Monticello’s Complicated History

I enjoyed my recent visit to Monticello, however, my feelings were tempered. Throughout the house tour, the role of slavery had been emphasized repeatedly. I had always thought so highly of Thomas Jefferson, his achievements, and his contributions to the founding and establishment of America. Nevertheless, his role in using and cultivating the slave market are indeed fact-based. Therefore, the questions surrounding such an evil practice are both honest and necessary.

As I paused in Jefferson's garden after the house tour, I pondered the lives that kept this place running some 200 years ago. I felt an overwhelming sadness for what had been accommodated here. The proximity to the furtherance of slavery, no matter how complicated its origins and eventual dissolution in America, was sobering. Obviously even more so, because here the slavery was furthered by an international champion of liberty.

Despite his many unparalleled essential contributions to our freedom, the fact remains that Jefferson participated in the buying and selling and production of enslaved human beings. The resulting severed and fractured families is a stain that he could never possibly reconcile and ultimately did not. The practice of slave trading was a hideous evil, and Jefferson prospered from it.

It doesn’t diminish Jefferson’s unparalleled contributions to America’s Founding to critique his failings with open eyes. We owe so many of our freedoms to his foresight. Thankfully, those same rights are part of the cultural DNA of the descendants of those who were denied them in America’s early years.

America, as no other nation, has adapted, grown and expanded on the world’s stage. I never support the eradication of historical monuments, statues, works of art, etc. that memorializes any part of the era of America’s slavery. Instead, it is good to remind ourselves of what we as a country have grown beyond – keep the good of it in our historical memory, but also retain those visible reminders of where we never want to go again.

Valuing all human life must, sooner or later, become a central integral bedrock of the collective American conscience.