20 years ago, you would have, the mountain and justine jeffersons beautiful neoclassical villa. What we wanted to do was change that. We wanted to restore the landscape of slavery because of you had come up this mountaintop in jeffersons time, the first thing you would have seen would be enslaved people. There would have been no place on this mountaintop that slavery was not visible. , maket to restore that that known to visitors who come here, today. We are now in the middle of recreating or restoring ,wellings along mulberry row the main plantation street, as well as rooms attached to the house, just behind us. All of this is part of an effort to shift the focus away from just jefferson, and talk about the dozens of other people who essentially made his life possible. Are just near jeffersons main house, the mansion that he built throughout his life. We are standing next to mulberry row, which is the main plantation street at monticello. It is about 1300 feet. Through documentary research, we know that over 20 workshops, storehouses and dwellings lined the street. They were enslaved families here, indentured servants, hired white artisans and several of these workshops were supervised by jefferson and members of his family white family. This is the hub of industry of the monticello, which was not just this mountaintop, but a 5000 acre plantation. Thats about eight square miles. This plantation is enormous. The center of activity is right here. If you had been here in jeffersons day, you wouldve seen carriages coming up and down this road. You wouldve heard the noise of chickens and dogs. You wouldve smelled smoke in the air. You wouldve heard hammers and saws. There were dozens of people here, all working for jeffersons plantation. From jeffersons copious record taking, we know that he owned 607 human beings in his lifetime. At any given time, 130 to 140 slaves would have been working at marcello. That wouldve been not just this mountaintop, but the surrounding farms as well. This is a tremendously dynamic and fluid place where enslaved people were coming and going, living in different areas. Jefferson interacted with all of them in different ways. It was not like he was isolated. He used to take daily rides throughout his plantation. Not only the kind of remind slaves that he was their owner, but also so he had a knowledge of what was going on across these eight square miles. Mulberry row was an experiment for jefferson. This plantation street was unique in the larger context of virginia plantations. He wanted it to be an experiment , as a way to reform slavery. He wanted to do that by imparting trade to slave people. Rather than than just being field laborers, they could come here and learn a skill. Carpentry, just a few of the skills that enslaved people learned, and jefferson consider this an improvement over being out in the fields with wheat or tobacco. Knowu come here and you that jefferson is the author of the document of the declaration and the words all men are created equal, and you find out that he owned 600 slaves, he looks pretty bad. In his mind, he was not a hypocrite because he believed he was making changes to the institution of slavery that would pave the way for its abolition. He is trying to reform it and alleviate material conditions. He is changing housing and he believes it is a gradual process that will result in emancipation further down the line. Monticelloe about than any other plantation in north america. It is the best documented the state. Because of that, we know more about the enslaved people here than anywhere else. I think we have been able to put together the most comprehensive portrait of life for enslaved people during jeffersons time. Beyond it as well. That lends a unique and human portrait to what slavery was, here, both as a horrific institution, but also as a way of emphasizing the humanity of enslaved people and the fact that they were able to preserve themselves and their families, even within the bounds of enslavement. Sally hemmings was part of a very large family of enslaved people at monticello who numbered about 80 people. She was the daughter of elizabeth hemmings. We believe that years after his wifes death, jefferson fathered six children with Sally Hemmings whomr whom four of survived to adulthood. Sally hemmings was part of a inheritance. Its important to remember that slaves were property and they could be inherited through marriage as well as being bought and sold. When jefferson married his wife, martha in 1772, she was the daughter of a wealthy trade of a wealthy slave trader. It was through him that jefferson inherited 135 slaves and Sally Hemmings was one of those slaves. Emphasize that she was related to jeffersons wife. She was marked the wales jeffersons halfsister. She may have even resembled jeffersons wife. Essentially a trade ambassador. He was trying to forge treaties with the french and other countries. He wanted to have his daughters with him. And hisd to have martha youngest daughter. He also wanted someone, and enslaved woman or girl, to accompany maria on the long passage along the atlantic. It was the young Sally Hemmings who ended up accompanying maria to paris. Sally hemmings came and lived with jefferson and his two daughters in paris. That may have been the beginning of their relationship or however you want to describe it. According to Sally Hemmingss son, medicine, she became pregnant by jefferson in paris. It was there that she extracted a important promise from him. That was if she returned to virginia with him and bore the child, that in the future, all of her children would be freed. This was a huge decision for her because when she was on french soil, she was considered free. If she remained in paris, she could have been a free woman. Because of what we think transpired, this promise that she extracted from jefferson, she came back here and when jefferson died, all of those children were freed. The Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson controversy has been one going on for over 200 years. One thing we want to do in the Current Initiative that we are embarking in the mountain tops is to focus on Sally Hemmings, herself. We want to divide her from Thomas Jefferson and that controversy and focus on her as a person. In this 200 year debate or discussion, she has always been a foil for jefferson. We want to restore her humanity. We are standing inside of the space that we will be interpreting as Sally Hemmingss quarter. We believe it was the space or the one next to it. You can imagine her here with her children, doing some mending or cooking the last meal of the day or sitting around and sharing stories. Behind me, you see the restoration of monticellos south wing. This wing was built in 1802. After jefferson died and monticello was sold, it was rebuilt a couple of times by the levy family in the 19th century. In the 1940s, the Jefferson Foundation restored the south wing. Not only did they restore the kitchen, the smokehouse and the cooks room, they also put bathrooms into what were slave quarters. As much as as much of this material as we have been removing and we are now at the point where we are restoring the spaces about we think is a more accurate interpretation. We know that because there is physical evidence as well as documentary evidence that tells us specifically what jefferson wanted. He even drew out a plan to scale. It shows exactly how big the rooms were and what the rooms were used for. We know what space was the derry and the slaves quarters and the smokehouse. We are able to find physical traces of where these walls would have been placed, so we can put them back accurately. On the chimney stack, we have remains of the plaster that we know was there in jeffersons time because there is a letter that talks about asking his workman to plaster that space. There is a hearth that survived. Slave families may have warmed themselves or cooked a meal here. There is also evidence of what the floors would have looked like. It is a small detail, but we are dedicated to getting as much of along this back wall, what you see are the circa 1802 bricks, and we can tell how they are laid. They are laid on edge. Which is a little particular. And then there is a running bond, so we are able to restore the floor very accurately. We have bricks that are the same size and we will lay them the exact same way. Theres also evidence of where these partitions were that divided the two spaces. You can see the carpenters have started to put back a sill p late, but they have aligned sill plate with what we call an architectural ghost. Here is where a stud sat upon the stone wall in jeffersons time, and the space was plastered and whitewashed against it, and when that stud goes away, what is left is this gap in the finishes that tells us exactly where the stud would have been and its size, and we are able to put it back. And we can see this wall was canted, because we have a ghost on this side on the other side of the fireplace that shows where the wall would have sat against the fireplace. So we are able to you know, even though a typical carpenter would love to have a nice, straight wall, we are putting it back just a little out of square, because thats the way the evidence tells us it sat in jeffersons time. So what is going on right now is that craftsmen from salvage rights, a local restoration company, are putting up the timber frame. We know the size of the timber frame. Jeffersons documents tell us exactly how big the stud should be. That they should be 4 x 3 inches. These craftsmen have prepared all the framing offsite, like they would have done in the 18th century. Everything is prepped and assembled and taken apart and brought onsite and put up. What is going on right now is they are actually securing everything and then putting up brick knocking is the next step for the slave quarters and then siding, like you see behind me on the kitchen, for the dairy. So we are in the south pavilion celler. This is a building one of the first buildings built on the mountaintop by jefferson, finished by 1770. And the space originally was a kitchen. Actually, we are standing about four feet above the original floor level. Why that is is because jefferson raises the floor level in 1809 after he builds the south wing, and he turns this into a wash house when the larger kitchen was built to the east. And the amazing thing in this space, not just that it is this early and it survived, but also that earlier kitchen survived largely intact underneath this great phil. I call it is great phil because it has a lot of artifacts mixed into it. We think a sill as pretty boring, but in this case, all that trash they are bringing in with the dirt they are pouring from somewhere contains a blog of cultural material, and archaeologists are able to find really amazing pieces of ceramic and pins and symbols, toothbrush heads. Just a lot of great artifacts that will give us a sense of how people lived on the mountaintop. In addition to these great artifacts, what they also found was evidence of this first kitchen, and actually evidence that it changed over time. They have come down upon the original fireplace where jeffersons early meals you know, he and his wife lived in the room above for several years until the main house was ready for them to move in. So that fireplace was uncovered as well. Veryw stove, which is a highstyle kitchen appliance for the mid and late 18th century. It would have let Jefferson Cook this high style french cuisine that hes probably having in williamsburg at the governors palace. We suspected he had his stove. We do not know for sure. He draws it on a document in the 1770s. But luckily enough, tremendous evidence survived of this stew 4burner, you could call it, this rubble, sort of ruinous structure down below. The archaeologists have removed as much of the material as they are going to for this part of the project, and they are cleaning up the site for final photos and documentation, so you can see they are meticulously cleaning between the bricks, and they have measured everything in. Its really an intensive process, but it allows us to gather and record as much information on the site as possible, so that can be analyzed in the future. So we expect to complete the exterior perhaps by later this spring. In the interior, we are still working on the exhibit plans, the interpretation plans. Those should be open by spring of 2018. When we finish with the restoration of the south wing, we hope visitors will be able to come and experience perhaps a bit more of the slave life at monticello, to understand how monticello functioned in the plantation context to see how it supported the main house. But we are also very, very excited about being able to put back Sally Hemmings quarter. This tremendously important person on the mountaintop, important in American History. It is important to remember that monticello is not just a home on a mountain. It is a plantation. 5000 acres, eight square miles nearly. And the majority of people that lived here in Thomas Jeffersons time were enslaved africanamericans. So it is important to remember, as you look at this home, that most of the labor that went into building this home was done by enslaved africanamericans. Jefferson did hire several white workmen, including an irish joinder by the name of james dinsmore. He was assisted by several skilled craftsmen of the enslaved community. Monticello was really Thomas Jeffersons home for his entire life. Hes born on this plantation, just three miles away from where he builds this home. He inherits this plantation from his father. His father dies when jefferson is 14. As a young man, he will inherit this land as well as the slaves that his father owned, and jefferson is going to decide to build up here on this mountaintop at a very young age. This is jeffersons home his entire life. Jefferson is trying to use that plantation to make money. Like most virginia plantation owners, he has cash crops, primarily tobacco and, later in his life, wheat. He has mixed success in turning a profit off of this plantation, but here on this mountaintop, this is also the center of his home life as well. Throughout his retirement years, once the house is complete, this home is filled with his family members. His daughter, Martha Jefferson randolph, and her husband moved into this home, so this would have been a home filled with his family members as well as guests. Throughout jeffersons retirement years, as a very public official and as somebody who gained fame for not only being president of the United States but being the man who wrote the declaration of independence, he would have hosted perpetual rounds of company here. Guests would have come right here into this room, where we are right now, the hall. Depending on who they were, they may have had to wait here to have a chance to see jefferson. We have a lot of accounts of those guests for their visits to monticello. For them, this would have been something new that they did not necessarily expect. One guest referred to the strange furniture of the walls. Another guest called this room cluttered. He filled this room with knowledge. Jefferson sets this up almost like a museum or a cabinet of curiosities, and he is filling this room with things that he thinks are interesting, that interest him, but also influential people, influential ideas, in the creation of this country. So jefferson had maps of all the known continents around the room. He had Natural History specimens of animal life in north america, fossilized bones. He had American Indian artifacts that would have been displayed here that had been sector him from lewis and clark, Deval Patrick exchanges on the way to the Pacific Ocean and back with more than 40 American Indian nations. He had busts of influential thinkers like voltaire, the french philosopher. He even had, for Broadway Musical fans, his arch nemesis hamilton, a bust of hamilton here in this hall, which he set on the opposite side of the room of a bust of himself. He liked to tell visitors that they would be opposed in death as in life. I like to ask visitors all the time, why do you think he had it here. Because we do not know for sure. One visitor once told me that perhaps it was a political hunting trophy. Because of course, jefferson eventually won in the political battle versus hamilton by becoming president of the United States. The dining room is one of the brighter spaces at monticello because of the chrome yellow paint on the walls. It would have been located on the north side of the house, which would have been the coldest and darkest side of the house. Thats were breakfast would be served each morning and dinner about 4 00 or 5 00 in the afternoon. Jefferson is very famous for his political uses of food. When he was president , he would, multiple times a week, invite politicians to dine in small dinner parties at his home, both democratic republicans, his party, but also his adversaries, federalists. They would come on separate nights. But jefferson used those conversation to talk about politics, but also other things of the day philosophy, religion. He preferred kind of private, intimate affairs, where conversation could really come to life. In the monticello dining room, there are a number of contraptions and conveniences that would limit the number of enslaved people that would be required to be present for the dinners, so the food would come in through a side door with revolving shelves, so that the enslaved waiters bringing the food from the kitchen underneath the house would not have to be entering the room and exiting the room nonstop. They could put the food on the door outside the room, and the enslaved butler, burwell colbert, could simply turn the door and bring the food into the room. A wine cellar, which was located directly beneath the dining room and on either side of the fireplace, jefferson had built into the mantle wine dumbwaiters, so the wine could be delivered straight up to the sides of the fireplace. So hes using the contraption to limit the comings and goings of enslaved servants, but at the same time, theres a lot going on behind the scenes by those slave servants to make that dinner and the engaging conversation taking place possible. The south side of the house is really devoted to private family spaces and private spaces for jefferson. And he had, kind of, his own private apartment on the south side of the house, and it consisted, really, of three separate rooms. His cabinet, what we would probably call an office or study, his library, and his bedchamber, of course. His bedchamber would have been, of those three spaces, the most private space. That is where jefferson would wake in the morning with the sun, and he would begin his day each day with a cold foot bath and begin to read and respond to letters for a few hours before breakfast. It is also the space where he would return in the evening for a few hours of reading before bed as well. The other thing you can say about jeffersons bedchamber is that it is the space where he passed away at the age of 83, which is really one of the more remarkable stories. Jefferson died on july 4, 1826, which was the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the declaration of independence, that he was the primary author of. Jeffersons death is a very sad time at monticello for many different reasons. Jefferson struggled with debt his whole life. He died about 107,000 in debt, which is many millions of dollars in todays money, and the family were unable to keep monticello. They had to sell monticello, the land, the furnishings, and the home. And, most heartbreakingly of all, they had to sell about 130 enslaved africanamericans. One of the slaves here in the plantation recalled that jeffersons death was a time of great uncertainty amongst the enslaved community. You can imagine that enslaved people here would be worried that the death of Thomas Jefferson, that his death meant their families would be split apart, which is what ended up happening in many cases. The property, in the 1830s, would be bought by a man by the name of uriah levy, who was one of the first naval officers of jewish faith in the United States. Uriah levy and his family began the process of tracking down some of the original objects of the home, and in 1923, it was uriah levys nephew, and man named Jefferson Munro levy, who sold this property to the Thomas Jefferson foundation, which continues to own monticello as a Nonprofit Museum and has since 1923. One of the things that we are striving to bring back here to the Guest Experience at monticello is a sense that monticello is more than just this house on a hill. The house is incredibly well preserved, and we want people to walk in jeffersons footsteps, but we also want them to understand that monticello had nearly 200 People Living here during jeffersons time, and that most of them were enslaved. And so, over the past several years, we have been working to restore the landscape of slavery to monticello, so when you walk outside the house, you look down on mulberry row, and you can understand that there was a center of industry and enslaved life there. And that if you tour the south wing and the north wing, underneath the house, you will see that this was a home for the people that jefferson enslaved here as well, and that it was their work that made monticello what it was and, in many senses, made jefferson who he was. When people leave monticello, i hope they get a sense of the complexity of jefferson, but also how relevant his story is to the nation that we became. Heres a man who wrote all men are created equal and yet was a slaveholder. Here is a man who truly believed that government should be representative of the people, even though he was very much a virginia aristocrat. But jefferson, at the end of the day, had a very optimistic view of our nation and a very optimistic view that we could govern ourselves. I hope people who leave understand that while monticello was jeffersons lifes work, and he was always trying to perfect it, he also viewed the United States as something that would never be perfected and that would continue to be a work in progress. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] this weekend on American History tv on cspan renown, tonight at 8 00 on lectures in history, Messiah CollegeProfessor John fea on the people and ideas that shade the 1776 pennsylvania constitution. The continental congress, the representatives from all of the colonies, had instructed allr the july 4 declaration of the colonies, now states, to form new governments. Sunday at 4 30 p. M. Eastern, secret service and fbi agents reflect on protecting president reagan following the 1981 assassination attempt. When i heard the shots go off, i immediately went to my weapon, because i recognized shots had gone off. Ton i only had seconds determine where those shots were coming from. By that time, you saw the smoke from the weapon, you cite individuals moving towards the potential assailant. And at 8 00 on the presidency, historian annette g ordonreed on the relationship between john Thomas Jefferson and the enslaved hemings family. People could be bought and sold, and that is something many ings family, despite the privileges Sally Hemings and her children had, they have the possibility of that happening, because the law and jefferson construed them as property. For the complete American History tv schedule, go to cspan. Org. He once called for the removal of little as a planet. On sunday, author and asked a physicist Neil Degrasse tyson. Ll be our guest on in depth ourllow me to tell you, moon, as small as it is compared to earth, has five times the mass of pluto. Some people over here so pluto lovers were never told that, where you . [laughter] welcome to the company of informed people regarding pluto. Threehourur live conversation, we will take your calls, tweets, and facebook russians for mr. Tyson, also the director of the hate in planetary and Hayden Planetarium in new york city and author of many books, including welcome to the universe and death by black hole. Live with noth tvrasse tyson sunday on book Neil Degrasse tyson sunday on book tv. Later today on a ministry tv, Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell talks about wendell fords life and legacy. Here is a preview. On capitol hill, there are two types of members. Show horses and workhorses. The former strive for the headlines. The latter strive for results. Ford was every bit the workhorse. He proudly saw himself as i can situate senator. He was there to serve kentucky. Ford advocated doggedly for kentucky interests, despite their unpopularity in many quarters of the nations capital. Ford used to remark that kentucky has beautiful women, horses, bourbon, and coal. Ford did not shrink from political combat in washington, d. C. Described as an almost compulsive campaigner. When the opportunity arose, all ran for the wendall is one of only three senators who chair there partys campaign three times. The other includes barry goldwater. Watch the entire program on former kentucky senator wendell ford this evening at 5 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan 3. Cspan where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. Join us Tuesday Morning as we head to the heart of appalachias coal country or at awashington journal coal plant to talk about coal. Our guest include the president of Murray Energy corporation. Representative bill johnson. Vivienne stockman. And nick mullins. Watch live at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Julia we are standing in front of the turtle bay exploration park and museum in redding, california. Come inside as we look at an event exhibit that shares the agricultural history of the region. I think it is really important for us to remember that agriculture is one of the backbones of california. Even in far northern california, where it is mountainous and the trained does not really lend itself to a lot of big ag. It does lend itself to pockets in a community that is close to the land. Bay expirationle parks explanation home. You