Monticello: Thomas Jefferson’s Mountaintop, by Chuck Strom

If I could choose any stone to have over my grave, my pick would be Thomas Jefferson’s. His is an obelisk, and his epitaph reads as follows:

HERE WAS BURIEDTHOMAS JEFFERSONAUTHOR OF THEDECLARATIONOFAMERICAN INDEPENDENCEOF THESTATUTE OF VIRGINIAFORRELIGIOUS FREEDOMAND FATHER OF THEUNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

This is as noteworthy for what it leaves out as well as for what it includes. Jefferson also was the third President of the United States, but somehow he did not think that important enough to list among his accomplishments. He may have thought, correctly, that the others were more than enough to guarantee his immortality.

The family graveyard is just down the hill from Monticello, Jefferson’s iconic mountain residence. Last summer, I fulfilled one of my lifetime desires and visited the place, not only to see where Jefferson lived but also because I had heard of the structure’s many innovations. As one of my college professors once said, “There were lots of things in Jefferson’s house that went bang and whack.” Some of these were well known, such as Jefferson’s dumbwaiter, where he could put an empty bottle of wine into a small dining room cabinet, ring a bell, and make a filled bottle appear as if by magic.

Monticello did not have the intimidating grandeur of the Vanderbilts’ Biltmore mansion, which I had just toured, but otherwise it lived up to its reputation during my visit. It is kept in far better condition than in Jefferson’s day, mostly because the Thomas Jefferson Foundation has more reliable funding than the debt-burdened Jefferson. The house tour started in the front hall, where Jefferson displayed many of the Indian artifacts and other items he received from the Lewis and Clark expedition. It accomplished his intention to impress visitors with his knowledge of anthropology and geography. The other rooms that impressed me most were the parlor and his bedroom/study. Inside the parlor were some extraordinary paintings, including a large and prominently displayed image of Herodias holding the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Despite the stark nature of the image, the features of both Herodias and the head itself were portrayed with such a gentle softness as to make the scene almost tender. Considering that Jefferson, who was a Deist, was not particularly devoted to Christianity and its imagery, I wondered what led him to acquire the painting.

The bedroom/study, for its part, was a wonderful space. The study contained a lot of Jefferson’s contraptions, including a revolving stand that could hold five open books at once and a polygraph that would make duplicate copies of letters as Jefferson wrote them. The bed was set in an alcove between the two rooms, so Jefferson could roll out of bed in the mornings and sit at his desk a few feet away where he composed and read his voluminous correspondence. “That’s a short commute,” I said to the tour guide. The bedroom was also well-situated in another way, depending on your view of Jefferson’s personal life. It was the only bedroom on the first floor, and it was near an outside entrance, making it possible for his alleged mistress, Sally Hemings, to go in and out in the night without being observed.

The Jefferson Foundation and its Monticello staff are much more forthcoming on the subject of slavery than they used to be. In the past, it was not unusual for them to sanitize Jefferson’s records of any unsavory references to this part of his life, including whippings and sales of uncooperative slaves to distant plantations. In this, they acted in the spirit of Jefferson himself, who was conscious of his reputation and did much to conceal these details from antislavery friends who questioned him on the peculiar institution. At present, visits to Monticello include walking tours on slavery as it existed there in Jefferson’s time, including its unpleasant parts, and the staff explicitly leaves to visitors any judgment on what took place.

For many, including some historians, these revelations have been disturbing, not merely because they tarnish Jefferson’s reputation but also because they appear to diminish the ideals of our nation, such as the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which he espoused in the Declaration of Independence. It is perhaps human nature to associate those ideals with the real-life Jefferson and to deny or dismiss his unsavory aspects on that basis, but this approach is misguided. I read a lot of biographies—one of my pastimes—and I do not recall a single subject of those works who did not have a character flaw or a dirty secret that eventually reached the light of day. Sometimes it takes a while for that to happen. Three decades after Charles Lindbergh passed away, for example, his family confirmed that he had children by three mistresses in Europe, maintaining separate households for each. Lindbergh’s secrets may have been more dramatic than most, but it would be silly to suggest that they somehow erased his honorable achievements. He still flew solo over the Atlantic, and most of what he did afterward, with the exception of his America First involvement, deserved the credit it received.

So also for Jefferson and his achievements as they read on his epitaph. Good deeds can be honored in the context of failings in other parts of life. They give us hope that sometimes we can be better than we normally are.

– Chuck Strom