The Mountain and Its Contradictions

Visitors come to Monticello expecting the home of a founding father, and they find that, but they also find a plantation where over 600 people were enslaved over the course of Jefferson's lifetime. The Revolutionary War story here — Tarleton's raid, Jefferson's narrow escape, the British soldiers drinking his wine — is dramatic, but it is not the whole story, and it may not be the most important one.

What we have tried to do in recent years is present the full community that lived on this mountain. The archaeological work and the documentary research have revealed the lives of the enslaved families at Monticello in detail that earlier generations of historians either did not have access to or chose to ignore. Isaac Jefferson's memoirs, dictated in the 1840s, give us a firsthand account of the raid from an enslaved person's perspective. He remembered the British soldiers, the confusion, the fear. His account is different from Jefferson's.

The raid itself is a useful teaching moment because it shows how differently the same event was experienced by different people on the same mountaintop. For Jefferson, it was a political humiliation and a physical danger. For Martha Jefferson, who was in poor health and had recently given birth, it was a terrifying flight with an infant. For the enslaved community, it was a moment of disruption that some used as an opportunity to escape. About thirty enslaved people from Jefferson's various properties left during the British campaigns of 1781, seeking freedom with the enemy.

Jefferson wrote about liberty with more eloquence than any American before or since. He also held over 600 people in slavery and freed only a handful in his lifetime. We do not resolve that contradiction for visitors. We present it honestly and let them sit with it. The Revolution was fought for freedom, and it was fought by people who denied freedom to others. Both things are true, and both are part of what this place means.

The view from Monticello is stunning — the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Piedmont spreading out below. Jefferson chose this site deliberately. He wanted to look out over the world from a position of elevation and beauty. Understanding what that world actually looked like — who built it, who maintained it, who lived in it without choice — is the work we are still doing here.