The Jefferson paradox

Charlottesville, VA -- When we were last here, at the beginning of our trip, we stayed in a hotel because it was too cold for camping. Today we're back, and it's too hot to camp without using our air conditioner! Fortunately, we are so equipped and are therefore quite comfortable.

It was a short hop from Appomattox to Monticello, just outside of Charlottesville, so after our drive through a winding, up-and-down country highway, we had plenty of time to spend on the grounds of Thomas Jefferson's estate, which has been designated as a Unesco World Heritage site.

Set atop a mountain in the midst of a 5,000 acre property, the third president's home was built according to his own architectural design. With its dome and columns and large windows, it dominates the hilltop, with a wide lawn in front of it edged with flowerbeds and tall trees. The view from the top is breathtaking, with the Blue Ridge mountains in the distance and green fields and forests spread out below.

Ariel, our guide, took us inside and showed us many examples of Jefferson's ingenuity. One item, his seven-day pendulum clock, caught my attention in particular, because I came to Monticello as a child when we were living in the US, and I remembered the cannon-ball weights that operated the clock, indicating the day of the week down the wall, with Sunday at the top near the ceiling and Friday at baseboard level. Jefferson had to cut a hole in the floor so the weights could go through, and Saturday's spot was one floor below in the basement!

Other gadgets included a dumb waiter in a sitting room, hidden on the side of the fireplace, which could carry up bottles of wine, placed in it by a servant in the wine cellar. Jefferson also invented a globe-shaped sundial that still works today.

Of course, Thomas Jefferson is best known as the author of the Declaration of Independence, with its inspirational phrases such as "all men are created equal" and everyone has the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". But his personal life seems to fly in the face of these exalted principles; he owned some 600 slaves and believed black people to be inferior, ignorant and incapable of abstract reasoning.

After touring the rooms of the mansion, with their classical paintings, displays of aboriginal art, and vast collections of books, as well as rich tapestry drapes and fine furniture, we went outside to take the tour of the grounds where armies of enslaved people grew crops, prepared food, tended livestock and kept the household running.

Two rough one-room shacks depict a typical home for the enslaved men, women and children who worked on the plantation from sun-up to sundown six days a week. They are copies of what originally stood along the side of the main house. Zella, our guide for this portion of the visit, had the difficult job of describing the hard life of Jefferson's slaves, who lived constantly with the fear of being separated from loved ones if they got sold off. While some who worked in the kitchen produced sumptuous meals in the French cuisine style Jefferson preferred, their own meagre rations of food consisted of dried corn, salt pork and fish. And they had to till the fields, cure the meat and catch the fish themselves.

It was hard to listen to the stories of the African-American people of those times, and to gaze at some of the other visitors in our tour group with black skin and wonder what their thoughts might have been. It was hard to understand how a brilliant man like Jefferson could draft documents that stirred the hearts of his countrymen to strive for human ideals, and at the same time could countenance the whipping of enslaved children and the hard labour of their mothers and fathers.

So, our day was a varied and interesting one that gave us lots to ponder. Our last stop on the property was the Jefferson family cemetery where a large obelisk stands above Jefferson's grave. On it is engraved the three accomplishments of which Jefferson was most proud, the Declaration of Independence, his statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and his founding of the University of Virginia.

Once settled at our campsite, a few miles from Monticello, it was time to get the laundry squared away for another week. From the sublime to the ridiculous!

(We also discovered we don't have cellphone connectivity here, so I will have to post my photos of the day some time tomorrow when we do.)