Thomas Jefferson’s Coming Home

Lin-Manuel Miranda spent years creating the absolutely brilliant, witty, historical musical, Hamilton. It is so brilliant in fact that the lyrics continually repeat in your head. Today was a day that the lyrics were supported by what we saw and did that they often escaped our heads and formed in our vocal cords.

Thomas Jefferson’s homecoming from France and his home of Monticello are referenced multiple times in the show, and today, we saw his home of “little mountain.”

I had sort of had visiting Monticello on my radar, but it wasn’t high on my list. However, thankfully, multiple people told me about how incredible it was, so thankfully, we made stopping here a priority.

In Thomas Jefferson’s lifetime, the home was part of a 5,000 acre estate, and home to over 100 slaves. And yet, amazingly, the home itself does not actually appear massive or overbearing. A trick of the eye developed by Jefferson himself. The house is actually three stories tall, but it only looks like about a floor and a half.

I knew that as a founding father, Thomas Jefferson must have been a very wise guy, but I had no idea how clever he truly was. He could read in six languages in addition to English. He is credited as being one of the first meteorologists because he recorded the wind, weather and temperature twice a day.  He has plants named after him due to his work as a botanist. He has an extinct animal named after him because of his work as a paleontologist. All around his home, you see creations of his own invention such as the clock that is weighted with cannonballs which slowly is pulled throughout the week marking the day of the week, the wine dumbwaiter that brought wine to the dining room, the double door that closed when just one of them was pulled to, the lock in his bedroom that could be released by a pull of a rope from his bed across the room, and the double pen that when he wrote letters, copied another letter at the same time. He also believed strongly in education, helping to found the University of Virginia. The foyer of his home where guests would wait to greet him was full of things that allowed people to educate themselves while they waited. A mastodon jaw, maps of around the world, mounted animal heads and horns, drawings by ancient people, old weapons, all filled the room just waiting to be learned about. Absolutely incredible!

The grounds themselves were stunning. There were lovely gardens of vegetables and flowers, rows of grape vines in the vineyard, all atop this little mountain with sweeping views of the surrounding countryside.

All of this beauty is marked with a dark stain as well. Thinking about the many slaves that Jefferson owned over his lifetime and the way that they were inevitably treated is horrific. The long hours, grueling work, and hot sun that they endured to keep the huge estate going is a reminder of a terrible part of our nation’s history. It seems odd that a man so brilliant, who fought for religious freedom, couldn’t see how slavery was wrong.

While Hamilton and Jefferson argued about the financial plan of the government, Jefferson pointed out that the south was where things were grown and created, but Hamilton pointed out, “we know who’s really doing the planting.”