Behind the Bastards - Part Four: Thomas Jefferson: King of Hypocrites

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

Robert and Prop conclude the story of Thomas Jefferson by talking about the time he built a smarthome powered by child slavery.Robert and Prop conclude the story of Thomas Jefferson by talking about the time he built a smart home powered by child slavery.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cool Zone Media. So, Prop, you listened to the Boston Slide Cop episode. Jamie's new show. Yes, mainly because I just feel like Boston City people are the most on-brand people. The Boston people are the most Boston ever. And it was a joy to hear Jamie bring back her accent. Yeah.

I miss that. I'm like, I need you to have more. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she does a nice imitation of a Boston accent. I just really think a lot of I just really want a techno remix of the end of the sidecar video where he's like, oh, fuck. I don't know, Robert, could you do it better? Yeah, you teach us how to do it.

Why? Oh, I'm slidin'. That's what that was. It's like East Boston, you know, I think this guy was more from- I'm slidin', that's what you said. Some other part of town. Yeah. I'm slidin'. Yeah, classic Boston line. That's what he would say.

Oh, fuck. I'm getting better at it, I'm getting better at it. Yeah, you are. Anyway. I'm very proud of that show. So 16th minute of fame. Yeah, that's a great show. That's a great show, man.

That's a cold open about 16th minute of fame. And you know, 16th minute of fame is made by our friend, Jamie Loftus. And when we start part four, we're gonna talk about Thomas Jefferson's friend, Dabney Carr, who died. Anyway. Jefferson's friend, Dabney Carr, who died anyway.

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So we've talked about Dabney a couple of times here, prop, and he's his childhood best friend. They go to school together. They live at school together. Then Dabney dies at like 30, you know, tragically young. And as little kids, they had, they'd spent a lot of time hanging out in, you know, the vast property, all these thousands of acres his dad owns. Thomas's favorite part is this place called Monticello, this place he calls Monticello, which is like this little mountain.

And as a child, he and Dabney made a promise that the first one of them to die would bury the other under a specific oak tree atop Monticello. Jefferson followed up on this promise by having the people he owned dig it, cause he's not gonna dig a grave for his dead friend. And then he took notes like a serial killer about it. Weirdo.

But the mountain Monticello, where his friend chooses to be buried, gets its name from Jefferson, who took the Italian word for small mountain. Now I've always heard that Monticello was a mountain, and that's what people always say about it. But before I sat down to write these episodes, I hadn't actually looked up the height of the fucker.

And as soon as I did, it's 800 feet tall prop. That doesn't seem like a mountain to me. That's a hill, right? That's a hill, yeah. That's a fucking hill. And like, I don't know. It's one of those things, there's not actually a universally agreed upon definition

of a mountain, right? And this is petty. We're talking about a man who does some terrible things, but it annoys me. Yeah, the size of a mountain is kind of a mountain, right? And this is, this is petty. We're talking about a man who does some terrible things, but it annoys me. Yeah, it's kind of, yeah, the size of a mountain is kind of a vibe thing, but like, but I feel like, but you know a mountain when you see it, bro.

You know a mountain when you see it. Yeah. Some places like in, I think in the UK, I think it's a thousand feet, it has to be. So it's not a mountain if we're going by like British standards, right? But obviously- I see you take this very seriously.

I do, I'm livid, Sophie. I've never been angry. Well, I have been angrier, but I still find it frustrating. Because it's just like, okay, if it were anyone else, if it was just like a, I would be like, aw, I get it, bro.

Yeah, nah, this your mountain. It would be fun. Sure, sure, you got a mountain. Yeah, go off king, you know what I'm saying? I'd be on your side, but, yeah, nah, that's your mountain. Like, it would be fun. Like, I'd be like, go off king, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'd be on your side, but like, this fool, like, nah fam, that ain't no damn mountain. That is a hill. If this mountain versus hill issue is so important

to you, Robert, and it makes you so livid, I just want you to know, I would die on that hill for you. Thank you, thank you. Yes. So. Thank you. Well done. I looked into it a little further, by which I mean I read an article on adventure.com, Thank you. Yes. So. Thank you. Well done. I looked into it a little further,

by which I mean I read an article on adventure.com, but spelled without the E in the middle of adventure, which points out that both the Oxford English Dictionary and the American English Merriam-Webster Dictionary define the mountain as a landmass that projects conspicuously above the surrounding area. So they do literally say it's a vibe thing, right? Yeah, it's a vibe, yeah.

Like, does it look like a thing, right? Yeah, it's a vibe, yeah. Does it look like a mountain to you? Yeah, totally. The USGS, the United States Geological Survey, used to have a minimum height of 1,000 feet for a mountain, but they don't do that anymore. I'm sure Big Mountain got to them, you know? Yeah, totally.

All that mountain money coming to the fore. Anyway, Thomas Jefferson, at least, got mountain vibes from Monticello because that's what he always called it, even though it's a hill. Jefferson inherited the property at age 21. It had been owned by his father, but he had loved the land since boyhood.

So basically, he starts building in 1768. I think that's just when he's finally in a financial situation, where he feels like he can afford to do that. And I say he starts building, he has the people that he owns built. He does not do any of that. Yeah, that's what you mean. He does sometimes hire people too.

Got it. He has laborers come in to do parts of it, obviously. One of the interesting things is a lot, people are fascinated with Monticello. It's like a, it's a whole deal. And one of the things people will point out is that he designs the whole thing himself. He's not a professional architect, but he becomes one. He has no training, but he drafts blueprints for Monticello. And normally when people are self-proclaimed architects, it's a bad thing.

He actually seems to have been pretty good at this. And he becomes. He does. He designs seems to have been pretty good at this. And he like, but comes, he does like, he designs a bunch of professional buildings later in life. Because I started the series by noting that he was kind of the ancient Roman equivalent of a weeb. Like he's obsessed with ancient Rome the way that like some people are obsessed with Japan over in the US today.

So it's based a lot on like ancient Greek and Roman sort of classic designs. And he, you know, this is like, at least in the things that he expresses through his writing, Monticello was like the center of his being. He wrote about the property, I am happy nowhere else and in no other society and all my wishes end where I hope my days will end at Monticello. Now the reason for his happiness, that's always portrayed romantically.

He was just so in love with this land and this beautiful house that he built. I think what's actually happening here is a little more sinister because- Not that he's just like, I really love this hill. I really love this hill, I really like my living room. No, the real world constantly falls short of Jefferson's beliefs, right?

Those beliefs are kind of incoherent, but he is like a dreamer. He expresses these kind of like constant revolutionary fantasies that never quite come true, right? The French Revolution, we can argue if it's better or not, but like it doesn't doesn't work out the way everyone hoped it would when it started, right? Exactly. Yeah. And he has this obsession with like Cato's idea of the idyllic free farmer as the backbone of a mighty Republic.

And also all these weird beliefs about these independent Saxon explorers who'd founded the colonies and like, none of that's real. And he wants to kind of make these dreams that he has from the things that he's read. He wants to like build, he's kind of the same thing a lot of cult leaders want, right?

Like, I just want to go out into the woods and build my own society, a perfect utopia, right? Now, in modern America, you can do that and people do, but you have to be a cult leader, right? You have to get a bunch of people to like follow you. Otherwise you're not going to be able to build your utopia.

Thomas just owns people. Like that's what he's doing here though. Right, he is, this really is very much like a cult leader motivation, but just using slaves. Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way. Yeah, like a place that you could pretend it's like, you know, and it becomes like you saying that now, like becomes such a part of the

mythos of the South, even like the, you know, like the lost cause thing, you know what I mean? That we did where it's just like, you want this like whistling Dixie, you know, lazy afternoon sip and seat tea, like kind of lifestyle where we can just hang out and talk about the new scuttle bucket. It's just a perfect like world on our Sunday tea on the porch while we're trying not to catch the vapors. You know, it's like, you just want that.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And that is, that's what's happening here. Jefferson starts, you know, has construction started in 1768. He moves there for the first time in 1770 because their old home, Shadwell had burned down. They lived at first in an outbuilding until the main house was finished enough to allow

occupation. Jefferson occupied the house there with his wife Martha for about 10 years before she passes on and he takes a break to become French for a while. The architecture that he witnessed in Paris inspired further changes to the property when he returned in 1789. And as we noted, he pays for that by using the people that he owns as collateral. His goal when he comes back is to kind of retire

from public life and live in Monticello. That only lasts like three or four years. Like he's never actually good at, you know, retiring and giving up public life. But when he gets home from France, he's like, I'm so tired of the weariness of the world. I just want to retreat to- Yeah, and having to lie all the damn time.

Yeah, having to bullshit all these French guys. Yeah, it's exhausting. Yeah, and then what a lie to someone else. Yeah, totally. So part of what's going on here with Monticello is he has built for himself, or he's had built for himself, a home that includes, he's almost made a smart house, right? It is filled with ultra modern amenities

and a lot of things that you couldn't actually have in a house until the age of like automation and like machines and electricity, using like human beings to actually fulfill that role. And I was unaware about this. People always talk about like how, what an architectural marvel it is, but like the idea that he has built

a slavery powered smart house was not expressed to me. Wow. That's a phrase. That's what it is. I wouldn't read you- Yeah, I mean, you're right. Yeah. I'm gonna read you a quote

from the Smithsonian Magazine article by Henry Wynseck. The mansion sits atop a long tunnel through which slaves unseen hurried back and forth carrying platters of food, fresh tableware, ice, beer, wine, and linens, while above them twenty or thirty or forty guests sat listening to Jefferson's dinner table conversation. At one end of the tunnel lay the ice house, at the other the kitchen, a hive of ceaseless activity where the enslaved cooks and their helpers produced one course after another. During dinner, Jefferson would open a panel in the side of the fireplace, insert an empty

wine bottle, and seconds later pull out a full bottle. We can imagine he would delay explaining how this magic took place until an astonished guest put the question to him. The panel concealed a narrow dumbwaiter that descended into the basement. When Jefferson put an empty bottle in the compartment, a slave waiting in the basement pulled the dumbwaiter down, removed the empty, inserted a fresh bottle, and sent it up to the master in a matter of seconds. Similarly, platters of hot food

magically appeared on a revolving door fitted with shelves and the used plates disappeared from sight on the same contrivance. Guests could not see or hear any of the activity or the leaks between the visible world and the invisible that magically produced Jefferson's abundance. He made a Disneyland. He made a Disneyland, yeah, he's got, yeah.

That's crazy, like, it's Disneyland. Yeah. Yeah, it's a Disneyland and it's all powered by slavery. And I didn't, like, I knew that his life, you know, relied heavily on slavery. I didn't realize, like, realize he built a magical house. He figured out how to hide them. Yeah, you don't even see the people serve

because that's uncomfortable, right? It's really awkward to have to look at slavery. Yeah, especially as you're discussing the tenants and the nuances of liberty. Right, right. So it's like, we can't just, it's like all out in the open about it. Yeah, you've just got your magical wine box

that keeps being filled with fresh bottles. Oh, yes, built in Disneyland. Yeah, kinda, yeah. And in learning this, it kind of brought Jefferson into clarity for me. You know, there's this, how can he write so well about the concept of liberty while still owning people, right?

Why did he ultimately fail? He used, it seems like he used to, when he was younger, have some convictions about abolition, and then he failed, like why? And it's, I think part of it at least is because using the people he owned, let him mimic aspects of what we would call a first world lifestyle with 18th century technology.

Right? It's kind of rad. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of rad to stick a wine bottle into a wall and then a new one comes out. Yeah. I think that honestly, that makes him more comprehensible because we do all see, we all know that like

shit that's really convenient, you know? Like have like Amazon Prime or whatever, right? Great being able to get a thing the next day and you know why you're able to, right? We all know how evil it is. We all know how evil it is. Right? Access to all of these like wonderful luxury items

like comes through a lot of like, not just environmental waste that's, you know, we are going to pay for one day, but like a lot of human suffering. And we're all pretty, yeah. I totally love this. And I think this is a big takeaway because it's like, again, the answer,

motivations of stuff, again, my organizing premise is history is just us back then. So the answer is actually as simple and as obvious as it's not a deep mystery. It's no, this made my life easier. Yeah. And I know it's wrong, but God damn it. I really, I really could use a new pencil holder.

So it needs to come right now. I can't wait two days. It has to come right now. Yeah. I understand that this is the great evil of my era, but I'm not walking down to the wine cellar. Right? At all. Yeah.

That makes it so petty, but also so comprehensible. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Monticello has been a famous property for generations and its innovative design gets sort of folded in with longstanding myths about Jefferson's genius. A classic example would be this quote from John F. Kennedy during a dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners at the White House.

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. And you'll, you run into that quote a lot. Cause it's, it's that like Aaron Sorkin era, like American mythos, like our great, like these men were really like Titanic minds. And it's weird both because like, yeah, I don't know.

I don't see as much evidence for genius as you do. Like, was he a really good writer? Yeah, absolutely. But like, I don't know, genius. I don't even know if I'd call him a genius writer, right? Like, but more to the point, that's also, that's a shitty thing for JFK to say to a bunch of Nobel Prize winners, because the 1962 Nobel Prize winners

list included John Steinbeck, who was a better writer than Jefferson. Oh, didn't know that. It included Linus Pauling, who had attempted to end the nuclear arms race and like done, made significant progress in doing that. It included Francis Crick, James Watkins, and Maurice Wilkins, who put out a paper

describing the helical structure of DNA for the first time. So I actually think that crew is a lot more impressive than the guy Powered by enslaved people. Yeah, definitely like a like it's like you say that line And then you stop and look at the room like when Thomas Jefferson died a lot dined alone. Mm-hmm Yeah, yeah, get it cuz he has smartest guy ever Get it. Yeah, you guys just figured out DNA He figured out how to get wine bottles up to his house without looking at people.

Listen, he figured out how to hide evil. That's what he did. Talk that. Man. So as it happens, obviously, the whole machine that was Monticello was powered entirely by the work of child slaves in particular.

And by powered, I mean, that's what funded his lifestyle in a very specific way. Like that's generally true in that, like that was just a thing across later, but like specifically young boys are what pay for Jefferson's lifestyle. You get hints of this in more casual popular coverage

of Monticello. One write-up I found on history.com notes, at a time when most brick was still imported from England, Jefferson chose to mold and bake his own bricks with clay found on the property. Monticello's grounds provided most of the lumber, stone and limestone, and even the nails used to construct the buildings were manufactured on site. Now that kind of makes it sound like Jefferson is like a shop local pioneer.

He's an off-grid king, right? Like he's built this, wow, they even made their own nails. That is leaving, that description, the way they talk about the nails leaves out something important, which is that Thomas Jefferson is horribly in debt. And because he is not going to work what you and I would consider a job,

he needs a way to cover his bills with labor performed on the property. Now, Jefferson's image is as like a farmer, right? Because he's obsessed and he writes a lot like Cato did about this Yale man farmer, right? So you might expect him to have made his living by having slaves work his farm and grow crops, which is what I had always assumed, right?

He didn't try to do this, but he's a terrible farmer. Like he's dog shit at the, his job is the business side always assumed, right? He didn't try to do this, but he's a terrible farmer. Like he's dog shit at the, his job is the business side of this, right? And he's bad at it. The business of farming. Yeah. Oh, so he out here saying like, I've made millions of dollars on my online store

and I'll teach you how to do it. Right, yes. Where's your store at? Yeah. I've never seen your store. Yeah. And if you're making millions of dollars on the store, why you teaching classes?

Yeah. He is the old timey equivalent of that guy sitting in his like garage next to a Lamborghini and a bookshelf being like, I read a book every day. Yeah. Do you? Yelling at you on YouTube to send him money so he can tell you how to do drop shipping

or whatever the fuck. Yeah, basically. Now, so, you know, he does try to make it as a farmer in the business of farming. The first crop he really tries is tobacco. Now the problem with tobacco is that it's dog shit for the soil, right? If you just are growing a little bit

because you want to smoke, you can do okay as long as you like really know what you're doing and like, you know, you understand how how to regenerate the soil and stuff. But tobacco farming on an industrial level, which is what he and everyone else is trying to do because they wanna make money. And this is the same thing, Washington does the same thing, a lot of people do, right?

The climate is actually changing in Virginia during this period. So tobacco becomes something that gets done elsewhere. And a lot of them move over to wheat, but the other problem that Jefferson has is that Monticello is a hill or whatever, but it's like an alpine terrain, right? And the soil is bad in that kind of a place.

You get a hint of this in like, they made their own bricks for Monticello out of like local clay. Well, if there's a lot of clay in the ground, it's probably not great for industrial agriculture, right? You kind of want soil more than clay. Yeah, you can't grow out of clay, guys. Yeah, it's not very good to do, right? Now Monticello is, he probably, he could have,

if this was like, you know, somebody who was just trying to live, you know, off grid, or I mean, there was no grid back then, everybody lived off grid, but if there's somebody who was just trying to live off grid, I mean, there was no grid back then, everybody lived off grid, but there's somebody who was just trying to like live in an independent farm and like make all of their own food. You could do that because they had enough land there,

but Jefferson needs a business that's going to get him out of debt, right? So he gets very excited at first with wheat because wheat is the crop, wheat is in a lot of ways what revitalizes slavery as a profitable industry, right? Because it requires a lot, for one thing, it's not nearly as bad for the soil. So you can do it a lot more. You could at least have the option of kind of doing it indefinitely without the soil failing if you know what you're doing. It requires a lot less human labor than tobacco.

So you can grow more wheat with less people, or as Jefferson sees it, you can free up a chunk of the workforce that you own and have them do other things that make you money, right? While still selling wheat and making money off of that. Wheat is also, it requires, there's a more like regimented process to grow and harvest and wheat, which encourages more on the job training and kind of a more stratified system

for like slavery in these communities that you've got. And Jefferson wanted Monticello to function as a community, as like an independent little society, which means he needed blacksmiths to forge and repair tools. He needed people to spin thread and make clothing. There was a tinsmithing operation on the property. There was a cooperage making barrels. And what we see here, I think it's not worthless to like tie this to that common

kind of rich white person dream of having your own intentional off-grid community in the mountains. Only like, again, he's not, it's not like a cult, right? Because they don't have the choice to be there, yeah. And you also didn't do any of this stuff. But it is like this, no, no, you're just telling people to do it, right? Now, the closer you work to the family, like physically,

the closer you are to the house on the top of the hill, the higher your place in the slave hierarchy is, right? Some of the people who are like working in the house or who are doing stuff like being a blacksmith would even receive gratuities as Jefferson called it. That's what he wrote it out down as, which is basically small amounts of money as like an incentive for them to work, right? Jefferson took a system for human bondage for agricultural profit and he modernized it into a semi-industrial society.

Still based around slavery, but also much more complex than just kind of these like big farms that had existed previously. And the anchor of profit for Monticello was his nail factory. That's what makes the money at Monticello, is he has like an industrial factory for producing huge quantities

of nails. Wow. And the best people to make nails are little kids. Oh no. Part of why he lands on nails as a profit engine is that in the tobacco era, large numbers of children were needed in the field because their tiny hands could kill the bugs, right?

Like there was a lot of child labor that was necessary for tobacco. It's really not for wheat. But obviously Jefferson isn't gonna let all this perfectly good child labor go to waste. He's not excited about this because like, oh good, these children get to have a childhood. He's excited because, oh, I can work them

in something more profitable, you know? Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. In his farm book, Jefferson writes this to describe the standard plan for the children born into his property. Quote, children till 10 years old to serve as nurses. From 10 to 16, the boys make nails, the girls spin.

At 16, go into the ground or learn trades. Sheesh. And it's, you know, all this stuff in the farm book is a big part of what Wynseck based his book Master of the Mountain on. We had a lot of this info about how he's using these, like this child labor system that he consciously crafts for profit.

And it gets hidden. Like one of his biographers, basically he doesn't destroy the work, but he just doesn't write about it when he's like analyzing the farm book for a biography on Jefferson. He like, a conscious choice is made by a lot of historians just to not go into as much detail as we actually had

about what Jefferson was doing at Monticello because it's ugly. Yeah, they're so precious about it. Yeah, like there's, I'm telling you, it's precious about him specifically. It doesn't quite make sense, right? Like why is he the equivalent of the white boy of the month on TikTok, but for all of America in depth?

Yes, it's, I think the way they want to portray him is like, I keep going back to an artist, but like a great musician with a heroin problem. That's how they want to portray him as like, well, he was a great genius. He was brilliant. That's how they want to portray him as like, well, he was a great, a genius. He was brilliant. He has this fatal flaw, you know? And like, that's tragic, but it doesn't mean that, you know,

he didn't do a lot of great stuff. But like, you know, heroin, it could be bad for you, but like, you're not harming other people in a way that is evil necessarily. I mean, you can, but like, yeah. Yeah, multiple families. Yeah, come on. Yeah, multiple families with, yeah, come on. Yeah, yeah. Like you can destroy, like fundamentally you're damaged.

And that's kind of how they treat it. Like, yeah, he had this thing that was like this fatal flaw where like, no, the man built his own industrial society around child labor for profit. Like that's what he did. He knew exactly what he was doing. And he documented it. Yeah.

Now in that line, he said that like, yeah, once everyone's 16, they go into the ground or learn trades. Going into the ground means you're on the lowest rung, right? You're working in the field, right? Yeah. And learning a trade, as I said, is like your best path

if you're one of these people to like some kind of autonomy, right? Because the blacksmith, you kind of just need to let him be the blacksmith, right? Yeah. So if you were a boy, before you had chance to do either of those things, you worked in the nailery, right? You made nails.

And that quote I read earlier makes it sound like the nails are just kind of part of Jefferson's plan for a self-sufficient community, but the reality is that they are where his money is coming from for quite a while. They're the most successful profit earning business in Monticello and alone paid for all of his family's food. The nailery opened in 1794 and in a 1795 letter, Jefferson explained his reasons for starting

it in a letter to a French friend. In returning home after an absence of 10 years, I found my farm so much deranged that I saw evidently that it was necessary for me to find some other resource in the meantime. I concluded at length to begin a manufacturer of nails, which needs little or no capital. And I now employ a dozen little boys from 10 to 16 years of age,

overlooking all the details of their business myself and drawing from it a profit on which I can get along until I put my farms into a course of yielding profit. Two things I never thought about is, oh yeah, nails have to be made. And you just go to the store and get nails? Like, I forgot about that.

There's that. And then secondly, I was like, oh yeah, what was this farm doing for the 10 years he was gone? That was another thing I just, I didn't think about till right now. Like, yeah, what, like, who was, was, is there any right on that? Who was there?

Like, and why didn't everybody leave? Like, yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll talk about that. He has white people who are employed as overseers, who he is. Some of them are like kind of business partners of his, but like as part of their job and like being a partner,

they get a cut of like the profits from the wheat or whatever, but they also have to manage the overseers who live on the property and are responsible for keeping everybody in line And overseers right you knew that propaganda Overseers yeah, and what we'll talk a little bit more about that later because we have some of his letters to his overseers while he's in Paris so we actually know when he's talking about Liberty some of the things he's directing them to do and they're pretty ugly when he's talking about liberty, some of the things he's directing them to do and they're pretty ugly.

Yeah. But the other thing he's doing- I'm teaching these French, yo, yes, get this ad on. Yeah, yeah. You're right. Let's get this ad break. You know, I don't know, I don't have a good way to lead into the ads. Just listen to the ads and we'll come back

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or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back. So Jefferson is managing Monticello from Paris, as we talked about through like letters and stuff that he sends back. And the other thing he's doing in Paris is he's spending shitloads of money and going even more into debt because he is just not actually capable

of living on like a normal allowance, right? Like again, for all of his talk about like autonomy and self-discipline, he's never able to like live within his means. I always find funny when he leaves for public office in 1794, he comes back in 1789, but he leaves public office for a while in 1794, Jefferson is horribly in debt. He goes even more into debt in France and he doesn't get out of it in those five years

where he's back in the US, but he's still working in politics. Around that time, Jefferson states publicly that he wants to retire. And he kind of frames this as like, I need to get away from Washington. I need to get away from like this cutthroat political world so that I can be a farmer. And he kind of compares himself to Cincinnati's, who is this, have you ever heard of Cincinnati's prop?

No. He was a Roman general who like, Romans used to like elect a dictator, right? Yeah. When they had like a problem, right? Like there's a war, we're getting invaded, we need a guy to be in charge for six months. Cincinnati's was this like farmer who,

he got all this power because he was the only guy who could win this war. And then he gave it all up because what he really wanted to be was a farmer. That's what he loved more than anything. I actually don't, that may actually be what Cincinnati did, but Jefferson likes to compare himself to Cincinnati. Yeah.

It's like, no one needed you in DC, bro. And like, by the way, you suck at farming. The game needs me guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Cincinnati couldn't grow shit. Yeah, how about It doesn't. Yeah. Cincinnati's couldn't grow shit. Yeah.

How about that? Uh-huh. Now, the real reason why he basically goes into retirement is that he needs to get a handle on his debts. He talks to his colleagues in Washington about, I actually can't keep working in politics. I really got to fix Monticello. Otherwise, I'm going to lose everything. In American Sphinx, Ellis estimates Jefferson's debt

at several hundred thousand dollars. Now this was a common state of affair for wealthy quote unquote wealthy Virginia planters, right? But it's embarrassing too. And Jefferson attempted to defray his responsibility for his bad economic situation by blaming his overseers for not hitting the workers enough. Now, it's such a-

Oh my, continue, but it's such a stupid move. Yeah, yeah. All right. It is, it's such like a, no, it's not that like I'm planning things badly. It's not that I picked a bad location for a working farm. Right? Like fundamentally, a lot of this comes down to Monticello

is a bad place to do what he's trying to do. But like, he can't accept any of that. So he's gotta find someone to blame. And it's like, well, my overseers aren't strict enough. You know, that's gotta be, that's gotta be what's causing the problem. Nobody ever taught him location, location, location. No.

It's just fucking me. You know, you just, it's all, it's middle management. You know, these managers, they don't wanna work. Did you hire all them? Was that? Yeah. You hired's all, it's middle management, you know, these managers, they don't want to work. Did you hire all them? Was that, you hired them all, right? This year? Yeah.

Oh, so this is entirely you, yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Come on, bro. So, and I, you know, I think it's one of those things. He can't admit this publicly. I think he knows. And part of why we, I think he knows is that

he writes this in a letter to his daughter during this period. The unprofitable condition of Virginia estates in general leaves it next to impossible for the holder of one to avoid ruin. And this condition will continue until some change takes place in the mode of working them. In the meantime, nothing can save us and our children from beggary but a determination to get a year beforehand and restrain ourselves vigorously to the clear profits of the last." And I find that fascinating because he's admitting,

well, it seems like none of these big Virginia farms that our whole culture is based on, these huge plantations, basically none of them work, right? None of them can like actually make a profit. We're all horribly in debt and it's getting worse every year. Maybe our whole culture is wrong.

Maybe we built a bad society. What? Jesus. He's like, no, we need more financial discipline. Yeah, yeah, you're not like, I don't know guys, maybe this ain't working. Yeah, maybe we built a bad civilization and we should start over.

I love it. Maybe without the slaves. I hate it, but I love it. Yeah, yeah. So he refused to actually live within his means and he refused to sell his lands past a certain point because he saw his land as his only real wealth. And thus that's what he was going to pass down to his kids.

He did attempt to make a business out of wheat, but he was dog shit at this, just like he was dog shit at everything he tried to do with farms. Jefferson actually operated seven farms on his vast holdings, but only about 10% at this just like he was dog shit at everything he tried to do with farms. Jefferson actually operated seven farms on his vast holdings, but only about 10% of the acreage he owned was actually under cultivation. So when he hit upon nails as a business, he treated it as a life preserver, making it

the focus of his day-to-day exertions. This passage from American Sphinx describes how much of a personal focus Jefferson made of his new nail business. Quote, every morning except Sunday, he walked over to the nailery soon after dawn to weigh Sphinx describes how much of a personal focus Jefferson made of his new nail business, quote, Every morning except Sunday he walked over to the nailery soon after dawn to weigh out the nail rod for each worker, then returned at dusk to weigh the nails each had made and calculate how much iron had been wasted by the most and least efficient workers. Isaac Jefferson recalled that his former master made it clear to all hands that the nailery

was a personal priority and that special privileges would be accorded the best nail makers. He gave the boys in the nail factory a pound of meat a week. He gave them that worked the best a suit of red or blue and encouraged them mightily. Jefferson even added the nailery to his familiar refrain in the pastoral mode. I am so much immersed in farming and nail making, he reported in the fall of 1794, that politics are entirely banished from my mind. Now, this is not, I think it's worth emphasizing, like a tiny picturesque blacksmith shop. This is a little factory, right?

Yeah. It is dirty and it is loud and it is maybe not dangerous compared to the work most adults were doing, but it is very dangerous work for children, right? It makes money though, right? Like it's actually very profitable. And this is kind of another example of him being a hypocrite because he writes a lot about like industrialization and like what's happening in, you know, back in Great Britain during the early industrial revolution

is like hideous. And he has all this like these hippie back to the land ethos that he expresses a lot in writing. But the only real money-making venture he was good at was like a nail factory. Industrializing, is industrializing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, a child powered nail factory.

Yeah, bro, like, come on, man. Where's your self-awareness? The great man. Yeah, it's just gone. It also represented an efficiency that he found attractive. He seems to have been bothered on some fundamental level by the idea that enslaved young boys would spend their time idle, having like a childhood or whatever. He wrote that the nailery made him happy because, quote, it would employ a parcel of boys who

would otherwise be idle. That Ellis quote I included earlier includes a line about how he would reward his best workers with extra meat, better clothes, but Wynsek points out that he really treated them as part of a mechanism by which he managed his society. This is a machine to him. That's what's happening here. Quote, those who did well received a new suit of clothes and they could also expect to graduate, as it were, to training as artisans rather than going in the ground as common field slaves.

Some nail boys rose in the plantation hierarchy to become house servants, blacksmiths, carpenters or coopers. So- Yeah. Yeah. You stratify, you stratify the slaves in a way that pits us against each other. Yeah. Nah.

It's- And it's- And then you're fighting for scraps. Yeah. Yeah. You're doing like there's, there's that version of it, the evil version. And there's also the fact that like, you are using this almost as a training program

to fill out positions in the rest of the property, right? Like, and that's part of what attracts, and it's so efficient, like this whole, this wheel by which he, yeah. No, I get it. These are transferable skills, you know, that if he were a decent man would be like, I'm giving you job training so you can go anywhere.

You know how to make, you know, you can go anywhere, get a job. You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, but that's not what you're doing because you can't go anywhere. Yeah, that is right. So two months after starting the nail factory, he wrote that it quote,

now provides completely for the maintenance of my family. The first two months of labor by his nail boys prayed for the entire yearly grocery bill of Jefferson's family, right? That's how big a deal this is for him. In 1796, his gross income from nails was like $2,000, which is pretty good money back then. His main competitor, this says a lot, was the local prison. Oh my God. Yeah. Hold on, hold on. His main competitor, this says a lot, was the local prison. Oh my God. Yeah.

Hold on, hold on. Yeah. Hold on. Yeah. The hell is this world? Okay. It's so fucked up. Yes.

Yeah, you can see why his biographers for years would like hide this shit, right? Yeah. Like it doesn't match any of the other things that they want people to believe about the man. They were like, if we take out, you know, the fact that he was a pedophile, an abusive piece of shit, a terrible business owner.

Yeah, they wrote his life the way he wrote the Bible. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Just remove all the shit I don't like. Yeah, yeah, it's something else. So it's probably worth noting that the nailery did involve labor from some young free white boys as well. They were paid 50 cents a day on Saturdays to feed the fire.

They were only allowed to work at Saturdays because they had school to go to, right? So Jefferson is capable of understanding, right? Like what the actual decent thing to do would be. Yeah, I'm not a caveman, guys. Yeah, yeah. Well, you are. There is, one of the stories here I found is like,

you get this little piece of like, kind of some of the inherent decency of some of the stories here I found is like, you get this little piece of like, kind of some of the inherent decency of some of the little kids, like some of his kids and grandkids, because his grandchildren were known to volunteer at the nailery sometimes, so that the boys that Thomas owned could go take days off to go fishing.

Wow. So you get little, again, other people are capable of treating them like people, right? Yeah. Jefferson isn't. I found that interesting. Yeah, without oversimplifying, but like you got to beat the humanity out of that kid. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Because the kid looks at him and goes, well, he's a kid like I'm a kid. He sucks. He's there every day. Yeah. Dude, look, bro, I can do at least a day, dog. Right.

We're just sitting around. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And then someone has to come and tell you, well, no, because you're not property. Yeah, yeah, they don't need days off. They don't really want them. They don't need days off, they're fine.

You have to lie and abuse people to get them, I think it's such an interesting example of just like, well, yeah, these kids just noticed that these other kids don't get to have a childhood and did something about it, right? Interesting. The little bits like that you get, I guess, are also maybe one of the ways that these kids get to speak

a little bit out into history, like the speech that was denied them. But you have to assume the kind of communication that like led to that. Like even if it was just communication, like, wow, these kids look obviously unhappy here. Yeah. I thought about that a lot after reading.

Yeah, such a human moment, you know? Yeah. So back during his years in France and when he'd written notes on the state of Virginia, Jefferson had written at length his belief that black people were not mentally capable of being free. Right's a big part of how he defends himself to these French intellectuals. The success he'd had in turning Monticello into a functioning complex industrial society, or semi-industrial society, made some of his French friends who came and visited him

at Monticello, like Duke de la Rochefoucaulde and court Basically be like I know what you said about these folks But like it seems like they're capable of doing all sorts of very complicated jobs That are everything they'd need to do in order to live independently and free, right? Seem pretty smart to me. They seem like they're capable of building an entire society on their own basically You telling me these people can't the people that built your house are unable to survive on their own, basically. You telling me these people can't, the people that built your house are unable to survive on their own? Yeah. Yeah. It seems like they have a lot of the same kinds of skills

that we consider skilled labor in outside society. And so like Duke de la Rochefoucauld, the encore is like one of his friends who visits Monticello is so impressed that he's like, hey, this is great. This means you can like free these people, right? Like you've taught them all this. So like now they can be free, right Thomas? Remember what you said when we was in France about that.

Like it seemed like problem solved. Yeah, so we're doing that, right? Dewey Dewey, right? The Duke recorded Jefferson's response this way, quote, he sees so many difficulties in their emancipation and he had so many conditions to render it practicable that it is thus reduced to the impossible. And it's too hard. Yeah.

Part of why he does that or why Jeff like Jefferson's argument is again, it comes down to race mixing, right? Yeah. Like he's like, if we free these people, then they'll inevitably going to like Mary and have children with white people. Right? Yeah. Part of his justification to this guy is like, again, it all comes down to race mixing.

He's been doing this for a while since France. And what's interesting to me is not like the specifics of his beliefs on like this kind of stuff and how it ties. I mean, it is interesting that it ties into scientific racism, which Jefferson usually doesn't get blamed for. And he is very much a part of that. But what's really interesting to me is that like, first off, he's actively doing this thing.

Yes. That like he says, is this reason why these people can't be free? Yes. And second, he, it's as a public figure, right? He supports brutal punishments for this. As I noted earlier, when he's revising Virginia slave code, he proposes that any white woman who gives birth to mixed-race children be cast out from protection of the law. But a few years earlier, right after he'd finished Notes on the State of Virginia, he

sold one of the women he owned to a white man with the understanding that she would be freed by him and they would live as husband and wife. He was willing to do this. This guy is a friend of his. So you get this mix of like, well, he clearly doesn't actually have a problem with this, but he thinks it's very important in public to have a problem with this.

Yeah. And- God. Yeah. Yeah. This has to have both. Right, right. Now, where I think this gets most disgusting

is in his public protestations of his gentleness as a master, he would drop lines like, I love industry and a bore severity, right? Basically like, I love it when people are working. I hate the idea of like, God forbid, you know, having to punish, you know, these people. Oh, what a horrible thought, right. And he would regularly in his public writings, attack overseers. Right. He called them degraded, unprincipled, violent people, which in many

cases they were. That's not an unfair thing. Right. Yes. But he's also hiring these guys. I was like, yeah, like so fucking fake. Yeah. Yeah. This is it. You're not like this, this is the Thomas Jefferson I know. Yeah. You know, just like about the whole, you know, miscegenation and then like, we're all like, Nikki, you have like 29 black children.

Like what are you talking about? And it also brings up an interesting point about how like there was a time that like, having a mixed relationship was an act of protest. Yeah. You know, that that's like such an interesting moment where it was like, no, this is, this is me being a part of the revolution.

You know, it's such a weird position to be, you know, it's just, wow, I just, I don't know. I just think about that stuff. And then, yeah you know, it's just, wow. I just, I don't know. I just think about that stuff. And then, yeah, and then publicly, yeah, anyway. Yeah, yeah. Like just, that's that bull. And then, yeah, and the overseer thing,

this like, of the many things that are so infuriating, it's just like, not only are you calling yourself a farmer who don't do no damn farming, you know what I'm saying? Now you get somebody, you get a goon basically, to do the shit that you ain't got the stomach to do anyway cause you know you wrong. And then you got the nerve to stand by and be like, well, I hate we have to do this.

I wish you would just like, just comply. I don't wanna have to go get the- Yeah. Yeah, I hate it, but you this. I wish you would just like just comply. I don't wanna have to go get the. Yeah. Yeah, I hate it, but we really gotta make the money. Yeah. If you'd have just worked until you die. You know, I know it's Friday and I hate to do this. But you gotta have to work forever.

Yeah. Like it's, and it's interesting, like again, he gets such a, there's so many historians, even up to the pretty recent period, are willing to like go to bat about like how relatively nice he is. But Jefferson, not only is he hiring overseers, he's not just, it's not just that like,

well, he hires overseers, cause everybody does. You have to have someone to watch it for you. He hires overseers and talks about the violence he wants them to do, right? Wow. And we're gonna get into that, but first here's an awkward ad break. From KT Studios, the number one podcast,

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She mentions, well, there is this alleged murder to have taken place. There was just one problem. They had no clue who the victim was. We have to do our job, and we have to find out, who did they kill? It had been 15 years since this alleged murder. Was it still possible to unearth the truth? I used to watch the Unsolved Mystery shows and I often thought about calling because

I was like, this is not right. How can a person get killed and no one knows anything? I'm Jay Calpern and this is Deep Cover, The Nameless Man. Listen on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everyone, I'm Mark. I'm Greg. I'm Brendan.

And this is a trailer for a new podcast called Get It to Dutch, A Screenwriter's Journey. It's about screenwriting. And a journey. The three of us play aspiring screenwriters on a quest to get a hit Hollywood script to famous producer, Dutch Huxley. Well, I would say one of us is aspiring

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you get your podcasts. And we're back. So the standard punishment for a slave who tried to escape and got caught was what was called an iron collar. Now this is a torture device that forces spikes up behind each ear so that if the person with the collar turns their head, they are like stabbing themselves. Basically. You're piercing yourself.

Yep. Now this is a famously evil thing, right? Like when people in Europe are talking about the horrible evil of the American system, these collars are one of the things that get written about, right? And Jefferson in notes on the state of Virginia, which is again, him trying to defend the United States to France,

writes about how these are one of the worst parts of this really cruel, hideous system. In 1791, he ordered his property manager to purchase a load of collars. Wynsek, in his exploration of Jefferson's farm book and correspondence, lays out a clear pattern. Jefferson often says the right thing, or at least the less cruel thing, but then acts with as much cruelty as any other master. He cites a 1792 letter by Jefferson to

his executive overseer, Colonel Randolph, about replacing a retiring overseer and the need to balance cruelty and goodness. Quote, in his response to Randolph, Jefferson also wrote, my first wish is that the laborers may be well treated. But what it appears at first glance to be an ironclad declaration of principle turns out to be just what Jefferson said it was, a wish, and it was qualified by a second wish, that they may enable me to have that treatment continued by making as much as will admit it."

You see what he's saying there? Like, I want to treat them well, and I hope they make me enough money that I don't have to have them beat, right? Like that's what he's saying, you know? Yeah, look dude, this is, look, nobody, I don't want this. Yeah. But like, if you like, basically you're choosing it.

Like if you choose not to, like this is your choice. Like you're choosing not to be compliant and work hard. Look, if the system works, if you work the system, just. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That is exactly like, yeah, what he's saying here. I'm going to continue that quote from Wynseks book.

First, this was Jefferson's contract with the slaves. I wish to treat you well, but if you do not produce enough, there will be harsh measures. Second, it was Jefferson's contract with himself. Having made this mental compact with the slaves, he could absolve himself from blame for anything unpleasant. The slaves were at fault." Right? So he's doing this. He's expressing this because that way he can be like, well, we have this agreement and you guys didn't make enough. Right? It's not me having you punished. You know? There's his through line. His through line is, dang, it's all clear now. His through line is, I'm going to find a way to absolve myself.

Like, whatever we're doing, no matter what it is, I'm gonna provide myself an out. And that's continually what he continues to do, like as a politician, as a farmer, as a husband, as a father, and now in this context, it's like, oh, but yeah, he's always finding himself an out. Damn. Right, right.

Yeah, that's the guy. Yeah, that's that guy. All of this, if it can be made more infuriating, it is made more infuriating by the reality of Jefferson's correspondence with a man named Benjamin Banneker. Do you know who you heard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know who I'm about to talk about. Yeah, Benjamin Banneker. Do you know who you heard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know who I'm about to talk about. Yeah, Benjamin Banneker. Yeah, come on now. Banneker was born to, we're not entirely certain, but probably was born to two free black parents in Maryland. Yeah.

Educated as a, he was educated as a child. He's taught to read, he's taught arithmetic, and he inherits some land, which he farms with considerably more aptitude than Thomas Jefferson ever farmed anything, right? Yes. Now, Banneker was an early mathematician and he was in fact so able at mathematics

that by the late 1700s, he had a popular almanac that Jefferson and many other Americans used. He like puts out a really good, and an almanac, you have to think about an almanac as like, it's like an iPhone, right? It is the product of intense science that is absolutely necessary for your day-to-day life if you're a farmer, right?

And it's impressive being able to understand astronomy and all that kind of stuff well enough to make a good almanac is difficult. At age 21 for an idea of how smart this guy is. When he's 21 years old, Banneker borrows a pocket watch from a friend and carves his own functioning watch out of wood based on the pocket watch he borrows

that like works his whole life. Just a, like, you know, a polymath, right? Yeah, I need to double check my, my history, but I believe he designed this, the dish of Washington DC. Oh, did he? I didn't know that. Yeah. He designed the roads. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. Like, so that was like one of those things that I,

that was one of the, one of the things. Yes. Yeah. He established the board as a district of Columbia. So like he actually designed the roads. Now granted, they're very annoying now, but that's because they were made for horses then. You know what I'm saying? But he definitely designed them.

You can't blame him for not assuming DC would ever get that big. Yeah, of course. So Jefferson had cited, if you remember back to, I think our second episode, he had cited some of his evidence and notes in the state of Virginia when he wrote out, like, here to, I think our second episode, he had cited some of his evidence and notes in the state of Virginia. When he wrote out, like,

here's why I think white people are superior. One of it was that he hadn't run into a black man who knew Euclid, right? Well, here's a black mathematician who is definitely better at math than you, Thomas, right? Yes, yes. You would think like, well, maybe that, talking to this guy should have some impact on him, right?

And in 1791, Banneker actually sends Jefferson a letter would think like, well, maybe that talking to this guy should have some impact on him, right? And in 1791, Banneker actually sends Jefferson a letter and he quotes the Declaration of Independence back to Jefferson and is like, hey man, like what the fuck, right? Like he's still like, how can you write all this and do this? And I love the way he gets Tom's ass here.

Quote, this is Banneker, but sir, how pitiable is it to reflect that although you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the father of mankind and of his equal and impartial distribution of those rights and privileges which he had conferred upon them, that you should at the same time counteract his mercies

and detaining by fraud and violence, soon numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others with respect to yourselves." He's like, where I'm standing, you're as bad as the king was.

Yeah, you sound just like, yeah, you ain't shit. Yeah. And also what I love too about that, that is the, him saying like, you're doing this to my brethren because even in their brains, freed, intelligent black people were like, well, they're different.

Like that's the exception. Like you not, these are, that's what y'all normally like. You in the section like, no, they me. Yeah. We are them. There are no, like, no, they me. We are them. They're no, no, that's my brothers. Yeah. And that's kind of what Jefferson does.

Is he like, he says to, he praises Banneker. He's like, you're a credit to your race, basically, right? Yeah. Like, but he won't, he's not willing to admit that like, and this means I was wrong, right? And therefore. Like, turns out if you just let people go to school, some of them will learn about Euclid, you know?

Like they did it, Tom. Yeah. Yeah. He does write basically that like, well, I guess maybe this does show that black people are intellectually equal to white people. And he writes, I can add with truth that nobody wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition

of both their body and mind to what it ought to be. So again, he's not willing to con, he says all this, but then he doesn't do anything about it. And after Banneker dies, in that letter, he had said, I'm gonna send your almanac off to this French philosopher I know, he'll be so impressed. And then as soon as Banneker dies, Jefferson's like, he lied about writing that almanac, couldn't have been him.

Couldn't have been him, Couldn't have been him. I don't think it was him. I don't think he did that. Ain't no way. Anyway. It's like, man, that guy made a lot of great points, man. It seems that the Negro could really learn anything. Anyway, John C.

Yeah. In 1800, TJ was elected to the presidency. Now I should note that when I asked this question of my search engine to double check, the AI summary said 1801, which is wrong. So again, don't trust these AI summary things. They get really basic shit wrong. This is not a hard question to answer.

And if you wanna know more, listen to Better Offline, who's the head of the throne on this very network. Yep, yep, yep. Now you would assume, right, that. Now you would assume, right, that now that Thomas is president, right, this would be the per, if he really did have deeply held beliefs about emancipation,

well now he's literally the president. He should be able to do something, right? Yeah, I was like, we all wish we had power. Now we have it. Yeah. Yeah. He does worse than nothing. So Jefferson is a Francophile, right? Really loves France.

Really loves the French. And he loves the French revolution. And being that guy, once he becomes president, he is happy to be approached by Louis Pichon, the charge d'affaires of the French Republic, which talked a good game about liberty, but was also at that point in the process of trying to crush the first successful slave rebellion

of the modern era in Haiti. And this is obvious, this is when Napoleon is running things. And at this point it's not Haiti, it's Saint-Domingue. Now that successful revolution had as its most prominent leader, one of the most impressive men of that century, to Saint-Lôvature. Now Pichon wanted to know what the third president would do if France sent its army to Saint-Domingue. And here's how Thomas Fleming, former president of the Society of American Historians, describes his response.

Jefferson's reply exceeded Pichon's most sanguine hopes. The new president urged Pichon to tell his government that America was eager to help restore French rule in Saint-Domingue. He was pleased that France wanted to send an army to crush the black rebels. Nothing would be easier for us than to furnish your army in fleet with everything and to reduce to St. to starvation, Jefferson said.

Damn. So again, this guy who's like, the inevitable world revolution for liberty has started as soon as the Haitians overthrow their slave masters goes, well, yeah, we got to starve those people to death. Well, that's different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's like, yo. Yeah, and that's around the corner. Like that's cool. We could send them down there. That's easy. Be easy as hell for us. Yeah, we got lots of boats. So I should note that while the,

obviously, you know, the story of the international community fucking over Haiti is a long one. That's what we've done several episodes on it. The French do capture De Saint, he dies in captivity, but their whole army is either, a lot of them die by rebels and like, I think most of them, it's just the yellow fever, right? Like the whole, anyway, it does not go well.

They do not take back control. Yeah, you're not made for the Southern hemisphere. Yeah. And the, but their attempt is so brutal that in the wake of their failure, a rebel general named Jean-Jacques de Salines massacres every French white person he can get his hands on and makes himself the new ruler

of what he starts to call Haiti, right? So thanks for that, Thomas. Great work. Now, Jefferson had often expressed his terror at the inevitability of a race war if emancipation didn't proceed on very specific ever shifting lines. The reality, and I think that's why this story is worth telling, part of why, obviously it's worth telling for a lot of reasons, is that Jefferson himself provoked a race war by betraying

his own stated revolutionary beliefs. The instant a group of slaves freeze themselves and tries to start a republic. Yes. Yeah. That Yes. Yeah. That guy. Yeah, that guy. So people might get frustrated that we're not really going to cover his presidency in detail, his beliefs about manifest destiny, his role in the ideological underpinnings of

US colonial expansionism, because again, there was just so much to say specifically about Jefferson and slavery, and I really wanted to keep us focused on that. I do think there's one more aspect of his life as it relates to slavery that is worth discussing, and this brings me to a guy named Edward Coles. Coles came from old money, a family with a pedigree at least as impressive as Jefferson's own. Like Thomas, he inherited land, and eventually he inherited a bunch of human beings. Like Jefferson, in his youth, it became clear to him that slavery was evil and the system

had to be destroyed. Unlike Jefferson, Coles actually believed this. He was influenced by the death of George Washington, who would come to similar conclusions about slavery and wrote in his will that his domestics should be freed after his death. Now, the reality is that only about half the people held at Mount Vernon got freed in relatively short order. About half of them were slaves in many cases for decades afterwards. But it would be accurate to say that Washington was more committed to emancipating the people he owned than Jefferson would prove to be. That said, for the purposes of what Coles sees as important, it's that Washington is

seen as having made a real commitment to emancipation, right? So when his own father dies, Coles tells his family right away, I'm going to free all of the family slaves. His family calls this folly and attacks him for giving up the comforts his parents had worked so hard to gain. He's going to piss away our inheritance. Yeah. Yeah, it is.

It is. Yeah. Yeah. That is exactly how they talk about it. Now, this was such a problem that his brother, who had been Thomas Jefferson's personal secretary, gets Coles a job offer from the next president, James Madison, as his private secretary. Coles decides he's gonna turn the job down because he really wants to make emancipating

all of these people he's inherited a priority. But James Monroe basically convinces him that like, if you do this, if you get this job, you'll get into that, you can change the system from the inside. If you really wanna fight for emancipation, this will teach you how to do it more effectively, right? So he makes that call, you know, for a while.

And he spends five years living in luxury at the White House, being waited on hand and foot, and seeing how men like the president lived while regularly encountering coffles of chained slaves being marched from the oxen block, makes him angrier and angrier. And in 1814, he decides to reach out to former president Jefferson.

And his thinking here is like, I don't think I can do this from inside. We have to have some kind of big movement that's going to lead us to emancipation. And you're the prophet of liberty, right? Can you help me with this? Yeah, remember that? Yeah.

Do you wanna do this together? You know? He writes in the- You remember like, bring that same energy. Remember all the stuff you were talking about? Yeah. Yeah. It seems like this together? You know, he writes in the ring. That same energy. Remember all the stuff you tell mom? Yeah. Yeah. It seems like this used to matter to you. Can we try it? Um, he writes in one letter, my object is to entreat and beseech you to exert your knowledge and influence and devising and getting into operations. Some plan for the gradual emancipation of slavery. Coles wanted Jefferson to help him write a general emancipation plan for Virginia

and introduce it to the state. Jefferson gave him a semi-polite fuck you, saying like, yeah, slavery is bad, but just that too many Americans, you and I get how evil this is, but there's just too many people who don't get it. Particularly, you know who was really to blame? It's the young people.

They don't really love liberty the way my generation did. And kids don't believe it. It's disappointing. Yeah, disappointing that they don't like it. Liberty the way I do. And it was there, I mean, and it's on them anyway. Remember that you said last time. It's like, yeah, now kids will figure it out.

Tired of that tape. But they don't love liberty. Yeah, it is. He does kind of start that ball rolling too. All of our great democratic traditions. Fuck them kids. Fuck them kids. That's where you should have- That should be the t-shirt, Thomas Jefferson. It was some fuck them kids.

Yeah. Now, at the same time, he argued that the fight for emancipation was the responsibility of the young. He's just too old and tired to do it now. Coles was left alone. And to his credit, he's like, eventually like, well, okay, I guess I can't do this, right? I can't make the country fix this problem.

So you know what I am going to do is not be a fucking hypocrite. And he travels with, he takes the 17 people he owns and he purchases like 160 acres for each of them, along with a bunch of farming equipment and sets them all up independently on free farms. Let's go. He actually does the thing.

Dude, it was already a nail, like your first nail in the coffin is when the guy goes, well, no, take the job, cause you can change him. You could work from within. You could be the adult in the room. Like, listen guys, I don't work, fam. Yeah.

You can't sway an institution like that. Yeah. And he does eventually like realize, do the right thing. Yeah. So that's nice. Another one of Thomas Jefferson's friends was the revolutionary war hero, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, who leaves Jefferson, this is one of his friends who like is becomes an abolitionist, right?

And he's frustrated that Jefferson, you know, Jefferson's always got these excuses And so of it when he dies Thaddeus is like here's 20 grand Here's a bunch of money. You can use like half of it on your own debts Use the rest to free your slaves and buy them land and equipment for them to farm, right? I'm giving you the money. And this will even solve a bunch of your problems, right? Damn, I'm giving you the bread.

Like I'm putting my money, look man, I'm a pony up. Yeah. No excuse, bro. Yeah. Yeah. And he makes Jefferson the executor of his will. So it should be Jefferson's job to do this.

Jefferson refuses. He just doesn't do it. He doesn't take the money. Of course he does. Yeah. From Master of the Mountain, quote, if Jefferson had accepted Kosciuszko's bequest, as much as half of it would have gone not to Jefferson, but in effect to his slaves, to the purchase price for land, livestock, equipment, and transportation to get them started in a place such as Illinois or Ohio.

Moreover, the slaves most suited for immediate emancipation, Smiths, Coopers, Carpenters, the most skilled farmers were the very ones whom Jefferson most wanted to keep. He also shrank from any public identification with the cause of emancipation." So part of why he does it is he just doesn't want to get into the debate, right? He's apolitical. Oh my God. Yeah, that's such a vile thing. Like your friend literally, and you're in a horrible debt.

You can, you can. Yeah. He removed every possible obstacle. Yeah. Jefferson still wouldn't do it. And still wasn't down. Yeah. Thomas Jefferson died July 4th, 1826, leaving a debt of more than $107,000 for his children

to manage. Monticello never became an engine of profit, at least not one that could generate enough money to cover the interest on his debts. He died delusional, sure a public lottery would be created to pay for his daughter and her family to keep Monticello and his slaves. But within a year, his descendants had sold the land, everything inside the house, the famous house itself, and 130 human beings. Only seven of the people that he'd owned were freed, and only five of those people were

freed by Jefferson in his will. And again, Washington, who's not at all a saint here, frees about half of the people at Mount Vernon. So even by that standard, not a great guy. No. Yeah. There's a quote about Jefferson as an abolitionist or an emancipator that's like, "'Never did a man get more credit for that which he did not do.'"

That's dope. Yeah, it's a good- That is a dope quote. Yeah. Yeah. Never did a man get more credit for something he ain't do. Yeah. God dog. Yeah.

Well, Prop, that's the episodes. All right. Man, I'm glad it's as dead as he is. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of where I stand. Yeah. Yeah. Bro, like, and like you said, like we ain't even talked about him as a president

and man, that's destiny and all that shit that like is its own, yeah, that we'd be here, we'd be here till December talking about all that. Right, right. Yeah, there's a lot more to say about him, but yeah, I think we've done, this is a good overview. No, this is perfect. Because it's, no, this is definitely perfect

because it's like, you need something to say like, before a person gets into the hero status, let us remember that this man ain't no hero. You know, and I, I, I just, you know, us, we follow politics, we follow geopolitics, we follow all this stuff, and there may be characters who may step up and may do something that's like, oh, that's cool.

You know, that's great points for your team, you know, but like, like, let's think about this dude that you trying to give, you know, trying to give some give dap to like that man is not your friend, you know, and, and people need to just yeah, like, like this is important. It's just like, how your antennas up before you start like. Man, is that man is not a hero. And I'm so glad you did this. And I got to be a part of it so I can make fun of it.

But I will say this. I will say this. I believe that there's I might be pulling this out of my ass, just like him. A gathering of his descendants, like that continues and that they're like, we need our money. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, yo, like this is what you promised us. We need, where our money at?

And I'm like, I hope they get they money. Yeah. I mean, I hope we all get our money in reparations, but still. Yeah, I'm supportive of reparations. I will have to say he didn't have any money when he- Yeah, right. He's like, look, you can take it all.

You want a check? They literally never do that. That's so funny. It's like, yeah, hey, I'll write you a check, bro. I, you know, just don't cash it till Tuesday. Yeah. Checks in the mail. Classic. Well, prop, you have a podcast, Hood Politics.

Hood Politics with pop, with pop, yep, with pop. With soda. And yeah, where I kind of teach you how to like, hey, use your antennas. Like, don't trust him over there. That boy ain't no good. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, nah, so that, yeah, seasons cranking.

Really trying to like step our game up. We're doing hood politics for eyeballs also that I've attempted to remove the swear words from so that like, you know, you can, if you're so inclined to have ears around that you're trying to keep swear words away from, I got one for you, you know what I'm saying? Excellent. Yeah, and I got a book, poetry book, Terraform.

That's right, that's right. If you don't do some kind of project called, you know what I'm saying, I feel like we're, I, I, I, I, I, man, it is a crutch word. I don't know some kind of project called, you know what I'm saying? I feel like we're really missing out. I don't know what it is yet. I don't know what it is yet. It's crossword. It could just be a segment.

I know, right? Before I even send off the audio to Matt, I go through and edit them out. That's incredible. I say it so much. It's embarrassing when I listen back to myself. It'll be like, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, I'm like,

can I say that all the time? Yeah. One day, you know what I'm gonna do just for you? I'm gonna chop them all and put them on one file. It's just like. Oh, I wanna, you know what I'm saying? Remix. Yeah.

I need it on a beat. I need it on a beat. Oh man, you know what I'm saying? Okay, I'll tell Matt. Hilar remix. Yeah, no, I'm saying I need it on a beat. I need it on a beat. Oh man, no, I'm saying. Okay, I'll tell Matt. Hilarious. Well, what I'm saying is thank you. And yeah, folks want to donate some money to the Portland diaper bank to help people

who don't have much money afford diapers or just have diapers for free. You can Google GoFundMe, Portland diaper bank, Behind the Bastards. or you know just have diapers for free you can Google GoFundMe Portland Diaper Bank Behind the Bastards and yeah that'll that'll get you what you need. My dog has decided we're done she's playing in the background. I love it. So it's over. Bye bye.

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