Podcast
Behind the Bastards
The book explores the complex relationship between Jefferson and the enslaved people at Monticello, noting that Jefferson never gave them a second thought beyond their functionality, while some of them expressed affection for him.
One of the reasons I like Henry Winesack's book, Master of the Mountain, is that he reflects on the complex dimensions of this relationship with a line that I think is really useful to parsing out wha...
— Episode: Part Three: Thomas Jefferson: King of Hy...
Episode: Part Three: Thomas Jefferson: King of Hypocrites
The book explores the complex relationship between Jefferson and the enslaved people at Monticello, noting that Jefferson never gave them a second thought beyond their functionality, while some of them expressed affection for him.
One of the reasons I like Henry Winesack's book, Master of the Mountain, is that he reflects on the complex dimensions of this relationship with a line that I think is really useful to parsing out what's going on here on a moral level.
asked to reminisce about Jefferson. Several slaves summoned up warm memories of their master on the other side of the divide. However, Jefferson left no intimate account of the Monticello slaves.
In other words, members of the Hemings, Granger Evans families expressed affection for Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson relied utterly on these people for the health and safety of his family.
And based on the writing we left behind, never gave them a second thought beyond that. There's no real evidence he thought of them as people.
Pressing the come on, fam, button in Mass of the Mountain. Henry Wiencek writes Jefferson admitted mentioning that the Virginia legislature had liberalized the slave laws so as to enable individual owners to free people at will for Demunay would have then asked why persons of virtue and firmness had not yet freed their slaves, particularly why Jefferson had not freed his