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

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

Robert sits down with Jason Petty, AKA Prop, to discuss how Thomas Jefferson became a global prophet of liberty despite owning human beings and helping to invent modern racism. (4 Part Series)  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everyone, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to talk about something that is important to me, important to everyone else at Cool Zone. We've not really covered it in detail, but on June 10th, 2024, a man named Leonard Peltier, who is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, of Lakota, and Ojibwe ancestry, and is the longest-serving political prisoner in the United States, will be appearing before the U.S. Parole Commission for the first time since 2009. The FBI is vigorously resisting any thought of him being paroled because he allegedly killed two FBI agents in a firefight on June 26, 1975.

Said agents had shown up on reservation land to execute a pretextual warrant. The initial firefight occurred during what's called the Reign of Terror on Pine Ridge in the wake of the occupation of Wounded Knee. It was a time of extreme violence by the federal government, who had installed a puppet tribal chair and was arming vigilantes who targeted indigenous traditionalists. Everything that led up to these events and the subsequent investigation and Mr. Peltier's extradition trial conviction and sentencing was characterized by gross misconduct on the part of law enforcement, the prosecution,

and the courts. Mr. Peltier's co-defendants were separately tried and acquitted on grounds of self-defense. Mr. Peltier was railroaded, and his case is tainted by discrimination at every level, ranging from the withholding of exculpatory evidence to the torture and coercion of extradition and trial witnesses, and from the refusal of the trialulpatory evidence to the torture and coercion of extradition and trial witnesses, and from the refusal of the trial judge to dismiss an avowedly racist juror to the apologetic gymnastics of courts

affirming his convictions in the wake of meritorious legal challenges and admitted evidence of outrageous government misdeeds. Mr. Peltier has been in prison for more than 48 years and is almost 80 years old. He suffers from chronic and potentially lethal conditions for which he receives insufficient and substandard medical care.

If you want to take action to hashtag free Leonard Peltier, and I should tell you his name is spelled L-E-O-N-A-R-D-P-E-L-T-I-E-R, you can call the US Parole Commission at 202-346-7000 and sign the petition at ndnco.cc slash free Leonard Peltier at ndnco.cc slash free Leonard Peltier. All one, you know, thing. Or follow the ndn collective on social media for more ways to support him. For more information on Leonard Peltier, you can listen to Margaret's podcast on the Lakota Nation and read In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Mathieson. Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards,

the only podcast that you're listening to right now, unless you're listening to more than one podcast right now. I think I've done this joke, this bit about the brain hacking people who like, I read 70 books a week. Yeah. Jason, do you have any brain hacks? How do you hack your brain?

How are you such a triple quadruple threat of a musician, writer, author, podcaster? I guess two of those are technically the same thing, but coffee entrepreneur. Yeah. Yeah. How are you him? I mean, there's a few of them. I think one of the main brain hacks is child labor So if you just that's a big one, that's a big yeah You just find a little yeah a little young hungry You know I'm saying kid that want to get famous and you just yeah make that we work too. Yeah, I mean I'm saying, kid that wanna get famous, and you just make a view. We work too. I mean, I'm telling you, man, it's like. We call that British Empire Maxing, yeah.

Yep, one of my mentors used to say, everybody has the same 24 hours, but if you work for me, I get eight of yours. So, I'm like, dude, I got 32 now. So there's your free advice for everybody today, go steal a child. That actually ties in very well to the subject of this episode,

because the guy we're talking about this week is one of the most famously productive human beings in history and one of the most influential Americans in the history of our nation. And he did it by stealing a bunch of children. We are talking this week about Thomas Jefferson. Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord.

Oh, man. The man that loved him, some black women. Oh, boy. We'll have a lot to say about all of that, but first, cold opens, frozen shut. Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning, and now we're sharing

an all new story of betrayal. Justin Rutherford, doctor, father, family man. It was the perfect cover to hide behind. Detective Weaver said, I'm sure you know why we're here. I was like, what in the world is going on? Listen to Betrayal on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Melissa Fumero and I'm Stephanie Beatriz.

You may know us from television. Nine, nine. And now we're here with our very own podcast, More Better with Stephanie and Melissa. Join us as we take on topics like listening to yourself, the challenge of self-care, and making friends as an adult. We're gonna share our struggles. We're gonna speak to experts,

and we're gonna share everything we learned with you. Listen to More Better with Stephanie and Melissa on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Plumb, and yous, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Plom and you're Maggie Freeling. Hey Jason. Every day we learn about another person who shouldn't be in prison.

58 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. So glad you're home. If you want to be part of this work, listen to Wrongful Conviction. The podcast where we hand the mic to innocent people to hear their stories. How do you send someone innocent to prison? Listen to new episodes of Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Frieling and Jason Flom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back.

And you know, prop, I said at the introduction of this, the only way to get those extra eight hours a day is by stealing them from someone younger. But there is one other way. What is that? And it's crudely made Kratom tea. Oh, this is true. Oh, sip it. I thought you-

I mixed mine with matcha and coffee today. I was like, are we doing product placement in the first minute of this? No. Is that coffee? No, this is just free. The concept of Kratom. Smooth. in the first minute of this? Is that coffee? No, this is just free. The concept of Kratom. Be cool if that coffee was owned by me. It was up until recently.

I ordered like four or five crates of your cold brew, but I finally, I need to make another order cause I finally made it through. That's been my like early afternoon coffee, just like crack a can, go do some squats or sit down and finally write for the day. Yeah. It's good stuff.

It's like, I will still say, it is magical that these scripts, that these are actually scripts, that you write them. I'm like, do you type 4,000 words a minute? I can get about 4,000 words. That's like a normal night. That's like one episode usually, four to 5,000 words a minute? I can get about 4,000 words. That's like a normal night. That's like one episode usually, four to 5,000 words. So that's usually-

Not a minute, not a minute. Once I finish- A minute though, I was like, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Did you catch my joke here, bro? Like I was like, no, okay. Once I finish like researching, it's usually about like five hours of writing per script.

Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Kind of depends on the script. Some of them take more. Sometimes it's more like eight or 10 for the same amount. Cause like word count is one thing, but it also depends on like how well you understand. Like if it's one of those things,

if I'm like writing about like Thomas Jefferson, thank God at least the basics of his history. Yeah. We were all raised with his kids. Yeah. So it's not as much as like if I'm reading about Chowchescu or whatever and I've got a like Let's get into Thomas Jefferson and specifically I want to I want to dissuade people who might be worried at the start

this is not even going to be four episodes about Thomas Jefferson his whole life because There's so much written about this man and surrounding context we have we're drowning in him These episodes are purely about Thomas Jefferson and slavery, right? I'm gonna say this. I'm gonna say this. Yeah. I'm gonna say, I love the rhythm

that the bastards guess have. It seems like some people get child murder. Yeah. People get- We have our dead baby guess. Yeah, you have a dead baby guess yeah, you have a dead baby guess you have your you know crack doctor guess I get Horrible acts of racism guess ah

Yeah, I mean I'll take it You're on the Mount Rushmore yeah So is Thomas Jefferson, I think. I'm pretty sure he has to be, right? Now, to start with, to really, I think to ground the story of Thomas Jefferson, because it's not really, even calling it Thomas Jefferson and slavery is not fully accurate.

We're really talking about Jefferson and the concept of freedom, because Jefferson is going to be seen in his own time as something of a prophet of the concept of freedom, because Jefferson is going to be seen in his own time as something of like a prophet of the concept of human liberty. Yes. To an extent that bleeds surprisingly far, both in time and geographically. And to make that point, I want to talk about September 2nd, 1945, which is when a guy you might've heard of named Ho Chi Minh gave a speech at Ba Điên Square in Hanoi, Vietnam.

By this point in the Vietnamese struggle for liberation, the hated Japanese occupiers had been forced out in August, but French imperial forces still controlled much of what was then called Indo-China. The war between France and the Viet Minh would take almost another decade until 1954 and lead inexorably to an even bloodier conflict between the United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Given the brutality of that conflict and how it has come down in memory, particularly among the Western Left, it may surprise some of you to learn that Ho Chi Minh opened his Ba

Dien Square speech with a quote from the U.S. Declaration of Independence written by former President Thomas Jefferson. Quote, all men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Here's what Ho Chi Minh had to say about that line. This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776.

In a broader sense, this means all the peoples on the earth are equal from birth. All the peoples have a right to live and to be happy and free. Now that is a lovely statement. That is not what Thomas Jefferson meant by writing it, which is in front of what we'll be talking about. Yeah.

Like I would say Thomas Jefferson, when I was teaching high schoolers, the phrase cognitive dissonance came up. And I'm like, if cognitive dissonance were a person, it would be Thomas Jefferson. Yeah. Because there are things that have came out of his mouth that are, I quote to this day, like him- Some of the best things anyone ever wrote. Some of the best things anybody ever said. The concept of human liberty, yeah, for sure. Even about the institution of slavery. Like, if he was like, if God is just, right? That's my favorite one.

If God is as just as we say he is, then oh shit, basically. Yeah, then we're gonna be fucked. We'll get to that line and its context in history. I wanna talk a little bit more about Ho Chi Minh because I don't think this is known enough, which is that prior to the US really getting involved in Vietnam, he was a little bit of an America boo, right?

Like he kind of stand to the founding fathers just a little bit. And part of you get in this speech, he's got these like very valid complaints about the French occupiers. He doesn't just quote the Declaration of Independence. He quotes the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, which was made in 1791

during the French Revolution. And it's like, basically, hey, these are great things you guys are saying, why aren't you acting that way? Maybe you should do it. There's a heartbreaking line in here where he's like, we are convinced that the allies, which at the Tehran and San Francisco Conferences upheld the principle of equality among the nations cannot fail to recognize the right of the Vietnamese people to independence

Oh boy, they sure did buddy Apologize for that one, but uh He was generally ho Chi Minh generally a guy who like gauged the moment correctly. He was pretty good at that, but he did not in this moment. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So if you care at all about understanding the history of human freedom as an ideological concept and a value system, you do have to study Jefferson. Not just because he wrote eloquently on the matter, but because his words influenced revolutionaries

in the world over his lifetime and do so today. At the same time, you can't study Jefferson without coming to understand what Ho Chi Minh eventually did about the Allies, which is that it's one thing to express nice sentiments about human liberty, and it's another to take any concrete steps to further that end, especially if they might exert a cost from you. So again, we're not doing a political biography on the man or even an exhaustive look at all of the bad things he did in his life. We are instead focusing, yeah.

He's like, he just called Cap and had right to because it's like, bro, and that's to me, like I'm glad we're doing this to me because that's to me what is so fascinating about history and specifically American history, the history of racism, the history of racism, the history of all of it is like, when you drilled, obviously I am a recipient

of all of this stuff, but like when you drill down into what's going on in the heart and the mind of a person that knows intellectually and even morally and spiritually what they're doing is wrong. knows intellectually and even morally and spiritually what they're doing is wrong. Yeah. And continues to be a part of it that, you know, 300 years later we could be like,

I don't understand what the hell you're doing. You know, obviously this isn't on the same playing field, but like fast forward to me tomorrow hopping on this plane to fly across. Sure, that's it. You know what obviously this isn't on the same playing field, but like fast forward to me tomorrow hopping on this plane to fly across, you know what I'm saying? Like knowing full well. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? That's particularly a good point because one of the chief, if not the primary moral issue

that we are dealing with right now is like the damage that we're doing to the planet's holding capacity for life. And it's damaged, especially all of us in the first world, contribute to because it allows for our lives to be very comfortable in comparison to most human lives. And that's what's happening with Jefferson. Kind of at the end, not at the beginning,

this is a guy we're gonna trace him. He goes through changes, but kind of ultimately, a big part of why he betrays his principles on slavery is because he builds kind of a first world life for himself in the 1700s. And he's not willing to give up that comfort, right? There's more to it than that, but that is ultimately what we're building to, because people don't know enough about Monticello.

So Thomas Jefferson, Tommy Jeffs, was born in what biographer Dumas Malone called a simple wooden house in today's Abelmoral County, Virginia. In those days, Virginia was the property of King George II of Great Britain, ancestor to modern sausage-fingered potentate Charles. The calendar was different when Jefferson was a baby,

but using modern measures, we'd call his birth date, April 13th, 17, photo three. So calling his family home simple, probably accurate enough, especially by like our modern judgment, but it loses some context, which is that his father is quite wealthy for his time period and for his era. And he's also kind of like famous.

He's local boy who made goods. Specifically, he had helped to map and lay out the boundaries of what became Virginia as a young man. And as a result of that and like the work he did during that time, he comes to own thousands and something like 11,000 acres, I think it was, and a significant number of enslaved human beings

to work that acreage. So his dad, it's important to note, does not inherit, like builds what he has, right? Primarily at least. That is not gonna be the case with Thomas. No. Thomas's family home was called Shadwell, but when he was a little boy around age three,

his father moved the family from Shadwell to a nicer plantation that he had been hired to manage as the executor of his friend's estate. Yeah, you can't tell me you come from meager beginnings if your house has a name. If your house has a name, yeah. Yeah, I'm like, nah, bro. Yeah.

That's really the easiest quick way to judge people socioeconomically. Yeah, I'm like, wait, your house has a name, bro. Is there a name they call your house that's not just that place? It's not the apartment complex. It's the one with the fucked up window. Yeah, yeah, if you come from Imperial courts, that's a housing project.

So I'm like, okay, that's the name of the projects. But you telling me your house itself has a name? Just Shadwell. Yeah, that's a rich guy house. I'm sorry. Nah fam. Thomas's first memory is as a three-year-old, a 50-mile ride on horseback through the woods to come to this new home.

And he's carried, he's on like the lap of one of his father's enslaved people, right? That is his earliest memory, is being carried by one of the people his dad owns to a new plantation. His parents would have several more children, three other sisters, or three sisters and one brother, and Jefferson spent age three to about nine or 10

wandering freely through the semi wilderness around the plantation he grew up on and reading obsessively from works of classic history. We are talking Greco-Roman shit. He had an odd relationship with his family. One biographer I have read said that he adored and admired his father, Peter, but had at best a strained relationship with his mother,

Jane Randolph Jefferson. Dumas, who is Jefferson's most detailed early biographer, he writes like the first kind of definitive Jefferson biography, simply says, there is no positive testimony about her in Jefferson's notes and describes her as a shadowy figure. He ain't got nothing to say about his mama. He has, he has a mom issues.

They are mysterious mom issues, but they are mom issues. That's weird, homie. Like, I don't know. She all right, I guess. Like, well, you know. It's weird he doesn't say shit about her. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, in him being a product of his time,

because all the mom duties was offloaded to slave black women. Yeah. That, you know what I'm saying? Like you said, like we riding in 50 miles, you sitting on the, on the, on the lap of the help, rather than your mama. You know what I'm saying? Like you said, like we riding in 50 miles, you sitting on the lap of the help rather than your mama. You know what I'm saying? Of course you gonna feel some type of way about your mama cause she don't do shit.

Yeah. That is, and I think that might, yeah, that's an interesting point actually. Yeah. I've had, I think I've mentioned this on the show, friends who like grew up, who were rich and had like a nanny, like a full-time nanny as a kid, and expressed that, yeah, it was kind of confusing.

As a three-year-old, I wasn't really sure which one was my mom. Yeah. Now, I find this interesting because immediately after saying he could find no positive testimony about Jefferson's mom, he describes her, Dumas Malone, describes her as having physical endurance beyond average,

bearing a total of 10 children and raising eight of them to adulthood, which is like, that's hard. That's not a bad 80% survival rate in that time for kids is solid. 10 kids? You're kind of knocking it out of the park if you're doing 80 on the percent of 10 kids. Yeah, that's pretty good.

Yeah, we are awarding her a behind the bastards t-shirt that says only two of my ten children died There it is. Yeah, we love giving that shirt out. I just hand that out at shows. Yeah, there it is So I got two I got two awards under my belt. We got the no diddle award with Robert E. Lee That's right. That's right. Like hey, you know, I'm bad at hundred only kids I got some bad news on the no diddling award here. Thomas Jefferson is not gonna win that bad boy. Oh no, he's not. No, he is, he is absolutely not winning that one.

He's not at all going out, nah. I thought we gave out commemorative pins, not shirts. Oh yeah, the no diddle was a pin. Well, maybe if we get a good pin guy, yeah. So her husband, Thomas's father, Peter, was significantly older than her. This will prove to be a Jefferson tradition. And he died young at age 49 when she was 37.

She lived 19 more years after this and was a widow longer than she was ever a wife. When Thomas was 10, his father, who was still alive at that point, gave him a loaded gun and told him to march into the forest and find food. The goal here was to increase the boy's self-reliance. Thomas failed at first, but eventually found a wild turkey that had accidentally been caught in a pen. He tied the captive animal to a tree, shot it,

and brought it home for the family slaves to cook. I might add that if like you need the slaves to process your game, you're not really living independently. Processing the game is kind of a huge part of it actually. Yeah, I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I think the kid just figured out the system. I'ma found, which also plays well into who he becomes.

It's like, oh, you just gotta work the system. Here's a turkey that's already caught. So I'm just gonna shoot it, and then have somebody else do the dirty work. Yeah, yeah, take it home. And then claim all the credit for it. Tie it to a tree so I gonna shoot it. Yeah, and then have somebody else do the dirty work Yeah, yeah take it home claim all the credit for tie it to a tree so I could shoot it Come on throttle its neck at that point man. You have the turkey. I don't know weird kid So Thomas's family right about the time of this hunting adventure probably a little bit afterwards his family moves back to the shad well

Plantation, but they do not take Thomas with them. He is left behind to live with a teacher, Anglican minister, William Douglas. Douglas was not, and Thomas is later reckoning, a very good teacher, but Thomas lived with him for five years alongside several other kids, I think five others. So this is like a pretty normal thing at the time, right? Like you have your childhood

and then it's time to go to school. And you know, there's not like a, we all live out in the country on these, you know, manners and stuff. So we're just gonna send you to live with the teacher for a while and he'll take care of you. Too far, like your school's far. Yeah, yeah.

Why don't you just stay there? Basically during his adolescence, he's only ever home for like short periods of time and only occasionally. His best friend at school was another boy who also lived there named Dabney Carr, who became his best friend. The one story that Dumas Malone gives us about their friendship is that Danny had a fast horse, but Jefferson had a slow one, and everyone gave Jefferson shit for this.

And so Thomas tricked Dabney into agreeing to have a race on February 30th, a day that does not exist. Dumas writes, not until the last day of the month that the others discovered they had been taken in. So, you know, he's a little smarter than them, although I might add they're not that bright. Yeah. That's not a hard one.

How many days are there in February? Yeah. Yeah. That's like two days more. Like, bro, like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Come on guys. So Peter Jefferson died in 1757 when Thomas was around 14. Thomas later wrote of his father's sudden death. When I recollect that at 14 years of age, the whole care and direction of myself was thrown entirely on myself without a relation or friend qualified to advisor guide me and recollect various sorts of bad company

with which I associated from time to time. I am astonished I did not turn off with some of them and become as worthless to the society as they were." Now that suggests a lonely boy and one who had a pretty low opinion of most of his friends and like companions. They're all worthless to society and they nearly dragged me down with them. He also doesn't really seem to be very close to his family It's interesting to me that his father seems immune to these criticisms

Even though by all accounts I can find he must have been the one who locked Thomas away for that's at that school for five Years and like kept him away from any kind of emotional companionship or whatever Now it's worth noting that Thomas's own recollections during this period ignore the fact that he did in fact have someone to advise and help him. This friend was an enslaved boy, Jupiter, who was in the style of the time raised alongside Thomas to be his companion and servant. This was not an uncommon state of affairs for the landed gentry in the colonies. In the book Master of the Mountain, Henry Winesick writes, he had grown up with Jupiter, born at Shadwell the same year as he. colonies. In the book, Master of the Mountain, Henry Wynsik writes, he had grown up with Jupiter,

born at Shadwell the same year as he. If they followed the custom of the time, the two of them were playmates and companions in fishing and hunting, though Jefferson left no recollection of this. Yeah, he was a house, what we would call a house and we're okay, got it. Yeah, yeah.

And maybe, you know, you have to, I do think you have to like, theoretically I can see how, because as a kid, Yeah, yeah, and maybe you know you have to I do think you have to like Theoretically I can see how because as a kid Jefferson's not to blame for the system either How as little kids this could be something where like you legitimately see them as a friend? But Thomas doesn't seem to have right yeah, yeah He doesn't write about this guy like he admires him and like when I read that like you were supposed to hunt together and play Together like I'm like well was he the one who found that turkey? You know?

Like, um. Yeah, he was a living robot. Like, okay, you're a G.I. Joe man that's alive. You're a living teddy bear. So it's like, I don't, you know, how many toys do you write about? How many toys did you just kind of leave you forgot when you moved?

You know what I'm saying? Like, if he's just that, it's like, oh, hey, look, I got you a black dude. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, great, look, I got you a black dude. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, great, thanks, Christmas, you know? And then by Christmas dinner, you forgot about your new toy, you know? Right.

Yeah, and I, you know, there's definitely people, white people from this time, who write about the relationships they had with these kind of, these house slaves that you're like raised with as your friend and write about it being complicated and it leading them to question the system that they live under.

Thomas does not do that. At least we have no evidence that he does that at all. So Jefferson grows into a robust young man and he's very tall by his late teens. He's always noted as having been extremely healthy. Although Dumas cites many contemporaries who also described him as thin-skinned and extremely shy. While his father sat on the House of Burgesses,

which is like a Virginia congressional sort of thing prior to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. He's a prominent, his dad had been a prominent local politician and leader. Thomas was noted from kind of his late adolescence as being anti-social, or at the very least, not what you'd call an extrovert. Dumas interestingly describes him as being indifferent

to clothes as a young man and basically a little bit of a feral youth prior to finishing school and starting college at Williamsburg. Dumas credits him finally getting interested in fashion to the fact that he had started to notice the girls. There it is. Many such cases. That'll do it.

Yeah, that'll do it. That'll do it. Time to not be naked outside, I guess. Yeah. The ladies don't like that so much. Turns out I smell like this wild turkey I caught. I better do something about this. Yeah, exactly.

I gotta take care of that. Yeah. So in 1760, freshly coiffed, he leaves for college. And while he writes little about this period Winesack notes that Jupiter accompanied him on his next adventure quote When Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg Jupiter went with him as his personal servant Decades later when Jefferson drew up regulations for the University of Virginia He forbade students to have their slaves with him, which he thought ruined the character of young white men now

Okay, we simply lack, I don't know if anything happened at his own college experience that made him do this, or if he's just being like, these new kids are lazy. Like, not like me, it was great for me, but not them. I don't know. This, you brought up something that I feel like might be lacking in my knowledge of African American history.

Where's the writings of a Jupiter character? Oh yeah. A person who had to play this role. I can't think of any book I've read. Yeah, I was like, no, I actually never thought about that. Cause I'm imagining this situation from his perspective, obviously, so I'm like, that's where I could put myself in that person's shoes.

And I'm like, I don't know of any writings from that perspective. You get very few of them. We are going to read some quotes. There's a decent amounts, particularly of later in his life of like, and these were interviews that were conducted after he died often, but of people that he had owned and in some cases later freed who talked about him, right?

Who did talk about that time. We do have some of those accounts, but it's very rare and like you just don't get, and I don't know if it's like, obviously in a lot of cases, slaves were just outright forbidden from learning to read or write or even if they did, they had to be very careful about who knew. Jefferson was less strict about, certainly not like a hardliner on that particular issue, but we still don't have,

we have basically nothing on Jefferson, or on Jupiter, very little. And it's made me kind of think, cause obviously part of why you wanna do that is because it makes it harder for them to find their freedom. It makes it harder for them to forge papers and stuff. It makes it harder for them to find their freedom. It makes it harder for them to forge papers and stuff. It makes it harder for them to live if they escape from you.

I wonder if some of it's, it makes it harder or impossible for them to like give a different account of what their lives were like. That's exactly. Yeah. That's one of the biggest things. It's just like, don't nobody want to really tell you because, because like we did with the lost cause stuff, like you're, you're trying to convince the world. they're like, no, they like it, don't you? You know? And of course, you can't trust nobody's statements under duress. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. The

only like, you know, this is why the writings of like a Frederick Douglass, you know, are so important to the American story. You know what I'm saying? Because he was like, oh, look, I've been I've been I've been slaved and I've been free. And I ain't worried about nothing to what y'all saying. You know what I'm saying? So I think, you know, yeah. So like when, when, like you said, it's like, so when, you know, the gentry gets to say,

no, the experience is like this. It's like whistling Dixie. And then somebody goes, uh, actually, bro, it ain't like that fam. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And I, I, it ain't like that, fam. Yeah, and it's interesting because we do know Jupiter seems to have occupied a place of extreme trust in Jefferson's life.

Later in his life, he's going to carry explosives independently for his master and stuff. So that's like a, there's a lot of trust there. Same thing with like- Yeah, so that's what's so interesting about it because it's like you're a slave, but you're not, you know, I mean, we could talk free on this. I don't know why I'm censoring myself, but you're not a field nigga, you know what I'm saying?

No. So like a field nigga's story is gonna be very different. Very much so. Than a Jupiter's, you know what I'm saying? And so it's like, I just, I know, like, I can tell you of like readings about what it was like to work in a house versus working in a field, but this particular thing, I was like,

dang, I don't think I know any things about that. You know, when it comes to, because we're gonna read a quote kind of about the amount of loyalty a lot of the people who lived in his household had. And you have to keep in mind when you're trying to figure out like, well, why would they be so,

well, they were raised with him, right? Like we can talk about the objective morality of this system and how evil it is. But like to Jupiter, growing up in this, this is also the dude that you were raised with, right? Like, and we really, that's kind of, I mean, it's incomprehensible to me, you know? Of course.

But I'm gonna read a passage about, that Dumas Malone writes about Jefferson at age 20. Hey, but before you read that passage though, before you read that passage. Should I do an ad plug? Is it time for ads? It certainly is. Speaking of products and services,

we weren't, but here's some. Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning, and now we're sharing an all-new story of betrayal. Stacey thought she had the perfect husband. Doctor, father, family man. It was the perfect cover for Justin Rutherford to hide behind. They led me into the house, and I mean, it was like a movie.

He was sitting at our kitchen table. The cops were guarding him. Stacey learned how far her husband would go to save himself. I slept with a loaded gun next to my bed. He did not just say, I wish he was dead. He actually gave details and explained different scenarios on how to kill him. He to me is scarier than Jeffrey Dahmer.

Listen to Betrayal on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. More, more, more, more, more, better. Hey, I'm Melissa Fumero. And I'm Stephanie Beatriz. you get your podcasts. And we've been through it all together. And we are totally killing it. We are literally the best. No notes. Life is great. Ha ha ha ha ha. None of that was true. JK, JK, join us on our excellent adventure as we take on topics like listening to yourself.

There were a lot of red flags, and it did take me eight years to get there, but I got there. The challenge of self-care. This is important, because now you're about to be a mom of two kids. And making friends as an adult. We're going to share our struggles just white knuckling through life, babe.

We're going to speak to experts, and we're going to share everything we learn with you. Listen to more better with Stephanie and Melissa as part of the Michael Duda Podcast Network available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Flom, and you're Maggie Freeling. Hey, Jason. Every day we learn about another person

who shouldn't be in prison. 58 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. So glad you're home. If you want to be part of this work, listen to Wrongful Conviction. The podcast where we hand the mic to innocent people to hear their stories. How do you send someone innocent to prison?

Listen to new episodes of Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Frieling and Jason Flom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. So, Dumas Malone writes this about our boy TJ at age 20. On his way to the county courts and to Williamsburg, he generally went on horseback or in a one horse chair.

His servant Jupiter, who was just his age, as a rule went with him or followed close behind, possibly carrying his luggage in a cart. The name of this trusted companion of the road who had been going with him since his days as a law student recurs in his account books with regularity. Jefferson was always giving money to Jupiter to pay a saddler in Staunton, to pay for ferries to Williamsburg and for bread and candles there. He even borrowed small coin from Jupiter

at times when he himself ran out." And yeah, it is, you have to, again, not to take away from the immorality of this system, but you also, in order to understand what it was like living under them, you have to get that there is a kind of intimacy that often develops between these people, right? And it's just kind of people. Yeah, and just the, like you said,

the emotional complication of like, okay, what we would call now like survivor's guilt where it's like, okay, I know I made it. And I know like my situation is not as bad as everybody else's. I'm looking at this person that I could truly as I'm on this carriage, nicely dressed and smelling good, seeing somebody that could be my brother, cousin or uncle

or auntie or mom on the side of the road, picking cotton, knowing full well that, and I know what they think of as they see me, you know? And then you're like, well, you know, I, and in reality is I would much rather be on this cart than over there, you know what I'm saying? And like, just the complicated, yeah. Yeah, it is complicated.

And it's also like that whole thing about like, I could be related to this person in the field. In a lot of cases, this is not the case with Thomas and Jupiter, but it's going to be the case with Thomas and a lot of the other people that he owns. You are also related by blood to these people, right? That's your daddy.

That's your uncle, that's a cousin by marriage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. That's also, and that's a cousin by marriage. Yeah, yeah, totally. The fact that these people, these white families, these slave-owning families often raise their kids together with, usually there will be a family or a couple of families of privileged enslaved people who live in and around the home.

It creates these bonds that I think pervert, but often exist in the image of the concept of family bonds, right? I think this is a perversion of family bonds, but it does mimic that, right? And in Master of the Mountain, Wineset goes into more detail on this phenomenon. I'm gonna read this quote and then we can talk about it.

As after the Civil War, visiting Northerner, astonished at the story she had heard, I'm going to read this quote and then we can talk about it. After the Civil War, visiting Northerner, astonished at the story she had heard, asked a former slave how he could risk his life for the family that enslaved him. The answer was that the slaves had not lost a sense of common humanity. Often we left our own wives and children during the war in order to take care of the wives and children of our absent masters. And why did we do this? Because they were helpless and afraid. While our families were better able

to take care of themselves and had no fear. When they saw their oppressors stricken with fear, they did not rise up in vengeance, but offered help. Yeah. And that's, you know, emotionally messy. Yeah, it's both a malady and a testament, you know, to, like you said that know, to, like you said that like, well, we didn't lose humanity.

I know we were being treated like we weren't humans, but we know we were, we knew we're humans, you know? And like you said, like, I still see this little boy who's the child of, or this little girl who's the child of my master, but I'm like, you like, yeah, that's still a child, you know? And I know we're both human, you know, like, maybe you don't, I do.

And I'm not gonna let you take that from me. You know, I think that there was a lot of stuff that I was even raised with where it's like, you can't let, you can't let your oppressors strip you from your humanity, like don't let them take that also. And I think that that, that's something there. But the thought actually crossed my mind as you was talking about this weird family bond

that like, okay, it's absolutely obvious to everyone in this house, including the master's wife that that little girl, that little light-skinned little girl who works in my house looks just like my husband. So, I know that's your child, you know what I'm saying? And I just wonder if that played a role between the relationship of white women and black women where there's a level of resentment. the relationship of white women and black women

where there's a level of resentment. That's another thing I never thought about. And that's a thing, part of the difficulty of getting, I think, I'm sure that happens. I'm sure that's a part of the story that's significant, but they also didn't really let women write a lot. Like, you know, it was also not a lot of, you don't get as nearly, at least not as much as we get of the men, right?

I just, and I just wonder if like that element like plays such a role of like maybe some of the vitriol and like, besides just run of the mill racism, the specific vitriol towards specifically black women. Yeah, like I just wonder if like, I wonder if that's a thing where it's like, I mean, just all in my face. And rather than directing the anger

wherever it's supposed to be, you know what I'm saying? Where it's like, well, she's property. She didn't have no say in this. Your husband raped her. Like, I don't understand what you don't understand about that. You know, but.

And also, as we'll talk about later, often forced her to be like a nursemaid to your kids, right, which I'm sure also, especially when you're talking about like a woman like Martha Jefferson is going to be, his future wife, who is sickly, right? And so, yeah, like that's another complication to it. But I think we have established,

these are very complex relationships that we are going to be looking into and breaking down. That doesn't impact the evil that we attach to them, but it is worth understanding if you want to get a context for what life was like. Now when it comes to where Jefferson lands in the intellectual history of slavery, I think it's important that during this time, he is a voracious reader and he's kind of, you know, the term weeb we use for like, I think it came out of initially like, like white Americans who are obsessed with Japan, right?

He's kind of that, he's kind of a weeb for the Roman Republic, right? He is a huge fan. He's in love with his idea, this distorted idea of the history and culture of that place and time. And he understood it through the scholarship of his day as like kind of a golden age that was lost in a lot of ways. And this influences the attitudes and opinions

of these ancient Romans he's reading, influences his early feelings on how slavery ought to work, right, and on the morality of slavery. And in a lot of ways, his opinions on this are more Roman than American in his youth. He's going to age into an acceptance of what we now call scientific racism as an older man, but that's not entirely where he starts with things. At college, Thomas gains a reputation for being, in biographer Joseph Ellis' words, an obsessive student. Ellis writes in the book

American Sphinx that Thomas would spend sometimes 15 hours with his books, three hours practicing his violin and the remaining six hours eating and sleeping. He was an extremely serious young man. Wow. Jefferson would later write about the two years that he spent at college as the happiest years of his life. He was active in sports and he built a sizable friend group, which included Dabney Carr. His mentor was a math professor, William Small, who was a prominent deist and whose views on religion shaped Jefferson's own. This is a big part of how he comes to see himself as a deist.

He has this guy, William Small, this professor as a mentor. He graduates, he's going to have a couple because he doesn't have a dad anymore. He graduates in 1762 because life moved a lot faster in those days, or at least school did. He took an apprenticeship in the law with a guy named George Wythe. It's spelled Wythe, but it's pronounced Wythe apparently. This lasted five years and it acquainted Jefferson with the nuts and bolts of the kind of law that he was practicing, which was mainly land title law. He was representing planters in cases involving land claims for the most part.

Wythe was also an intellectual inspiration for Thomas, who called him my second father and described him as the American Cato. Now, this is going to get us into our detailed talk about one of the Romans that Thomas reads a lot, and that is Cato the Elder. There's a Cato the Younger too, both Catos are related, and both were like known to be kind of these moral paragons of a very specific set of austere agricultural values, right?

They are these kinds of guys who still are with us today. Right? You know, this kind of like conservative, obsessive sort of love of the concept of being a farmer often detached from any real knowledge of what being a farmer requires, right? Cato the Cato's, but particularly Cato the Elder is like, he is ground zero for that. He is like the first guy in Western literature to be like, ah, we all need to be farmers. Yeah, that's particular.

I think it's important to like drill down that type of personality. Like, yeah. And while it's actually very telling that he goes to Kato because it's like if somebody were to say they were a karate master or a jujitsu master, you're like, oh, word. Like, how many tournaments have you been in? And they're like, no, I just studied it

and I know all the things. So it's like, oh, you're a master because you read it. Not that you do it. You read a lot about karate. You just read all about karate. Maybe a higher guy would do karate for you. Yeah, so it's like, no, I can teach karate in a classroom. Not in a dojo, in a classroom.

That dude, Kato. Yeah, exactly. And there's this reality, this thing that's really starting to happen in a major way that dude, Cato. Yeah, exactly. And there's this reality, this thing that's really starting to happen in a major way while Cato the elder is alive, that's like basically the backbone of the Roman military had always been these small independent farmers, right? These guys are freemen, they're soldiers

when they're not farming, if the state needs them. And this is like, you know, Rome is going to constantly deal with the state needs them. Rome is going to constantly deal with the problem of that. Once they start to get big, you start having all these rich people buying up all of this land that smaller farmers had and working it with slaves. This destroys the social backbone that had supported the military. A lot of Roman politics is going to revolve around this change that happens. It's more complicated than we're going to get into today.

But what's important for you to know is that if he were alive today, Cato the Elder would have a TikTok, right? And it would be the kind of TikTok where he's like, he's like giving these angry rants over AI generated images of farmhouses and wives with too many fingers handling plates of indistinct food

to broods of Norman Rockwell looking kids. And he would go on all these. It'd be a split screen with somebody playing with slime on the other side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He would be going these long rants about returning to tradition. He'd be really angry about women in video games.

I have my suspicions. Oh, for sure. Oh, wow, yes. In his own day, Kato wrote a lot about his idealized concept of the free citizen farmer, a tough and morally upright creature who formed the backbone of Roman military might. Of course, this citizen farmer was also a slave master,

and Cato had very specific ideas on how slaves should be kept from Plutarch's life of Cato the Elder. Quote, a slave of his was expected to either be busy about the house or to be asleep. And he was very partial to the sleepy ones. He thought these gentler than the wakeful ones and those who had enjoyed the gift of sleep were better for any kind of service than those who lacked it. In the belief that his slaves were led into most mischief by their sexual passions, he

stipulated that males should consort with the females at a fixed price, but should never approach any other woman. So he makes his slaves pay him to have sex. Wow. There's something to be said about, I don't wanna go, don't too big of a tangent, but just like what the Romans meant when they said slaves being rather different

than what we meant. Yeah. But also the way that they viewed sexuality is so interesting that you brought that up because sex was, at least in the ancient Romans, was much less about pleasure than it was about dominance. You know what I mean? And social status and order, you know what I'm saying?

It's a way to display power. So- Yeah, certainly when you're talking about like the people that you own, yeah. Yes. So then to say that like, because if for your slave to be able to have choice in who they sleep with is to say that you're letting

your slave exert power or some sort of authority. And it's like, I can't let you do that. Like that's not in our worldview, yeah. And Cato seems to be saying that if you do that, that little bit of power, that little bit of agency you give them will lead them, could be the foundation of rebellion. Yes. Right?

Yes. And yeah, his attitude basically is that slaves are living tools, right? So they should be either working or unconscious, having exhausted themselves at the end of every single day. Because people don't like living this way and because Cato, despite talking about like austerity and how it's great to not be,

to lose yourself to these modern comforts, Cato is a guy who seeks a life of comfort provided by human bondage, the people who work for him without being paid, right? And he understood that in order to maintain that life, he has to keep his slaves divided and befuddled beneath him. Yes. Quote,

and this is from Plutarch, "'At the outset, when he was still poor and in military service, he found no fault at all with what was served up to him, declaring that it was shameful for a man to quarrel with the domestic over food and drink. But afterwards, when his circumstances were improved and he used to entertain his friends and colleagues

at table, no sooner was dinner over than he would flog those slaves who had been remiss at all in preparing or serving it. He was always contriving that his slaves should have feuds and dissensions among themselves. Harmony among them made him suspicious and fearful." So he's like beating his slaves after dinner, not even if they didn't do anything, just so that like they'll get angry at someone else, right? At one of the other people, you know? This is one of the guys that Thomas Jefferson

is reading obsessively, you know? The fact that he compares his mentor to the American Cato is meaningful, right? It means a lot, yes. Yeah. And yeah, Cato is, he's a conservative, right? And he's someone who believes in the maintenance of his own comfort through the suffering

and subjugation of others, but also someone who fetishizes this idea of independence and hard work, despite getting a lot of their station through inheritance. One of Cato's noteworthy sentiments was that a good Roman should seek to earn more than he inherited, and Jefferson would always obsess

over this image of himself as a great businessman, even though he never is able to really do that. While practicing law, Jefferson entered into adult society and found himself walking in some of the most respected circles in Virginia. He gained easy access to this scene due to his father's wealth and reputation, and Jefferson constantly spent more than he could afford to spend, burning away his inheritance trying to impress his wealthy society friends.

It was during this portion of his life that he fell in love for the first time to a young woman named Rebecca Burwell. Her parents had died when she was young, but left her a fabulous fortune. Her uncle, who was made her guardian, was the governor of New York. When he fell in love with her, Thomas, he was 20 and she was 16. And so, unlike Robert E. Lee, our boy TJ is going to fail early to earn the coveted Behind the Bastards Didn't Flirt with Children Award.

Didn't even barely made it to his twenties. You're almost in line with that one, Texas Romeo and Juliet law, right? 2016. So he's not as bad as some people. Allowing for the fact, well yet, he's gonna be actually much worse than most people, very, not too long from now, yes.

But allowing for the fact that this was more common back then we'll focus on that a little bit later. I also do want to acknowledge something most people already know, which is that guys who flirt with women who are a lot younger than them often have issues with control and self-confidence that make them want to be with someone

who is less able to exercise agency. And we can infer that this may have been part of what's happening with Jefferson from the fact that he is too shy to flirt with her directly. And so like after meeting her and falling in love, he flees to Shadwell for nine months. And then he like, he spends the whole time basically like getting his courage together.

And then when he comes back to Williamsburg, he does so, he tries to reconnect with her in this horribly awkward way, being like, hey, sorry, I was gone for nine months. I absolutely intend to ask for your hand in marriage, probably in the future, probably in the near future, but I gotta go to England first, is that cool with you? And Rebecca seems to have been like,

I don't know what to fucking do with this. And so another dude gives her an actual marriage proposal and she marries that guy. Dumas writes, he explained this inactivity to others on the ground that he had been abominably lazy, but the probability is that he was now deeper in the law than in love, by which Dumas means he was just obsessed with his job and workaholic.

Speaking of workaholic, do you know what cleans my palette is the products and services that support this podcast. Do they Robert? Is that accurate? It cleans your book too. Cleans whatever. You can buy your toilet paper. If we sell that.

Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning and now we're sharing an all new story of betrayal. Stacey thought she had the perfect husband. Doctor, father, family man. It was the perfect cover for Justin Rutherford to hide behind. It led me into the house, and I mean, it was like a movie.

He was sitting at our kitchen table. The cops were guarding him. Stacey learned how far her husband would go to save himself. I slept with a loaded gun next to my bed. He did not just say I wish he was dead. He actually gave details and explained different scenarios on how to kill him. He, to me, is scarier than Jeffrey Dahmer. ["I Heart Radio," by The Bachelorette plays in background.]

Listen to Betrayal on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. More, more, more, more, more better. Hey, I'm Melissa Fumero, and I'm Stephanie Beatriz. You may know us from television. Nine, nine. More, better. And now we're here with our very own podcast,

More Better with Stephanie and Melissa. We've known each other for thousands of years. And we've been through it all together. And we are totally killing it. We are literally the best. No notes, life is great. None of that was true. J.K., J.K., join us on our excellent adventure

as we take on topics like listening to yourself. There were a lot of red flags, and it did take me eight years to get there, but I got there. The challenge of self-care. This is important, because now you're about to be a mom of two kids. And making friends as an adult.

We're going to share our struggles just white-knuckling through life, babe. We're going to speak to experts. And we're going to share everything we learn with you. Listen to More Better with Stephanie and Melissa as part of the Michael Duda Podcast Network available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Flom, and you're Maggie Freeling.

Hey, Jason. Every day we learn about another person who shouldn't be in prison. 58 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. So glad you're home. If you wanna be part of this work, listen to Wrongful Conviction. The podcast where we hand the mic to innocent people to hear their stories.

How do you send someone innocent to prison? Listen to new episodes of Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Frieling and Jason Flom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So the most noteworthy consequence of these early years in law and high society was that it started bringing Jefferson into contact with some of the men who would become influential voices of the revolution.

This was 1765 and he was training to be a lawyer still when he first listened to Patrick Henry extemp against British tax policy, in this case, the Stamp Act. Henry, you're all familiar with Henry, the give me liberty or give me death guy, right? He's a fiery orator. That's kind of what he's still known for. And he is a very like,

he's a hardliner for independence, right? And Jefferson, he's a hardliner because he doesn't believe that parliament has any right to tax the colonies. And Jefferson agrees with this very strict stance, right? There's no reason parliament should be able to tax American landowners and farmers for any purpose. In American Sphinx, Ellis describes Jefferson as turning into kind of a fundamentalist on

this point. From his earliest days in the House, he opposed all forms of parliamentary taxation and supported non-importation resolutions against British trade regulations. Now, while Jefferson felt strongly about this, his participation in the debates of the day was mostly limited to watching and listening. He was still very shy and not confident in his voice or perhaps his mind. Ellis continues, He seemed to most of his political contemporaries a hovering and ever-silent presence, like one of those foreigners at a dinner party who nod privately as they move

from group to group, but never reveal whether or not they can speak the language. He had a deep-seated aversion to the inherent contentions and routinized hurly burly of a political career and was forever telling his friends that life on the public stage was not for him. Just as his political career was getting started, he seemed poised for retirement. Wow.

I do know dudes that like, are just introverted and quiet and just whenever things are happening right now, like they actually have a trillion amazing things to say. They're just, I just don't feel like I need to jump into this and I actually in some ways admire that because I am very much the like, like there's lava in my mouth.

I have to talk like, so like for it to be- Oh really? Oh really? Yeah. Loquacious we'd say. Surprise, surprise, surprise. You know? Wow. Yeah. Jefferson is very much one of those like discretion

is the better part of being a smart guy. Yeah. But he's also, he's gonna kind of, it's gonna cause some problems for him too. But he gets chosen to represent his district in the House of Burgesses in 1768 after it had been dissolved by the royal governor after a dispute around, you know, taxation. We're not going to labor on this much because I think this kind of stuff gets covered in school a lot and it's not super relevant to the bastardry in Jefferson's life. But the basic issue here is that Parliament

wanted Americans to pay taxes like everybody else, and Americans felt this was unfair as they weren't really represented in Parliament. The French and Indian Wars, which had concluded a little bit earlier, were a major inciting incident here because they had driven up debt for the Crown, which inspired a lot of the taxes and duties

on American goods that Jefferson and his cohorts are going to rail against. And it was during his time in the House of Burgesses that Jefferson first comes into contact with George Washington, who led an effort to have Virginia join the Association for the Non-Importation of British Manufacturers. This was an effort of intracolonial solidarity to protest British taxes on goods and support domestic manufacturing. Jefferson hated the idea that the Americas would have to import basic necessities from

elsewhere in the empire instead of having their own manufacturing base for those products, which is going to be strangled by the taxes and duties that parliament was pushing through. Like a lot of problematic dudes, Jefferson is going to grow increasingly obsessed with these ideas of autarky, right? Of radical self-reliance on both an individual and a national level. And he kind of is gonna come to believe that the basis of the society he wants to build should be these independent Yale men farmers

who produce all the necessities of life on their own, independent properties, or at least most of them, and kind of the nation that these people build in common together will itself be independent, right? It's not gonna need anything from elsewhere. Now this kind of life, the reality of it, like as with Kato's fantasies, it's only really possible with large numbers of enslaved.

It's like it requires slaves, yeah. To that point, from what I understand, like yeah, his picture of America was not big city. And that actually became quite a point of contention because of like just the very, his very just, his imagination of what this world could be is not modern. It's not. So that played such a role in his view of slavery

and a view of this and like, yeah. So like that, that in turn, if you took another like founder that was like, nah, dude, we could be modern. Like let's, we can be the future, you know, yeah. Yeah, you know, and there were a lot of these, a lot of those guys, Jefferson, his vision of kind of his ideal society,

for as much as he talks about democracy and his interested in progress as he is, and he's going to label himself an ally with the progressives of his time, what he talks about really seems like feudal to me in a lot of ways. These little feudal independent states run on slavery, right? Which is kind of their version of serfdom. It's made clear kind of how some of his beliefs are moving along in 1768, which is the same year he joins the house of Burgessus. And that's the year he

decides to build a house for himself on top of a mountain, Monticello, on a parcel of land inherited from his father. Building Monticello is going to be the work of a lifetime and in some ways the most insidiously evil direct action of Jefferson's life. But at this stage, his plans were unsettled. In 1772, he married Martha Wales Skelton, who had been widowed young and thus had a huge amount of wealth and property to offer him. The family slaves who were later interviewed about this marriage, describe it as a love match though, not something done for property, which is interesting and probably suggests that that's what it was, right?

They wrote about this as different from a lot of the other arranged marriages that they saw among the white people who were kind of at the top of their society. We don't really know much about the relationship because Jefferson later destroys most of his correspondence with Martha. Great.

Yeah, I don't know what's going on there. It may have just been a thing he did out of grief because she's not going to live a long life. And neither is her father, John. He is less of a mystery though, because he was a slave trader. Henry Wynsek writes, When Jefferson courted the beautiful Martha Wales, he spent evenings by the fire with her father, old John,

who undoubtedly talked business with the young suitor, discoursing on slaves in the peaks and valleys and the market for them. The incoming tide of slaves washed up against the steps of the county courthouses. Every late summer and fall, the lawyers and magistrates had the routine of land transactions and debt collections interrupted when overseers herded gangs of newly delivered African children onto the courthouses through the magistrates to scrutinize, their task being to assign each child an age. When children reached 16, they became taxable. So the planters had an interest in low estimates."

Wow. Yeah. The idea that like, you don't even really have your age. Yeah. That's something that like these guys are kind of hashing out independent of you. Yeah. Now, from what he would write later, we can infer that Jefferson was horrified by aspects of what Wales told him, particularly about the passage, like from Africa to the Americans. Yeah, the Middle Passage.

Yeah. Yeah. And so much so that he eventually is going to take action, not long after this point. Soon after joining the House of Burgesses, sometime at the end of the 1760s or the start of the 1770s, he submitted an emancipation bill anonymously through a cousin. Jefferson himself hated face-to-face conflict

and the vicious reaction to the bill, his cousin was accused of hating his country, reinforced his fear of speaking out on the issue. But he does at this point, he does try something. That's nothing either. Yeah, and to know that like what gets outlawed first is the importation of new slaves, of which I think indirectly is connected to Jefferson being

like something about this is crazy. And it's connected to Jefferson's, this belief he's going to express for a while about how slavery should be brought to an end. He's not going to consistently advocate for that, but yeah, we're getting ahead of ourselves. In 1773, Jefferson's best friend, Dabney Carr, died. He had married Thomas's sister, Martha, and his loss was an understandable blow to Thomas. What's harder to understand is how he responds to Dabney's death, as described in an article

by the National Park Service. While slaves were preparing Carr's grave, Jefferson sat nearby, taking notes on the time required to turn the soil. Two men spent three and a half hours at this job. Thus, Jefferson calculated, one man would take seven hours, and could therefore be expected to turn an acre of ground in four working days. What? Now, that's a weird response to losing your best friend.

Yeah. So like, normally I say there's no wrong way to grieve, but carefully studying the number of slave man hours needed to bury your friend while you watch them dig his grave is the wrong way to grieve. Bro, can you imagine- That's a bad way. You imagine sitting next to somebody grieve and putting your arm around them, they just real quiet.

And you like, bro, man, hey, I just want you to know you could talk to me about anything, man. I love you, homie. Like, how you feeling right now, man? What's on your mind? I feel like you could turn an acre of soil in about four days.

I'm sorry, what? Sorry? Yeah, wait. That's what you were saying about right now? Okay. Such a weirdo. I'd be like, uh, all right, man. Yeah, like what do you say to that as your whole boy?

All right, Thomas. Like, all right, all right, Thomas. Okay. Well, let me know if you need anything, bro. You're welcome for burying your friend. Yeah, how about that? Yeah. So that same year, the same year that Daphne dies, his father-in-law is also going to die. And you know, fuck him.

He leaves Martha Jefferson 11,000 acres of land, 35 slaves, and what biographers generally describe as innumerable debts. The exact reason for those debts is important to understand if we're going to grasp fully how the man who proposed abolition- Wait, it just says innumerable debts. Innumerable debts. That's hilarious. This man is under fucking water. And we're gonna talk about why he's underwater, right? Because- Super vague, but also not vague at all.

Strangely accurate. I was like, all right, all right, copy that, sir. Yeah, what is said and what's being communicated. Yeah, what is said is vague, but what being communicated is spot on. Yeah, yeah. And again, this guy, Wales, John Wales, I think, has been a wholesaler of human beings.

And he had, shortly before dying, set up a big deal in 1772 for a consignment of enslaved people coming in on a boat called the Prince of Wales. Only 280 of the 400 people aboard survived, which was a high rate of loss. I mean, it was never a low rate of loss, right? But this was, it was bad, seen as bad.

And this shrank their potential profits. But then they sold 266 of these people and they did so on credit to quote unquote wealthy planters who claimed to be good for it. And the plan they did so on credit to quote unquote wealthy planters who claimed to be good for it and the planters were buying on credit because they needed these guys to harvest their tobacco and then they were going to sell the tobacco and then they were going to pay back Wales but then the tobacco market crashed that year and the planters had no cash and thus Wales and his business partner had to make good on the payment to the original slavers in London. Thomas Jefferson inherited this debt in 1773.

And he is, it's gonna take, he's not really getting out of this, right? Like this is gonna be hanging. It's like a student loan, right? It's like an evil student loan. I mean, student loans are a different kind of, very different, very different. Yeah, yeah.

Student loan only for slaves. Yes, yeah. It's like a student loan, right. And like with a similarly ruinous rate of interest, right? So he's not gonna be able to like really pay any of these or the debts that he has accrued off. Situations like this are not uncommon for the wealthy Virginia planting class, right?

These guys are wealthy in quotation marks. And to explain this, we have to talk about what Jefferson and his peers considered wealth, right? Because they're not talking about like cash, right? You know, like they are talking about primarily land, right? Wealth is land to a lot of these guys. And the fact that all of them are hideously in debt, mostly to British lenders is inconvenient and a problem,

but it doesn't change their impression of themselves, right? As wealthy men, but it does cause all these problems because that land can be taken away, right? And debt is inherited in this period. And so debt is going to be a central issue for Jefferson over the course of his decades in public life. He would often advocate for the elimination of American debts held by English bankers

during post-war negotiations. And like Robert E. Lee, a generation later, he came to see the human beings that he had inherited as a path out of the debt trap that his relatives and his own spending had locked him into. In 1774 and 1775, the conflict over British taxation and rule of the colonies reached a fever pitch and boiled over into armed resistance. Jefferson became a major figure in Virginia and increasingly well-known throughout the colonies

for his full-throated or at least full-pinned, because he's not really a talking guy at this point, defense of the Boston Tea Party. Now he writes a lot about the Tea Party, not historically accurate shit, but what he writes sets the popular conception of this moment to an extent that it still exists today. You can draw a line from what Jefferson writes about these people to like the Tea Party that

we had in the early aughts, right? And I'm going to quote from American Sphinx here. In Jefferson's account, a dedicated group of loyal Bostonians risked arrest and persecution to destroy a cargo of the contraband. Samuel Adams, a major figure in the Continental Congress and the chief organizer of the Tea Party must have chuckled in satisfaction knowing as he did that the loyal Bostonians were really a group of hooligans and vandals who had disguised themselves as Indians in order to avoid being identified and who had enjoyed the tacit support of the Boston merchants,

many of whom had made their fortunes in smuggling. Sam Adams realized that the Tea Party was an orchestrated act of revolutionary theater. Jefferson described it as a spontaneous act of patriotism conducted according to the etiquette of well, a Tea Party. But then again, perhaps Jefferson's version was itself a propagandistic manipulation, just as self-consciously orchestrated as the Tea Party itself. Yeah. Now, the whole point of that book by Ellis, American Sphinx, the reason he calls it American Sphinx is that Jefferson has really hard to pin down

about this and other stuff, right? You can make a case, if you're arguing about like modern politics, that he'd be on both sides of most issues of his day or of like today, right? Like, because he's very inconsistent and he's fine with lying to protect his own image. He does it all the time, but he's also really good at writing. He's a inconsistent and he's fine with lying to protect his own image. He does it all the time,

but he's also really good at writing. He's a great writer. And so like the stuff he writes, Ellis describes his writing on the tea party as being like a fairy tale, right? And obviously the fact that that distortion gets passed down to such an extent is a credit to his ability to craft reality, which is very much what he is doing, right?

He's building, Ellis describes it as like a fantasy world for himself that is robust enough to occasionally admit the rest of the country. And- That's a good way. Yeah, that's a good way to say him. Yes. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

And we're gonna talk about that and a lot more in part two, but Prop. Yo. It's the end of part one But I hope you all had a good time Prop you got any pluggables to plug in hood politics with prop we do a hood politics for eyeballs Which don't have a don't have no cuss words in it and it's a little shorter so you can play to the kiddos But yeah, pull politics with prop go to prop hip hop. You could find the pod on all of the things. And yeah, man. And I'm gonna continue to rock with y'all, man.

Oh, I wrote a book, I wrote a poetry book called, Terrapin. You sure did. Yeah, and yeah, man. Excellent. Well, everybody, that's it for part one. Come back tomorrow where we'll talk about more Thomas Jefferson. Bye.

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning,

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