Jefferson Lives

we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal those words those immortal words were written by a young Virginian age 33 named Thomas Jefferson those words changed the world Thomas Jefferson lives in those words and he lives here at Monticello why do people like this happen what gives rise to them if you come him out of cello you feel that contact with it I know I went there as a youngster and something clicked inside me that changed my life and to be up there and to think here's where he lived and these are the rooms of the walkthrough and this is the view he saw and this isn't a recreation this is the real thing Jefferson was one of the Luminess minds of the 18th century not just in our country but in the world and his bearing on our present day couldn't be greater his championship of ideals as well as ideas freedom of press religious freedom and maybe most of all education that an educated public is essential in a free society that's the message that Monticello jeferson unlike some others never actually sat down and wrote an autobiography his real autobiography is Monticello you can walk around the house and you begin to see the man Thomas Jefferson was a gifted writer with an idealistic vision and his words shaped America they shaped who we are Jefferson was also an architect and at Monticello he expressed his vision of America he drew every detail of Monticello he made specifications to the ten thousandths of an inch everything at Monticello is a metaphor for Jefferson's intellect and his curiosity jefferson intended the entrance-hall as a museum and it was the first such place in America and in it he had a cloth because he was ever conscious of the passing of time he was surrounded by maps because he was ever wanting to place Monticello within the larger universe Jefferson was entirely committed to the success of the country that he had helped found and Monticello was his laboratory its paintings its scientific instruments its maps its Native American artifacts collected by Lewis and Clark were all ways of educating Jefferson's family and visitors and of course his own inner sanctum his cabinet as it was called his office and enjoins his bedroom surrounding himself with what he loved everything that you see reflects his interests and coming here enables people to make that connection you can tell a lot about anybody by what they love and you can tell a great deal about Thomas Jefferson at Monticello by seeing his orchard his garden is treat the gardens at Monticello were indeed an autobiographical statement of comics Jefferson you see ever so much the head in the heart of Thomas Jefferson on the one hand you see the human and the personal Jefferson in the way he designed his Grove or his flowerbeds around the house or the way that he use gardening his way relating to friends and family and neighbors we also see him as a garden experimenter growing 250 varieties of vegetables in 170 brought is a fruit keeping a garden diary called his garden book and this garden book has enabled us to put the gardens back fairly faithfully in terms of their structure and the character the plants that were grown in them this is the real thing the same flowers that he grew the same orchard that he had the same Vista miraculously is all there for us to include in our experience in our time 200 and some years later he's wonderful we looked at gardening as more of a scientist and his curiosity I think was very much expressed in the way that Monticello became sort of an experimental station of noon unusual plants that came literally from around the world Jefferson said that the greatest service which can be rendered any country is that useful plant to its culture and I think this curiosity was really unbounded in a lot of different ways I don't know how many times I have been to Monticello but I had always gone there and seen something I had never seen before and come away with something new in the way of an idea or a question no one who comes to mother cello will not be interested in the slave system that made Monticello possible as they should as we all should Monticello was certainly a working plantation it was a community on Mulberry row you would have seen furniture being made people worked in the mills they worked in the fields for a large portion of the time people worked in building this house Jefferson recognized that some of the people who worked here were unmatched in terms of their skills I have a real sense of the people who lived here I know their names and I know their physical descriptions but when I look around here I can see their work and I feel very proud of that and I think that other Americans african-americans included when they come here and they're truly able to understand what took place here I think that it'll also be a source of pride for that I feel very strongly every American should come to my job because it is a tangible contact with that distant time and those vanished people who are all through our lives whether we're cognizant of that or not they are there most people think of Thomas Jefferson in terms of his public career which is natural because he was in politics for over 40 years he held virtually every office for being a justice of the peace here in Albemarle County to the presidency well they think of just in terms of that he was the father of the University of Virginia which was founded on the illimitable freedom of the human mind but I think his most important contribution was his ability to articulate the highest ideals of the American people after Jefferson's death the family oftenly had to sell property the 1830s it was purchased by remarkable individual here on Phillips levy he believed that the homes a great men should be preserved as monuments to their memory ultimately in 1923 the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation was incorporated in New York City and purchased the property and since that time has been open to the public on a regular basis Monticello is the only home in America on the world heritage list Monticello is on that list with a Great Wall of China and the pyramids of Egypt the mission of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation is preservation and education we're here to save a finite resource and now it's time to make it even more authentic we want to restore all the places on the mountaintop so that they will be more like they would have been in Jefferson's time and thus the visitor will be able to understand Jefferson himself I feel that each of us is responsible for helping as best we can to pass the torch to see that this great American place and all that embodies is preserved saved perspective to the next generation it's much more than just about a building called mother shell as spectacular as that building is it's about what's at the heart of the American spirit Thomas Jefferson lives in every front-page headline story about freedom of speech our freedom of religion Thomas Jefferson lives every time we send our children to our school system nationwide Thomas Jefferson lives in our appreciation of the great architecture of America Thomas Jefferson lives in the world of the mind and new ideas that's at the heart of Jefferson's spirit the presence of Thomas Jefferson has felt here as nowhere else Thomas Jefferson lives here had mono JA

Channel: TeachMonticello

Views: 24,856

Rating: 4.830986 out of 5

Keywords: social, science, humanities, thomas, jefferson, monticello, history

Id: hfkQjDK8USg

Length: 9min 19sec (559 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 09 2007