Questions, Colonial Williamsburg and monticello. Thomas Jeffersons Monticello recorded this program and provided the video. Good afternoon. My name is Brandon Dillard and im the manager of historic interpretation here at monticello. You might recognize my voice because in previous live streams im usually the guy behind the camera and im reading questions from our audience as they come in so that we can directly engage with you while were talking to our first person interpreter actor bill barker who portrays Thomas Jefferson. We wanted to do something a little bit different this week. Given the National Conversation and given events all around us, we know that 2020 has been a challenging year. Monticello has been closed for months. We reopen this weekend due to a Global Pandemic and in recent weeks in the United States, millions of people all over the country are actively fighting for equity against different form of racial injustice, whether its racially motivated Police Violence or ra
Lived on the opposite side of the river in paulina, louisiana. This structure was donated to us about 10 years ago by the descendants of the original founders of that congregation. They bought the land in 1870. Two parcels of land for the express purpose of building a house of worship. In the sale document, which we have from the courthouse, they named their structure the anti they named their congregation the antiyoke baptist congregation. That message, being against the yoke or against slavery, is something thats important to our story here. And this is a Significant Church for newly freed slaves on the east bank of the river and so it is really important here in talking about the lives of people who saw freedom after the end of the civil war. So we like to start our tour of the whitney plantation here in this building so we could kind of see what happened to people, some of the things that they cared about after the freedom came. Whitney plantation is the only Plantation Museum in t
In so that we can directly engage with you while were talking to our first person interpreter actor, bill barker, who portrays Thomas Jefferson. We wanted to do something a little bit different this week. Given the National Conversation and given events all around us, we know that 2020 has been a challenging year. Monticello has been closed for months. We reopened this weekend, due to a global pandemic. In recent weeks in the United States, millions of people all over the country are actively fighting for equity against different forms of racial injustice, whether its racially motivated Police Violence or racially motivated monuments and memories. Its a conversation that we must engage in, and working here at monticello, we are a site of memory. Monticello is a plantation where over 400 people were enslaved. Today we decided to have a conversation, we would do something that we havent done and im sure everyone knows this, that when you tune in youre not actually talking to Thomas Jeffe
Joining us on the communicators is andrew marantz. He is a writer for the new yorker magazine, also the author of the book antisocial online extremists, techno utopians, and the hijacking of the american conversation. Andrew marantz, thank you for joining us. If i understand it correctly, the book grew out of reporting that you do for the new yorker. Can you explain that work and how it led to the genesis of the book . Andrew yes, so around 2014, 2015, i was writing for the new yorker. And you know, its a magazine that allows people to kind of roam and be generalists and sort of go wherever they find interesting stories. And something that i was finding interesting at the time was what the internet was doing to us as a society, in terms of our information streams. It wasnt really political in my mind at that time. It was just sort of what happens when the trusted systems of information break down and people no longer know whats true or whats important vs. Irrelevant or how to spend the
Test. Test test. Test. Test test. Test. Test test. Test. Test test. Test. Test test. Then it will be my duty, the cabinet members, to cooperate with the president elect george b. Mcclelland as to save the union. Between this election well say november of 64 at this point and the inauguration, march 4, 1865, as he will have secured his election on such grounds that he cannot save it afterwards. So were going to look at and say, okay, what happens if mcclelland had won the presidency . What would he be thinking when he put his left hand on the bible and raised his right hand on march 4, 1865 . What was his policy going to be . Lincoln says, if he wins it and it looks like he is it is over. Hes not going to be able to save the union. Well, will he save the confederacy . Is that possible at this point if you elect mcclelland as president . Lets look back at october and november 1 november 18, 64. Lincoln said you can put my name for candidacy in 1864. The convention will be in baltimore in