precepts of liberty and the pursuit of
Speaker 1: happiness and right to live freely and make one's own decisions,
Speaker 1: he did not keep in line with other policies that
Speaker 1: said that slaves couldn't marry. He actually can doone marriages
Speaker 1: between slaves, you know. So one would like to think
Speaker 1: that this founding Father was, you know, fostering you know,
Speaker 1: a tiny shred of happiness and and there otherwise mundane
Speaker 1: and and and hard working lives. But there's something perhaps
Speaker 1: a little bit sinister about the fact that if the
Speaker 1: slaves married and then produced children, their children automatically became
Speaker 1: his property. So one has to wonder was he running
Speaker 1: a slave mill essentially? Was he encouraging marriage only so
Speaker 1: that he could get their offspring and propagate this line
Speaker 1: of slavery at Monticello. You know, I'm always harping on
Speaker 1: cultural relativism, which is, you know, you can only judge
Speaker 1: a culture by its own standards. The same applies to um,
Speaker 1: to the cultures existent in different times. Right. So I mean,
Speaker 1: at the time that Jefferson owned slaves, slavery was, like
Speaker 1: you said, an institution in America. Um. And if you
Speaker 1: judge it by those standards, then Jefferson treated his slaves
Speaker 1: better than the average person. Um. I read uh in
Speaker 1: something you wrote that he preferred to dismiss them from
Speaker 1: their transgressions rather than have them whipped, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: which was pretty much the opposite of what everybody else
Speaker 1: is doing. So, yeah, he treated his slaves better, but ultimately,
Speaker 1: as such a pioneer, a great thinker, a philosopher, Um,
Speaker 1: couldn't he have just set his slaves free? You know? Really? Um?
Speaker 1: Can you can you say the man had slaves, but
Speaker 1: he treated his slaves well, But he still had slaves?
Speaker 1: You know, are we are we using our own cultural bias,
Speaker 1: our own temporal bias against him or is that something
Speaker 1: you know, not owning slaves that that goes against any culture,
Speaker 1: is a is a blemish on any culture, regardless of
Speaker 1: when they existed. I think that's a really hard question
Speaker 1: to answer, and especially for me because I'm an ardent
Speaker 1: admirer of Jeffersons for his political ideologies and some of
Speaker 1: the things that he accomplished. UM in the realm of
Speaker 1: invention and architecture and his finest architectural achievement, Monticello his house.
Speaker 1: UM Monticello means little hill. It was this beautiful home
Speaker 1: and built on top of a flattened mountaintop in Albemarle
Speaker 1: County outside Charlottesville, Virginia. Oh yes, I've been there. It's
Speaker 1: just gorgeous. I could live there, but they won't let me.
Speaker 1: I'm not banned from its Indeed, maybe with my red hair,
Speaker 1: I could pretend I was one of his great great
Speaker 1: great great great grandchildren. There you have it, There you
Speaker 1: have it. The tour guide I had was wearing a
Speaker 1: delightful little lily Pulitzer ensemble. That wouldn't be so bad.
Speaker 1: I could manage that anyway. The point being that his
Speaker 1: greatest architectural achievement will some may say University of Virginia was,
Speaker 1: but that was sort of an academic achievement to actually
Speaker 1: pays homage and as a testament of his treatment of
Speaker 1: his slaves, because he began Monticello's construction back in seventeen sixty.
Speaker 1: That was when he started drafting plans, and then a
Speaker 1: little bit later on he was appointed you as Minister
Speaker 1: of France. So while he was abroad, he essentially relied
Speaker 1: upon his slaves to oversee construction and to actually build
Speaker 1: his magnificent home. And it took nearly forty three years
Speaker 1: to build because he kept designing and redesigning, and so
Speaker 1: his most trusted slaves were put in charge of essentially
Speaker 1: organizing the construction efforts receiving I guess, um, what would
Speaker 1: I call them? I guess contractors from places like Philadelphia
Speaker 1: and other cities where they were specialized workers who were
Speaker 1: skilled and working with things like mahogany and tempered glass.
Speaker 1: The slaves didn't do that sort of labor. They did
Speaker 1: the brick laying and the foundation and made the bricks
Speaker 1: as well. Right they on site from the Red Virginia clay.
Speaker 1: And so Jefferson obviously put faith and his slaves capabilities,
Speaker 1: but still at the end of the day, they were slaves,
Speaker 1: even though some more house slaves they might have had
Speaker 1: it better. Sally Hemming's actually went with him to France
Speaker 1: and she was actually, uh, he'd paid for her education.
Speaker 1: She had probably a better education than than most, um,
Speaker 1: most of the whites in America at the time put together.
Speaker 1: Actually when she was she educated in Paris while she
Speaker 1: was there with him, Yeah, and she was there with
Speaker 1: his daughters, and she was, you know, there to help
Speaker 1: be their chaperone. And so it was essential that she
Speaker 1: being educated and eloquent and well put together woman because
Speaker 1: she was supposed to guide and mentor his daughters. There's
Speaker 1: a picture that I saw in your article I found
Speaker 1: kind of heartening. It was the first ever Hemmings family
Speaker 1: reunion UM in two thousand three at Monticello. Right, and um,
Speaker 1: you've got you know, white people, black people, and you realize, wow,
Speaker 1: they're all related. It really kind of drives home this,
Speaker 1: um the sense that uh, that we are all kind
Speaker 1: of the same. Really, you know, I mean that that uh,
Speaker 1: that that humanity transcends race, and that this photo, this
Speaker 1: this point that was made by this photo traces itself
Speaker 1: back to Jefferson. So it's it's like, even when the
Speaker 1: guy as complex as he is, even when he engages
Speaker 1: in in scandalous behavior whatever, he has this lasting testament
Speaker 1: to humanity and to um, to the greater good, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. It was like, even beyond the grave,
Speaker 1: he's still you know, making points. Yeah, that he sired
Speaker 1: a generation of of mixed blood essentially, and you know
Speaker 1: this was long, long before the Civil rights movement. But
Speaker 1: I wonder, you know, could Thomas Jefferson have conceived that
Speaker 1: on the steps of his home, you know, a group
Speaker 1: of blacks and whites and all these races combined would
Speaker 1: be a testament to one of the founding fathers? I
Speaker 1: would I would think not. I think that Um. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: he probably was either very attracted to Sally Hemmings, who
Speaker 1: was reportedly an extremely attractive woman, or you know, he
Speaker 1: loved her, um, And I think it was probably one
Speaker 1: of those things. That's as simple as that. And I
Speaker 1: can't imagine that he really had that much foresight. I mean,
Speaker 1: who does that shot? Although although if anybody did Jefferson
Speaker 1: probably would have. So we have a lot to thank
Speaker 1: him for for humanizing the office of the president. You know,
Speaker 1: when he was President of the US, he had two
Speaker 1: terms eighteen o one to eighteen o nine, he was
Speaker 1: sort of, I don't know, not rebuffed, but people looked
Speaker 1: at him askew because who would answer the door of
Speaker 1: the then White House essentially um barefoot or in his bathrobe.
Speaker 1: And he paid no heed to formal ceremony. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, there were for formal ceremonies to
Speaker 1: be held, but he really did bring it to a
Speaker 1: more casual level. You know, it was a separation from
Speaker 1: British monarchy, so he didn't see a need for pomp
Speaker 1: and circumstance. And today, you know, again we see similar things,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of ceremonial efforts, um. But and
Speaker 1: we see pictures of the president at his vacation home
Speaker 1: or maybe out hunting or with his family or or dogs. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, you get the impression from looking at these
Speaker 1: pictures from the vacations and these these homes and everything
Speaker 1: that the president is a fairly wealthy person. Um. And
Speaker 1: that's the impression I had at Jefferson too, And I
Speaker 1: have a question for you, actually, if you're ready for it.
Speaker 1: Um that I had heard that Jefferson, himself, a wealthy landowner,
Speaker 1: died penniless and broken in debt. It's true, that's true,
Speaker 1: absolutely fact. He died nearly a hundred seven thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and debts. How How because let me let me, let
Speaker 1: me wrap my mind around this Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 1: They left the White House in debt, but within a
Speaker 1: few years they were worth a hundred and ten million dollars.
Speaker 1: How did Jefferson uh end up dying in debt? He
Speaker 1: throughout his life was a voracious reader, and he didn't
Speaker 1: like just buying his books used off Amazon like I do.
Speaker 1: He wanted first editions, he wanted leather bound copies. He
Speaker 1: had a massive, massive library. He was constantly redecorating, remodeling,
Speaker 1: restructuring his home, and all these things added up. And
Speaker 1: aside from those more mercenary efforts, he was also a
Speaker 1: really big philanthropist, and it was well known that beggars
Speaker 1: would come to the steps of Monticello and wait for handouts.
Speaker 1: He never refused anyone. And he was also a pretty
Speaker 1: big entertainer. He sort of kept track of people's political
Speaker 1: records and voting records. After he'd invite them ever for
Speaker 1: dinner and you know, infuse them with good wine and
Speaker 1: good food and sort of subtly talked them into seeing
Speaker 1: things his way. And these expenses added up, you know, entertaining,
Speaker 1: remodeling and reading, uh, philanthropy. And so when he died,
Speaker 1: not a penny to his name, his daughter Martha was
Speaker 1: forced to sell off Monicello. I don't know how much
Speaker 1: she sold it for. I'll have to look back into that,
Speaker 1: but she sold it an auction, and later the land
Speaker 1: and the slaves, everything auctioned off, and it actually changed
Speaker 1: hands about four times. The house stood before it finally
Speaker 1: ended up under the care of the Thomas Jfferson Foundation.
Speaker 1: Appropriately enough, there you have it, and they're the ones
Speaker 1: responsible for restoring Monticello and making it the tourist destination
Speaker 1: and archives I guess that it is today. That's fantastic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that was a heck of a conversation, Candice. I
Speaker 1: like that, I know. And well, I have one more
Speaker 1: little tidbit for you. It's about how how did Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson break his hand in a romantic tumble? And it's
Speaker 1: actually not as um elicits as I would have you believe.
Speaker 1: He was picking flowers for his sweetheart with him. He
Speaker 1: was walking, and he had to scale a small brick
Speaker 1: wall to pick the flowers, and on his way back
Speaker 1: down he broke his hand. Well, and that this qualifies
Speaker 1: the romantic custle. Little Tidbits. For even more jazy tidbits
Speaker 1: on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, you can read How
Speaker 1: Monticello Works on half depth works dot com. For more
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