Guide: This home is a wonderful example of what they call vernacular architecture, which means if you generally go outside of the southern Maryland area you’re not going to find any homes built like this. It was actually built around 1770 and it’s a great example of a kind of home that the lower middling sort would have lived in. One architectural historian said it is not the kind of house that you would find on a house and garden tour, nor are you going to find chatty hostesses with artfully-arranged flower vases. Spinning wool was the one thing that they would do, process all the wool and actually knit things from it, which is great. To go from, you know, A to Z. And just about everything that we have in here is all based on a lot of inventory analysis. Head of household dies, people come through, they take a true and just inventory of everything that they owned, assigned a value to it, and that was for the purpose of settling debt. They are not the end all and be all of what people owned. But when you go through '54 you start seeing trends and so it’s those trends that we followed when setting up this room. You’ll notice that they have a looking glass, but not enough people had basins or razors to justify putting them in the house. Glass had to be imported and glass things could be relatively expensive, so to just have a looking glass and nothing else to go with it is sort of a little status symbol. The only thing that separated the small landowner from the tenant farmer was the fact that small landowners actually owned their lands and more importantly they owned at least one or two slaves. All slaves of families of this wealth level, male or female, were field slaves and they would be right outside the field alongside the master of the farm or the plantation doing the work. From day one, we had to be able to address the idea of slavery because otherwise you just come here and you’d think that it was just your typical colonial family living off the land doing everything themselves. The family that we're based on had Kate Sharper and her young son, John. John was probably ten pounds sterling and with that low amount, that probably puts him around eight years old. Kate was probably 37 pounds sterling. She probably came with Mrs. Bolton as part of her dowry; basically made Mrs. Bolton marriable, that she came with a slave or one of these, a bed. Sometimes bedsteads in inventories that we read are worth more than what the family brought in in a year on tobacco. The pillows, the pillowcases, the bolster, the counterpane, all that factors into the value of the bed and all that is imported. Biggest misconception about colonial people is this whole idea of self-sufficiency. They grew their food and that’s it. But make no mistake, they had access to a foreign market and they loved it. There was one study that came out and the conclusion was basically that the last thing that they would put money into was the house itself. They would put money in things to put in the house. They would put money into maybe building a corn house or a milk house and the reason for that is you’re basically showing your mastery of the agricultural endeavor, advertising your success. The same thing with the brick chimney. Reason why a family like this would have a brick chimney was basically they were showing off to anybody that was going by. And if you can imagine that you spend most of your time out in the fields working and dealing mostly with your family, to have somebody come through from England or France or whatnot, man, you wanted to show off. You wanted to talk to them. You wanted to feed them and that’s what people commonly did. A traveler through Virginia in the 1750s wrote in his diary that one was much more likely to find lodging and victuals at houses where brick chimbles showed then elsewhere.

Guide: In the 18th century this would be step one. They would always want to add more to it. They would always want to turn the upstairs into a place to live for rooms and things like that.

Teacher 1: Just like we do.

Guide: Exactly! Does anybody have any questions? Yes?

Teacher 2: Like, do people write about oppressive heat—

Guide: Oh, yeah!

Teacher 2: 'Cause I feel like that’s the main topic on the news every time you turn it on.

Guide: They did all the time. And the great thing was that—

Teacher 2: How did they deal with that?

Guide: They would go on and on.

Teacher 2: Sort of like they do now.

Guide: They weren’t foolish about it. At midday they would come in from the fields for about three hours and then they would go back out when it wasn’t that hot. You know only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.

Teacher 1: Can you talk about the doorways being so small?

Guide: Yes! It’s not because they were short. They’ve been here for over a hundred years, the diet has improved, they’ve acclimated to it. The doorways are small to keep heat in. We know within two years of being built that the walls and these exposed ceiling beams were covered in soot from the constant smoky haze that was in here during the winter time when they were burning 30 to 40 cords a winter to keep warm.

Colonial people generally didn’t bathe that often; they thought it was actually bad for you, it washed the essential oils off your body. They did laundry maybe once a week. You could have anywhere from two to 15 people living in here. That’s just the way it was. And so this idea of sitting around and doing cutesy little things, it’s like, no, they were actively involved in everything that went into farming this land and becoming a success.

The kitchen is often where the family’s slave would have slept in here with her young son John. But there’s absolutely no reason to believe that they also might not have allowed her to just simply sleep in the house with the rest of the family. That happened from time to time.

Sometimes if you’re a house museum you focus on the house, the things that are in the house, the stories that involve the house, but a lot of times one of the things that they forget about is the farm that the house actually existed on. And believe it or not, more and more house museums now are resurrecting the farms simply because, you know, you might as well bring the farm to life because it’s a much more complete picture.

Travelers even when they went to the homes of the very, very wealthy and looked at their gardens said that they were ugly. You know, that they paled in the comparison to what was going on in England. If you were spending the lion's share of your time out in the field cultivating tobacco, you do not have time for a fancy pretty garden. Mounds of earth with pumpkin, squash, and beans in it are sometimes all that the gardens consisted of. We've got a few more things 'cause we’re not that far down the totem pole.

Teacher 1: I know this is all colonial but the Piscataway that lived around here, they did, like, the Three Sisters?

Guide: They did.

Teacher 1: Do you have any Three Sisters?

Guide: We do very little Three Sisters simply because it’s never worked for us. Most everything that we grow in here are all heirlooms. Many 18th-century varieties of vegetables have gone the way of the dodo, they simply don’t exist, too many hybrids now, but they wrote so extensively about things and described them in such detail that the things that aren’t 18th century are things that most closely resemble them.

Most of the things on the borders are going to be your medicinals, such as that white flowered thing growing there is called Feverfew. Pretty much tells you everything about it. The red Wethersfields that are in there closely resemble another variety. Melons, these are called Anne Arundel melons just because they figure prominently in Peale family still lifes. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, one of my favorite colonial names, said, and I quote, “We are very deficient in our gardens for we have neither time nor taste. Besides the labor is too dear."

Guide: These fences only were used on farms. And of course the reason why colonial planters and farmers had these fences was to keep animals out, not to pen them in. English travelers happened to say in their diaries, when they looked at the way the colonial people were 'farming' in general, was they just wrote about the deplorable way in which they treated their animals, doing nothing with them, just turning them loose. No management, no skill, no nothing.

But this is what life here demanded from them. And the number one reason for that was tobacco. In April, they would plant their corn. And then May was time for planting tobacco. Once the tobacco's in the ground, they don't do anything with the corn any more.

So if you come at a certain point of the year, you'll see tobacco growing in the field, corn growing in the field, but there'll be weeds up all around it and people will be like, oh my gosh, what is that? And it challenges the way that they think that a field should look, that everything should be, you know, clean and precise. But that wouldn't be an accurate representation of the way that they did it.

They weren't thrilled with it. They didn't think that this was the bee's knees, this way of farming. It's not—it doesn't take a lot of this, it takes a lot of this. The difference between curing, which they called an art, and farming it, is that curing was all up here.

You harvest something, the agricultural year is over. Harvest corn, done. Harvest wheat, done. But cut tobacco, it's followed on almost immediately by the process of curing it. And your reputation was joined with this, because everybody's going to know what price your tobacco got. Is it too wet? Is it too dry? If it's too wet, sometimes they thought that they might have to light fires in here. But if you light a fire in here, that's going to flavor it, which means you're going to get less of a price. What do I do, what do I do, what do I do. Will you be known as a miserable planter? Will you be known as a crop master? Because if you mess this up, all that work that you did, out in the field is going to be for naught.

When you cut the tobacco, you want to leave it outside for about four or five days to kill it. That's the term that they use. Then you would bring it into the barn, you would stake it, stack it, and store it. Once it was cured, they would prize it, or press it, in these hogsheads. And then the hogsheads would be taken to the town of Piscataway over here, and the inspector would break it open, he would pull out the tobacco, and anything that he deemed trash was burned right there on the dock.

England loved Virginia sweet-scented tobacco. They loved it. The soil and the climate around the James and York Rivers was so different that the tobacco took on this sweet-scented variety that England prized. After the French War, the French and Indian War, it was widely known that Colonel Washington, when he took up residence at Mount Vernon was very desirous to be a successful tobacco planter. That's what Virginians did. That is what your reputation is, that's how you define yourself, by the kind of tobacco planter you are.

He was an absolute failure at it. He was not a bad planter. Maryland's soils have always been known as stiff, which is a reference to the amount of clay in here. So the tobacco took on this much more robust flavor. Where is Mount Vernon? Right across the river. He shared our soils. He tried for 10 years before he finally quit. That shows you just how important it was to everyone's reputation that they be successful at it, and show good judgment in their ability to master and command their environment.

Elizabeth V. Chew: This visitor center facility opened in 2009 and it has radically improved our ability both orient our visitors to just explain to them why Jefferson is important and so, why they're here, and to engage and educate.

This exhibition is really one of four that's in the building. This is the largest one, it's the one that is intended to put the house, which is the one piece of Monticello that mostly everybody sees, in the context of Monticello writ large, Monticello as a 5,000-acre working plantation.

If you look up at this light pencil drawing on the banner here, you can see the view that the young Jefferson would have seen from Shadwell, looking over across the Rivanna River, the little low mountain in the front here is Monticello. The high mountain behind Monticello is the mountain that Jefferson called Mountalto, and he bought—he bought what he could see from his mountain of that mountain in the 1770s. And so, as a boy, the little mountain just drew him and he had a dream of living there as an adult when he was a teenager. And that would have been the least practical place you could ever live. In a time when the river was a major means of transportation, where getting around was difficult at any time, where water was a constant problem and need, to live on a mountain made no sense. He really elevated ideals over being practical, over practicality.

The central section in the middle of the room here goes through and gives examples of Jefferson's just complete and total dedication to doing what he would call gathering, recording, and sharing and disseminating this idea of useful knowledge, whether it was related to science, to farming, to government, to transportation, to what you could and couldn't grow somewhere. He was interested in really every point of knowledge on the human spectrum. And nothing—there was almost nothing that was too small for his attention.

We have several really fun kind of interactive elements in the exhibition, and this one uses Jefferson's travels, both in North America and in Europe, and it shows people what, when Jefferson was traveling, what he was doing, and he said it himself, that he was gathering ideas that would be useful—'useful'—back in this country. So what we do is follow his travels—and I'm looking at southern France right here—and we talk about everywhere he went, what he was looking at.

So here we are: viticulture or wine-growing in the Burgundy region of France, or ancient architecture in Orange, France. He was also completely obsessed with the idea of people in this country growing olives. He thought that olive oil was going to be the new revolution and that the rice planters in Southern Carolina should stop growing rice and grow olive trees. And he really worked hard to convince them of that. Really, he's so interested in these little details of things that he thinks are going to help him come back here, share the ideas, and even put them to use himself.

So, this is a fun way, and, all as you all know way better than I do, young people love this kind of thing.

Elizabeth V. Chew: So I've talked about how the center is about his dedication to all this gathering and sharing and disseminating. This short wall here is dedicated to a horizontal look across the social spectrum at Monticello. Because we obviously know that Jefferson and his elite family in their 'big house,' they're the tip of the pyramid here, but obviously everything that happens that makes his household run, that makes his cash crops grow, is done by the labor of enslaved people.

So we also look across the spectrum of the enslaved community at people working in the fields versus enslaved people who work in the house or in the [?] industries, and we compare those also to hired white people. There were some hired white workers here who did things like, well, build a house, for one thing, or serve as blacksmiths or certain kinds of carpenters. They also trained enslaved people to do these kinds of jobs.

We've learned an amazing amount about the lives of enslaved people all over the plantation. So, what we know is that enslaved people owned material goods. We tend to have a notion of slavery, I think, or at least I used to, as being very fixed and abstract and this big box of awfulness and yes, it is that. But you can also come to understand it in a much more textured way where you see—we know a great deal about the names and activities and lives of the individual people who lived here in slavery and what happened to their descendants. And that combination of Jefferson's record keeping, archaeology, other kinds of written records, and then genealogy and oral history that we've been doing here for 40 years.

So we know that people who worked in the fields owned the same kinds of really fashionable tablewares that slaves who worked in the house and lived up on the mountain owned and that, in many cases, are the same kinds of things being used in the big house. Slaves had several different ways of making money. Jefferson preferred to give cash incentives to slaves rather than use harsh physical punishment, so some skilled slaves received cash money. Slaves also kept poultry yards and gardens on their own time and sold the products of those, both to the big house and sometimes in markets in towns. Slaves were paid by Jefferson for doing particularly onerous jobs like cleaning out the sewers underneath the privies, and slaves were given tips by visitors quite routinely. So with the money that people here in slavery owned, we know that they went into town on Sundays and shopped in stores. Scholars have studied shopkeepers' ledger books and found that there are records of slaves coming in and buying things.

So what we see here, I think, is examples of how enslaved people survived in a system that denied them their basic humanity. We see how people figured out ways to just get through it. And we see families over generations here whose descendants go on actually to be very involved in all kinds of work towards emancipation and later civil rights.

Elizabeth V. Chew: On the wall here behind you, we break down Monticello into four areas. We look at gardens, agriculture, plantation industries, and the house. And my interest here was making it all on the same plane. Often we tend to privilege the house over everything else. I think Jefferson saw it as being all of a piece.

So we look at how he puts what he considers to be this useful knowledge to work, in all aspects of his operations here, whether it's what he grew in the garden, his attempts to grow grapes to make wine, his intense interest in the technology of agriculture. For example, he himself invented a kind of plow moldboard. People think of him as being an inventor. He was mostly a creative adapter because of all these things he learned about, wrote down, and then later used here at Monticello. The one thing that he ever truly invented was a plow moldboard. And we have a recreation plow right here that shows this curved—it's the curvy wood part that sort of turns over the soil once it's cut by the metal blade. So he had witnessed people plowing in France that he thought were really inefficient, and he has this geometric idea for the shape of a moldboard that will do a better job with less resistance in turning over the ground. So he has this plow made here at Monticello and he writes to all of his people all over the world to tell them about it. Even though he won several awards for it, it was never really widely adopted.

The Garden Book is really a bravura demonstration of his record keeping interests. Let's see. We have a little facsimile of it right here, and it's really hard to see, but he basically—he started it as a young man still living at Shadwell. After his retirement here in 1809, he really does it every single year in earnest, where he writes down, keeps a chart where he writes down everything he plants and when, when it sprouts, how it does, and then eventually 'when it comes to table,' which means when they get to eat it in the house, and when it goes to seed. And he does this every year for over 20 years. He doesn't care if something doesn't do well, he just tries something else. His interest is really in what will grow well in this particular climate here in Albemarle County, Virginia. He wants to know what he can grow here that will be useful. So things like benne or sesame, he grows that. These hot peppers a friend in Texas sends him. There are a number of examples of things that people send him that he tries to grow. He really really really wants to grow wine grapes, but he never can. He would actually love the fact that wine is such a big deal now in Virginia.

So even though he has this amazingly gorgeous, 1,000-foot-long garden, we know for a fact that this garden was not primarily meant to furnish the table. We know that because from the beginning to the end of Jefferson's life at Monticello, we have record books kept by the women of his family, the white women of his family, recording purchases of large quantities of garden produce from slaves, and this is one of them right here. So Jefferson's garden was mostly a laboratory and an experiment. If something came to the table, that was great, but they were not relying on it. They had this very good backup plan that they had to use almost every week.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Tell me more about yourselves and what, when you woke up this morning or heard about this trip two weeks ago, you wanted to take away from it.

Teacher 1: Well, I teach fifth grade, so it's mostly U.S. geography, that's the emphasis for our course, so—

Teacher 2: Westward expansion?

Teacher 1: Yes, that's really—

Jacqueline Langholtz: Okay, so Lewis and Clark's why you're here? Great, okay.

Teacher 1: Especially the scientific discoveries and we're putting more of a science emphasis on the flora and fauna of different areas, too. So what their findings were and also what they found—yeah, I think it'll be very helpful.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Wonderful. Great.

Teacher 2: Is there information on the relationship with Jefferson or his time period with the Native Americans, because that's one of the things that we try to do as we move from region to region is that Native American element of that region.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah. Yeah. So the question was the relationship that Jefferson specifically had with Virginia Indians?

Teacher 2: And his contemporaries.

Jacqueline Langholtz: And his contemporaries. Okay. Jefferson's own and only self-published book, his own book, Notes on the State of Virginia, would probably be a good resource and that's a primary resource there. That's a field that I think people are really just beginning to explore and learn more about, and I think you'll hear some different opinions about, what did that really honestly look like, and I think you'll see a lot more scholarship about that coming out, I hope so.

Teacher: Do you think that it was typical what Jefferson had here, was that a typical economy for a plantation in the South?

Elizabeth V. Chew: No. You mean the slaves—

Teacher: What you found in the—

Elizabeth V. Chew: Oh, yes, I do. Yes, I do, actually. I think Jefferson was unusual in what he said he wanted here was to use things like work incentives and not harsh punishment, that keeping families together made people more productive because they were happier. That was not typical.

Teacher: Right.

Elizabeth V. Chew: Yeah. But I think that the slaves raising gardens and chickens, perfect, totally normal. Slaves owning goods across the South, completely typical.

Teacher: Wow.

Elizabeth V. Chew: It's probably the thing that most people don't know about slavery, that is most surprising to them. That is absolutely the case. In the very very deep South, like Louisiana, and maybe even Alabama, it's less so, but in the Mid-Atlantic, the Carolinas, it's completely the way it is.

Teacher: And these are very high-quality goods that they had, then, would that have been typical as well, that they had—

Elizabeth V. Chew: It's what was available. You know, they're on the spectrum of things you could have. They're not at the very top. Jefferson has some Sevres porcelain from Paris, but he has this stuff also.

Teacher: Wow.

Elizabeth V. Chew: So it's sort of like your everyday china, as opposed to your grandmother's fancy china, but it's absolutely the same thing that any of the other

Teacher: And where would that have come from, from Europe as well?

Elizabeth V. Chew: Stores in the area. These would have still been English by this time, but they would have been available, widely available in stores in every town in the U.S.

Teacher: So, typical. Like Pfaltzgraff kind of.

Elizabeth V. Chew: Yeah, he could have gone to Charlottesville on Sundays and bought them. Merchants stayed open on Sundays so the slaves could come, actually. And they bought things like tablewares and then clothing, things like buckles and buttons and hooks for clothing that they would make themselves and fabric. Jefferson gave slaves basic food, two sets of clothing a year, blankets, and then cook pots when they got married, but people had a lot more than that, that they acquired through their own incredible ingenuity and entrepreneurship basically.

Teacher: That's interesting.

Elizabeth V. Chew: It took a lot, it took so much effort and ability to survive laboring like that.

Teacher: Is there any evidence that slaves worked with Jefferson intensely on his inventions and machinery?

Elizabeth V. Chew: Oh, yeah. That's such a good question.

Jacqueline Langholtz: What was the question?

Elizabeth V. Chew: Whether slaves worked with him. Slaves definitely made the plow. I think, he lived in this cerebral region of his brain that he never, hardly ever went out of. I think he just saw—he drew all these geometric models of how he derived it. I think he kind of felt it in the abstract and then he had slaves—made it, build it, and then try to use it. But they probably were not involved in the design decisions.

Teacher: Right. Because that would have taken a lot of skill to craft.

Elizabeth V. Chew: No kidding.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Well, I get these same feelings about what you see in the house, or even the Campeachy chairs, even the friezes. So Jefferson is—he's the one traveling, he's the one reading, and then he's saying oh, I want this in my house. And then you have John Hemmings and James Dinsmore. But John Hemmings, who has not traveled, who hasn't read about these—

Elizabeth V. Chew: Who wasn't educated.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Right, who wasn't educated, making 3D versions, bringing Jefferson's physical ideas to life. It's just incredible to me.

Teacher: Wow.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Take a few minutes working in groups to figure out what’s in the pocket in front of them. So first, what is it? How would have it been used? And then lastly, who they think would have carried this pocket. So I am going to just give you the exact same challenge, take 10 minutes or so, talk within your group.

[Group 1:]
Teacher 1: Somebody’s a seamstress.
Teacher 2: Yes.
Teacher 1: Must do some cooking or . . .
Teacher 3: Had responsibility—
Teacher 2: Yes.
Teacher 3: —because I remember reading about that in the dependencies.
Teacher 2: Yeah, cause not everybody had the keys.
Teacher 1: No.
Teacher 3: Martha had the keys and there was one other.
Teacher 1: And there was a sewing little table in there.
Teacher 2: Also a number of geese were killed.
Teacher 1: I would think this would be like somebody who's either a supervisor or somebody that’s not the bottom person.
Teacher 2: No.
Teacher 1: This person writes so it couldn’t be a slave, right? Because they weren’t suppose to be able to write. Not that they couldn’t.
Teacher 3: Yeah, yeah.
Teacher 2: For our own eating 28 hams of bacon. Twenty-one shoulders and 27 middlings.
Teacher 1: Well, I think it’s a she based on the embroidery, on the fan.
Teacher 2: Sewing stuff.
Teacher 1: Right.

[Group 2:]
Teacher 1: I think we have it.
Jacqueline Langholtz: You got it.
Teacher 2: Yeah.
Jacqueline Langholtz: So that’s a—
Teacher 1: We think this is a slave child’s pocket.
Teacher 2: Or a child’s pocket.
Jacqueline Langholtz: What makes you say that?
Teacher 1: Well, you said they made nails.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Excellent.
Teacher 1: Marbles.
Jacqueline Langholtz: What were the marbles for?
Teacher 1: A game.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, keep going.
Teacher 2: Making extra money if, like, they made some extra nails or they were able to—
Jacqueline Langholtz: That’s right. And can I ask you would you have known that before you did your gallery tour and your house visit?
Teacher 1: No, because I had no idea they made money.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, that is a surprising fact to a lot of students and teachers to find money in the slave’s pocket
Teacher 1: And that they had china and stuff.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, so that’s a great opportunity for discussion because a lot of people will think this must be from someone else’s pocket or they’ll look at this and say ‘I thought it was a slave pocket but there's money in it,’ but you knew why there might be money in it, good for you.
Teacher 1: Fishing.
Teacher 2: We had said actually, originally, we thought this might be something that they either made like a handle or we thought is it something that shaped the, you know.
Jacqueline Langholtz: And once you know it, it’s right there in front of you but for students finding their way through this on their own, it’s a really good activity and they have a lot of fun with it. And then we get to you know dim the lights and we'll do a flint and steel show for them.
Teacher 1: I like this as a pre- and post- activity. That’s amazing.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, and photos for a lot of this are online, too. And you knew what this was?
Teacher 1: She did.
Teacher 2: Yeah, I did.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Good for you, do you have a name for it?
Teacher 1: Mouth harp?
Teacher 2: Something, yeah, it’s a mouth harp. I think it’s the mouth harp.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, so if you then had to group these items, too, or tell us what types of things you see—work, right, you see some home life, you see some entertainment, slave garden.
Teacher 1: Yeah, like this would be making a fire at home. This would be work.
Jacqueline Langholtz: And possibly spinning, this is flax.
Teacher 2: Okay.
Teacher 1: This would be play. This could be work or play.
Teacher 2: Or I was going to say, or extra food.
Jacqueline Langholtz: And there are some things that can be made and some things that are bought.
Teacher 1: Why would they carry seeds?
Jacqueline Langholtz: You tell me, I don’t know. And we don’t know that all of this was always carried.
Teacher 1: Why would they have seeds? Maybe they traded for them or something.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Well, do you remember Elizabeth Chew told us a story about the gardens—well, she said the garden's main function was not to supply all the food for the table and then she supplemented that with the story about the main house actually sometimes purchasing food from the slaves so purchasing cucumbers that they have grown or . . .
Teacher 1: So this boy maybe is going to plant some seeds to grow some food.
Teacher 2: So there are slave gardens.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, sometimes for themselves. So on a plot of land where they're able to supplement their rations, food that they're given by the house or maybe they choose to grow something that they know that the house could have a use for and they sell it back to the house.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Who thinks they know whose pockets they have? Just with a silent show of hands. I know, I know who my pocket represents. Great! Ah, wonderful.

Teacher 1: It’s a list and it’s written so we knew that person had to be educated—

Jacqueline Langholtz: Great.

Teacher 1: 'Cause even if they didn’t write it they had to read it.

Jacqueline Langholtz: And it’s a list of what kinds of things, can I ask?

Teacher 1: Ah, things they’re going to buy or—like it says kill chickens and stuff like that, you know, it would be like a grocery list.

Teacher 1: Like a grocery list, great.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Keys.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Can you hold those up so that we can all see them too? How would you describe that key set? If you said, oh, I left my keys on my desk, go and grab them. They look like . . .

Teacher 1: Like jail keys, no.

Jacqueline Langholtz: They’re big, right?

Teacher 1: They’re big, they’re bulky, they’re heavy. Must be somebody important 'cause not everybody had keys.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Great deduction, yes. And what’s that door like probably?

Teacher 1: Heavy.

Jacqueline Langholtz: It’s not a dainty little door, right. Great, what else is in your pocket?

Teacher 1: We had a fan and then an embroidered bag, so that led us to believe it was probably a female's bag.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Excellent. And that is a pocket that’s worn on the outside, tied around your waist, great. How about the big reveal? Whose do you think it is?

Teacher 2: Well, we thought it was Martha, Jefferson’s daughter.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Round of applause. Excellent. Yay. So, so why it, why is it Martha Jefferson Randolph’s pocket?

Teacher 2: Well, we knew based on what we had seen in the dependencies about the keys and the importance of controlling stores . . .

Jacqueline Langholtz: Great.

Teacher 2: And the list, keeping that. And then it was kind of also interesting, lots of sewing items.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yep. You have spices in there, I heard you talking about the vanilla, you have a sewing kit—and carrying the keys, you’re right, even that phrase is responsibility in the house. So if I’m carrying the keys to the storehouse, I’m responsible for what’s inside there, and she would sometimes pass the keys over to a domestic house servant or a slave who needed to get in to retrieve something or she would get it for them. And this was apparently an exercise that each one of the granddaughters had to do for about a week and they write and complain about it because it’s such a pain that people are constantly coming and finding you and interrupting you because they need access to something in the storehouse. And it reminds me of when I was in high school or junior high and they made me carry around a fake baby for a while. I don’t know if that’s still done in schools but it was to teach that this is—being an adult is a lot of responsibility.

Teacher 3: Well, one of the things I knew 'cause I knew somebody that actually had one of these and could play it. It’s a mouth harp. So you can put it in your mouth and when you put it in between your lips and you go like this then you can change, like, and it makes a twangy kind of sound like—yeah, like a real twangy kind of sound so we thought that that would probably be some sort of recreational something that would be in this pocket.

Teacher 4: And then there's nails, and I remember somewhere we heard that they make nails in the—that the children make nails, so—

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yes, in the what though? You were about to tell us where?

Teacher 4: In the, I forget, the place where they make nails.

Teacher 3: The forgery.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, that's the forge, the blacksmith shop, great.

Teacher 4: And then fishing line and a hook and a bobber doohickey.

Teacher 3: And then a flint, which we didn’t know what this was, but you can make fire with it and you've got the flax—yeah, Chris helped us. At first we thought it was a handle on something, but you can actually hold it and you can do that and make fire.

Teacher 4: And it’s small so it’s not like an adult could use it because the way you use it has to be small for small hands.

Jacqueline Langholtz: I use it, I use it. That’s a typical striker size.

Teacher 4: Oh, it is? Oh, okay, I thought it was small.

Jacqueline Langholtz: But you’re right in saying that it's small, you’re also letting us know something about it, that it’s portable. Right? And if we are looking at pockets, everything wer'e looking at is something that is portable here.

Teacher 3: And then really quickly, interestingly, we had these little pieces—they look like Monopoly pieces, and so you can put them together and make a coin. Apparently you used to be able to break a coin apart to make change.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Not like a piece of candy bar, though, but cutting it.

Teacher 5: Like a piece of eight.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Piece of eight! So okay, there’s a story there. What do you know?

Teacher 5: They would cut it and they would weigh it so that they would make sure that they paid the right amount.

Jacqueline Langholtz: That’s right.

Teacher 5: 'Cause your silver was very precious to you.

Jacqueline Langholtz: That’s right. So cutting and weighing the silver. And a piece of eight—eight of those pieces go into a dollar piece.

Teacher 4: And then marbles, which are also recreation.

Teacher 3: So we thought that it was a slave's pocket, like a child slave or, you know, young person.

Jacqueline Langholtz: And they got it right. And we had what I thought was a great discussion, too, because often times if—even teachers—but students do this activity before they’ve gone through any part of the mountain or before they’ve gotten exposed to some of the things in the galleries, sometimes the money in that pocket can throw them off. They either think, well, I thought it was a slave's pocket, but there’s money in it, so it’s not, or they think the money is from someone else’s pocket, so it’s a great way to also teach about how Monticello has different roles and responsibilities for slaves here and that sometimes slaves were paid for their work. People like Joe Foset, the blacksmith, or John Hemmings who often times sold some of their work in town and then had some money from that or selling produce back to the house as Dr. Chew told us.

Teacher 1: We had a sampler with the alphabet on it. A game that has different levels of difficulty, either trying to catch it on top here or in the hole, which is next to impossible. We also had marbles in ours, as well. A little squirrel, which, that actually ended up being a game piece as well. We had a slate with the engraving—I don’t know if you call it chalk or not but—and we had a book in French that was on Anne of Cleves and that’s all we could really figure out because it’s entirely in French. And what was most helpful was a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Patsy that was written—it was dated 1783 in Annapolis and kind of went over his educational expectations for her while he was not at Monticello and that led us to believe that this was the pocket of Patsy, his daughter.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yes, and would you mind for everyone’s intense enjoyment walking us through what the "miser of his time," Thomas Jefferson, recommends for how a young girl should spend her day?

Teacher 1: "From eight to 10 o’clock, practice music. From 10 to one, dance one day and draw another. From one to two, draw on a day you dance and write a letter the next day. From three to four, read French"—that explained the book—"From four to five exercise yourself in music. From five till bedtime read English and write"—looks like "writed." Communicate this plan to Ms. Hopkinson—

Jacqueline Langholtz: Her tutor.

Teacher 1: —"and if she approves of it, pursue it as long as I remain in Philadelphia. Activate her"—"articulate her affections, she has been a valuable friend to you and her good sense and her good heart make her valued by all who know her."

Jacqueline Langholtz: Excellent. Wonderful reading. So from family letters we learn a lot about the daily life—I mean, that’s the name of this program right, Daily Life at Monticello—for the family, for the staff, so for those who live in the house, for those who work in the house. We love that letter. And what do you think students—how do you think students react to that letter? What do they hear when they see it? They’re like, did she not eat? No, she ate. Did she not sleep? Right, but it sounds—you know, it sounds pretty stern. So who’s missing from this picture? El Jefe, right? Take us through what was in your pocket.

Teacher 2: Well, the first thing that was noticed was it's nice leather when we opened the pocket itself. The thing that we thought—we found really curious was the ivory for note-taking, for this. The glasses are really nice and they—

Jacqueline Langholtz: Ah, the spectacles.

Teacher 2: So they can be compacted a lot more. And this feels like very nice leather. There is a letter inside, it’s been sealed with the wax and the seal from here and it’s signed from Thomas Jefferson. It’s dated Monticello, April 16, and then the year 10, obviously 1810 because what other century could it be?

Jacqueline Langholtz: Right, but great question.

Teacher 2: And it says, "Dear Jefferson"—our question is who’s the Jefferson he’s writing to, it’s a person, he says they’re out of salad oil, he’s wondering if they have any in Richmond, if it’s good quality, they wanted—

Jacqueline Langholtz: They want a lot of it.

Teacher 2: They want a lot of it. I’m trying to think how many. If it’s mediocre then they want two or three. If it’s not so good just a single bottle just to serve them until he can get some from Philadelphia.

Jacqueline Langholtz: This is a man obsessed with salad oil, just so you know. Thomas Jefferson is obsessed with salad oil and this is—if it’s good stuff, get a lot of it, and if it’s bad, I need some, so just give me some and then we'll get some good stuff later on whenever we can. Yeah, that’s what that is.

Teacher 2: Just too fun. And then at the very end he says that everyone in my family is well except for Benjamin whose health isn’t too good. How are you in Richmond? And he said he’d probably see him in Richmond at some point in time. But we don’t know, at least we couldn’t figure out who Jefferson was. Was it his brother or somebody?

Jacqueline Langholtz: Well, that’s a great question and it’s someone in the family. Does anyone here—anyone here in a family where names are repeated in your family? Yeah, so the same thing here. And you’ve already seen that Martha’s name is repeated so his wife is Martha, his eldest daughter is Martha, and here his name is repeated—Thomas Jefferson Randolph is the grandson. He’s actually the executor of the will, so this is a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson Randolph.

Teacher 2: Randolph, the grandson.

Teacher 3: Provider of salad oil.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Provider of salad oil, that’s right.

Teacher 2: Okay, do we go through everything?

Jacqueline Langholtz: I like that next thing you’re grabbing, so please do.

Teacher 2: It’s a—this one is the quill—portable quill and the ink as well.

Jacqueline Langholtz: It’s a portable writing set. I love that. It’s so funny, too, because sometimes students ask us if it’s perfume or do you want to guess the other thing they were like—

Teachers: A flask.

Jacqueline Langholtz: A flask. No, no, no! Jefferson’s a man of letters, it’s for writing, yeah.

Teacher 2: Then there’s more money. If you want to show them the money.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, and more money compared certainly to what you had in your pocket, yeah. Excellent. And any sort of epiphanies or questions you have about Jefferson the man after looking through a recreated pocket for him?

Teacher 2: I just love seeing this after we’ve talked about it. This was awfully fun for me.

Jacqueline Langholtz: So what did we—what did we say about this? Or I don’t know if the whole group heard the discussion&#8212

Teacher 2: It was—it was made from ivory and you can write on it with a pencil.

Teacher 4: How accessible was that?

Jacqueline Langholtz: I don’t know, that’s a great question. Jefferson often has things made specifically for him to his specifications. I, at least, haven’t seen this in other venues—David, I’m looking towards you. I mean I learned about it here but that’s not to say that no one else used it. Certainly other people and Jefferson is not alone in being obsessed with data collecting as a man of the Enlightenment, he’s doing this and he’s sharing data with other people, but this is his system of collecting, but you can’t buy these so they're at least uncommon enough that no one makes reproductions of them. So these are piano keys, this is ivory from piano keys that we bought and then they're just sort of tacked together. And he had very small ones for travel and slightly larger ones in the galleries too. And you’re right—you take shorthand notes on them in lead and then transfer it to the appropriate book, so maybe it transferred into the weather book or the garden book or the plantation book and then wipe it off and reuse it. I love these.

Teacher 4: Were some of Jefferson’s actually found onsite?

Jacqueline Langholtz: We have some of his upstairs but I don’t think they were ever buried and unearthed. I think they were always known to be his and treasured or at least known of. Let’s give them a round of applause. Wonderful job!

Sarah Jencks: First take: What are some of the things you notice, both about the content, what he’s saying, and also about the way he goes about saying it? Just a quick phrase or what words or phrases stick out to you here? Teacher: Well, there’s some old Biblical references. Sarah Jencks: Yeah, he calls on the Bible a lot, absolutely Teacher: That’s strange for us in the 21st century Sarah Jencks: And he also, it’s clear he assumes people know that those quotes are from the Bible, right, because he doesn’t say these are Bible quotes, he just does it. What else? Teacher: He brings sort of a why he said some things in the first inaugural address and how this is going to be different, lays out and prepares for what he’s going to say. Sarah Jencks: He definitely starts off by saying this is a new day, this is a different time. Absolutely. What else? What other things do you notice in here? Yeah. Teacher: Malice towards none is sort of the start of the Reconstruction. Sarah Jencks: So yeah. So at the very end of the speech, he’s definitely moving forward and he’s setting a tone for what his expectations are. Absolutely. What else? Teacher: I think he reaffirms the notion that we’ve seen since the Emancipation Proclamation, that originally the war was about preserving the Union, but now he’s very clear that it was about ending slavery. Sarah Jencks: Absolutely. Yeah, he really states it. He even goes further than that. We’ll talk a little bit more about that. What else? What else do you notice? Anything about the structure? Teacher: I’m just struck by the rather severe comment that God wills the retribution. Sarah Jencks: Yeah, there’s nothing light or casual about this middle paragraph. Anything else? Okay, let’s try to take a second pass at this, and as we’re doing it, I want you to think about those things, about the references, the Biblical references, and let’s also—we’ll pay attention to these different paragraphs. He starts by saying it’s a new day, then he goes into talking about what it was like in the country at the beginning of the Civil War in the next paragraph, and then he goes into this really intense paragraph about slavery and about why this war—he’s got an idea why this war happened. And then moving us towards post-war times. And just quickly I want to remind you, do you all know what the day was that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated? Do you remember? [Murmuring answers] Sarah Jencks: April 14th. He was assassinated on the 14th, he died on the 15th. And what is this date right here? March 4th. So it’s how much earlier? Yeah, just like a month and a half. It’s not much. He hardly had a second term. Teachers reading: Fellow-Countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. Sarah Jencks: Okay, let’s stop for a second and talk about some of the things he’s doing in this first paragraph. It’s funny, I’ve been doing this for three years, and I just noticed a new thing, so what, what are some of the—he’s very skilled in the way he’s structuring this. What are some of the things that he’s doing in this first paragraph. How is he—what is he trying to do as he introduces this speech? What do you see? Teacher: Well, ’high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.’ Like, he has a plan, he’s not quite sure how it’s going to go and how it’s going to be accepted. Sarah Jencks: Yeah, and, you know, that’s the part that I just noticed something for the first time. He doesn’t ever say in this speech, and the Union is going to win, which was clear by then. It was clear by March 4th that the Union was going to win. Why wouldn’t he say that? Why might he choose not to say that in this speech? Given what else he knows? Teacher: He feels he’s a president of all the states. Sarah Jencks: He doesn’t want to stick it to the South. He’s specifically saying no prediction is ventured, I’m not going to go there. It’s an interesting way for him to start this. Teacher: So he’s already thinking about healing. Sarah Jencks: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, we’re not going to start this speech by saying we’re winning, we’re doing it. Teacher: Well, he even has sense before, ’reasonably satisfactory,’ he doesn’t go jump and say that we’ve won, pretty much, it’s very— Sarah Jencks: I just heard, I’m sorry, I don’t know—yes. Yeah. And very measured. He’s very careful how he does that. Teachers reading: On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. Sarah Jencks: Okay, let’s stop again. Um, he’s still talking about the previous inauguration and the beginning of the war here, and he does a lot of this ’then and now.’ If you notice, in the first paragraph, he says ’then the statement seemed fitting and proper, now, we don’t need it anymore.’ So, what do you notice about this paragraph, what are some of the things you notice about what he’s saying at this paragraph? I’m going to say one—are there any hands back there that I’m missing? Yes. Teacher: I was just going to say he’s very balanced. He’s not placing blame. And, you know, in these last few sentences, he states what one party did, then what the other party did, and then response one party did, and the other party did. He’s very—it gives a very balanced perspective. Sarah Jencks: And what’s the—this is just a little grammar thing that I sometimes do with kids when I’m looking at this. In that very last clause of the paragraph, who’s taking the action? Teacher: The war itself. Sarah Jencks: Yeah. Isn’t that interesting? It’s not a person on either side. It’s the war is the subject. Teacher: And he also does a similar thing by saying that insurgent agents, he’s not saying the whole South, the government, you know, or the leaders of the South, like agents, like I know it’s not everyone, it’s just these few. Sarah Jencks: And he also says in that second sentence, notice the way he says all dreaded it, all sought to avert it. Nobody wanted war. Teacher: I think he does nail, though, who he feels started it. Sarah Jencks: Yeah, yeah. It’s true. Teacher: Makes it clear. Sarah Jencks: It’s true. He says one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive. And the other would accept it. No, you’re absolutely right, you’re absolutely right. I mean, he’s not saying nobody’s responsible here, but he is really being careful about the way he phrases it. Um. We’re ready to keep going. Teacher: Okay. Sarah Jencks: Okay. Teachers reading: One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Sarah Jencks: Okay, I’m going to stop us here, because this is a really long paragraph. What’s he doing here? He’s moving on from talking about what happened at the beginning and who was responsible. He’s going a little deeper here. What’s he doing? Teacher: He’s kind of always said that the cause of the war was to save the Union, but here he’s saying that even though we always said it was to save the Union, we knew that this was slavery and this institute had something to do with it. Sarah Jencks: And who knew? According to him? Teacher: Everybody. Sarah Jencks: Everybody. He does it again. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of war. He’s not letting anyone off the hook here. What else? Do you recognize any language here, from other studies of slavery or anything? Teacher: A peculiar institution. Sarah Jencks: Exactly. A peculiar and powerful interest. Absolutely. And I think it’s really interesting the way he says to strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object to which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war. I love that image, his use of that word, to rend the Union, because I always think of sort of tearing fabric or something. Teacher: He’s also in the next part of that sentence talking about, you know, I didn’t say that I was going to abolish slavery at the beginning, I was not—I was going to let the states deal with it, the territory. He says, hey, you know. Sarah Jencks: Other "than to restrict the territorial enlargement." Part of what I like about this speech also is that it sort of like gives you like, the whole history of, you know, the early part of the 19th century. He addresses so many issues that you can then make connections to. Okay, let’s keep going. Teachers reading: Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Sarah Jencks: Okay, stop for just a second. What is he saying here? He’s addressing something that happened in January 1865 here. The cause of the conflict should cease before the conflict itself should cease. Does anybody know? Do you remember from down— Teachers: The Emancipation Proclamation. Sarah Jencks: The Emancipation Proclamation, yes, that was in 1863. January 1865, the Congress passed the 13th Amendment. And so it hadn’t been ratified yet, it wasn’t ratified until December 1865, but it had been passed by Congress. And so he lived to see that happen, and that was yet another sign that it was—we were in the endgame.

Teachers reading: Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Sarah Jencks: I love that sentence because the kids often, they think, they’re not used to these words being used in such a powerful way. A result less fundamental and astounding. Just changing the whole country. Keep going. Teachers reading: It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Sarah Jencks: Okay, let’s stop again. So he’s making a transition here from determining what the cause of the war was to what? What’s going on here? Teacher: It’s in God’s hands. Sarah Jencks: It’s in God’s hands. Where do you see that? Teacher: It’s just the [unintelligible] that I’m getting from the actual—the whole Bible and everything else, it’s just kinda like this is fate now. Sarah Jencks: He’s doing something more here with that. The way he was using 'all' before, he’s using—do you see he’s using that here as well? What words does he use here to bring people together? Teacher: Neither. Sarah Jencks: Neither and also—does anybody see anything else? Both. Yep, neither and both. He’s bringing everybody—he’s saying, we may not be seeing this from the same perspective, but we’re all seeing it together. Teacher: And I take that both sides here have lost. Neither side is jumping for joy. Sarah Jencks: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And he really is bringing everybody together. Let’s talk about that dig for a second. What’s his dig here? Teacher: That the prayers of both could not be answered. Sarah Jencks: The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. They could—we can’t—we’re not—we’re not going to be satisfied. What’s he—his previous sentence, though, may seem strange. Teacher: Yeah. Sarah Jencks: What’s going on in that sentence? Anybody want to read it aloud again? Somebody just go ahead. Go ahead. Teacher: Uh, okay. ’It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.’ Teacher: Is that a dig against slavery, then? Teacher: Yeah. Sarah Jencks: What’s he—how do you take that? Teacher: You’re making money from someone else’s work. Sarah Jencks: Yeah. But who do you think he’s talking to there? Teacher: I think to the South. Sarah Jencks: You think he’s talking—okay, tell me more about that. Teacher: Slaveowners. Sarah Jencks: Slaveowners. Okay. And the workforce. Think about the Northerner here, for a second. Why might that sentence—and I’m just thinking of this right now, so don’t think I’m so far ahead of you here. Why might that sentence be addressed to a Northern audience? Teacher: He’s critical in that the Northerners really didn’t maybe speak up more loudly against it, that they even have labor issues themselves. Sarah Jencks: Remember he quotes the Bible here, though. He says it may seem strange that slavery exists, but, let us judge not, that we be not judged. So yeah, he’s bringing up issues of labor in the North, and he’s saying hey, you Northerners, you abolitionists, you may think those Southerners are pieces of white trash, but let us judge not so that we be not judged. You’re not God. It’s interesting because he’s got many many audiences here, and we’re going to be playing with that in the minute. Teacher: I was thinking similar to the reference that he used, let he who casts the first stone be without sin, so, you know, it seems like another Biblical reference or reference to that part of the Bible. Sarah Jencks: Yeah, absolutely. Let’s keep going. Let’s go. Teacher: Woe— Sarah Jencks: My apologies for cutting you off. Teacher: It’s okay. ’Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’ Sarah Jencks: What does this mean? What does this Biblical quote mean? Let’s break it down, because it’s not an easy one. ’Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’ Teacher: I mean, to go back to the Biblical language, he’s saying something along the line of it’s a shame that we have to live in a world of sin, this is a sinful world, so we should feel sorry for ourselves, and this is a place where sin is going to happen, but God help the sucker who commits the sin. Teacher: Yeah. Teacher: Bad things happen, but this could have been avoided. Sarah Jencks: Right, and also you’d better not be the one who’s actually doing it. Yeah, absolutely, and what he’s doing, it almost looks here like he’s setting up the South, but then let’s see what comes next. Teacher: You wonder if there’s a little confusion in the speech. He starts out saying it’s about saving the Union, then he ends up saying, well, this is really about retribution for slavery. Which is it? Sarah Jencks: It’s the big question of the Civil War, isn’t it? Teacher: It strikes me, realistically, you can’t have it both ways, even though he wants it that way. Teacher: Couldn’t you read it, though, as more of a superficial understanding— Teacher: Superficial is my middle name. Teacher: No, no, I mean, the whole thing about preserving the Union, that sort of, you know, the reading of it, initially, but then, you know, we spent the whole week studying Lincoln and how he agonized over this stuff in his summer retreat and then at a deeper level, he’s looking for a more meaningful way to frame the whole thing, so that it’s not necessarily contradictory, but just deeper readings of the same situation. Sarah Jencks: I would throw out to you also that Abraham Lincoln was the consummate politician. He was a great leader. That’s separate from his having been a great politician. And that he was very conscious of the laws of the land and the way that he handled this war in the first half of the war. And in the second half, he started to become much—he was looking for a deeper meaning. For himself, with the death of his son and the death of all of these soldiers, whom he was mourning. And he really started drawing on—looking for a deeper meaning in a different way. So that doesn’t answer your question. Teacher: Back in the 19th century, didn’t most Americans, or at least, you know, the elites believe that democracy was a divine act? I mean, Reagan wasn’t the first person to say that United States was a city on the hill. You know, you’ve got Melville[?] and all these other guys referring to it that way, so for Abraham Lincoln, couldn’t that also be the case. That to preserve the Union was to keep God’s purposes, God’s will going on Earth, because as long as democracy was there, justice could be done. Sarah Jencks: That’s really interesting. Yeah, and that was, it was Winthrop, it was that early on, the city on the hill concept started. Teacher: Remember that, yesterday, talking about how the Declaration of Independence was the apple, yeah, the Constitution is the rain. Goes right back to that. Teachers reading: With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. Teacher: I mean, this is what brings the whole thing full circle. From the introduction, what Mike said about it started out trying to preserve the Union. Yes, slavery was a major part of it, but, I think, you know, events change people. You’ll have a belief when you’re a younger person and then as you get older and as experiences start to mold and shape you, you start to—especially having a child or something else—it makes you think differently. And this war, with the loss of his own child and the loss of all these mother’s children, changed him. So he needed to get back to a place that brings us back together. Sarah Jencks: I see also that he’s using this whole Biblical kind of exegesis almost to set up what he says in the last paragraph. Because if none of us are responsible, then we have to move forward, we have to strive on with malice towards none and charity for all. We can’t hold it against anyone. Teacher: Especially when he said back a few sentences before that both sides have committed sins during the course of this war. Teacher: Yet does he really say that nobody’s responsible, or does he say that we’re all responsible. I sort of get the sense he’s saying that we’re all responsible. Sarah Jencks: Yes, I agree with you. I totally agree with you. We are all responsible. Teacher: But he still names the insurgents. Sarah Jencks: Yes. Teacher: We’re still pointing the finger somewhere. Teacher: I still wonder, to what degree does Lincoln himself take personal responsibility for all this tremendous loss. I mean, in the first inaugural, I lot of you are remembering, he said, I’ve taken an oath to preserve the Union. So I’m this passive agent, essentially, and I must follow my oath. But of course he didn’t have to follow his oath exactly as he saw it. He had other choices. Teacher: And I think— Teacher: What do you think? Teacher: He wasn’t passive. You know, he used the Constitution to his benefit and that other times he expanded powers in it and stretched things and kind of toyed with it in order to achieve a goal. And you’re saying he’s a master politician, he wasn’t just—he wasn’t, in my opinion, this ’I’m a moral person that’s just following my oath,’ he was very deliberate in what he did, he was very calculated in what he did, and the way things that he followed in the Constitution, things that he chose to kind of stretch a little bit, it was all for his kind of for his goal to win the war. Teacher: Very Machiavellian. Ends justify means. Sarah Jencks: One of the phrases that I find really powerful from—I don’t know if you all are ever trying to make these connections, I can’t imagine you’re not, but I’m always looking for those threads that sort of go through the 19th century or follow from the Declaration, you know, the different political threads, through to the Civil War and beyond, and Lincoln was a great follower of Daniel Webster, the Whig politician. And one of Webster’s phrases, or his sayings, which is actually on the wall of the National Constitution Center if you ever get to go up there in Philadelphia, it’s ’one country, one Constitution, one destiny.’ And they were struggling with these same issues in, you know, the middle and the early part of the 19th century, too. It didn’t just happen. Teacher: [Unintelligible]—time we were a country— Sarah Jencks: Yeah. You’re absolutely right. And so Webster said that. Well, if you go down to the coat in the lobby, Lincoln had those words, ’one country, one destiny,’ embroidered in his overcoat. Literally, an eagle of the Union, with the words ’one country, one destiny,’ embroidered in his overcoat.

Sarah Jencks: So what I’d like to do is to start off by looking at some of the things, specific things that might have been, you know, when we hear presidential speeches and other speeches today, commentators and even regular people can see things, and then you think, oh my gosh, I see they said that, that’s going to be—that’s a buzzword or there’s that kernel of an idea, it’s going to keep going forward, I know it’s going to be an issue. And so the idea here is to partner up and to look for, to try to articulate, we’ve talked a lot about these, but the theory, the sort of proposition about the war that Lincoln makes, and then, secondly, what the policy is that he’s proposing. He makes a statement of a proposition of what the war was all about, and then he proposes a policy. Teacher: These two people get along fantastically—this person didn’t want to fight the war at all. This person didn’t want a war that would disrupt the institution of cotton and slave [uncertain], because his livelihood would be Teacher: Right— Teacher: But he could always turn a blind eye to how the cotton was being produced. Teacher: Alright, so the theory we’re going with is that there’s blame to go around, right? Teacher: Right, and the South is not going to be punished. And I guess that’s what she was getting to, in order to understand what happens next, why Lincoln’s assassination was a tragedy is because we know that Reconstruction went in a million different directions. Teacher: The war is God punishing us for slavery. Teacher: No, all parties are [unintelligible]. Teacher: Right. Because, I mean, he’s really not talking a lot here about the war to preserve the Union, to preserve states’ rights, he’s really focusing on the slavery issues a lot more. Sarah Jencks: I call these the POV cards, your point-of-view cards. I want to first ask you, does anybody feel particularly good about what you wrote, not to show off, but you feel like you could—you’d be willing to share with us either your theory or your policy and/or did it bring up any questions that anyone wants to raise with the— Teacher: We kind of felt that people of the North who really felt that they were sort of fighting to fight would see this as controversial. What do you mean we shared the blame, you know, we don’t have slavery, we’re trying to preserve the Union, and now you’re telling us that we’re partly to blame. I think maybe that’s where some of the controversy lies. Sarah Jencks: Interesting. Okay. Yes. Teacher: We also felt that neither the North, kind of going on what Nancy said, that neither the North nor South is going to be happy with his plan of no blame and that, you know, he wanted to move quickly, like the South now is going to be forced to join the Union, which they’re going to be upset about, and the North is going to be angry that they’re not, you know, held as this victorious winner, that he’s really got enemies on both sides now. Teacher: Northerners don’t want to accept Southerners, Southerners don’t want to accept Northerners, and that 10% loyalty cutoff[?] of which 90% of the population in that Confederate state doesn’t want to be there. Sarah Jencks: Did any—I don’t know how much you all got to talk about or you read about in the basement museum the election of 1864. What were Lincoln’s chances? What happened? Can anybody sort of revisit that? Teacher: I think it depended on victory. Teacher: Yeah. Sarah Jencks: I’m sorry, say it again? Teacher: Well, it depended on victory. Sarah Jencks: Yeah, military victory. So, how was he doing before Sherman started succeeding in the fall? Yeah, it was not looking good. It was all over. And there are amazing images, again, of what happened on the Library of Congress website and on other places, in Atlanta and Savannah. And at the same time just remember, you know, if he hadn’t done that, where would we be? It’s a conundrum. It’s a little bit like the conundrum, when you investigated, of should we have dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima? Teacher: Well, Grant as well. I mean Mike was talking about should Lincoln take the responsibility of the death toll, where if you look at a Sherman or a Grant, their strategy was attrition and just keep throwing bodies at the problem until they run out of bullets. Sarah Jencks: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of controversy over what the best military practice is here. We do a play called The Road from Appomattox and it’s a meeting between Grant and Lee the day after the surrender, which we know took place. We don’t know what happened in it, but we know it took place. Or at least in their memoirs they both say it took place. And one of the things that Lee says is this is the last war that will ever be fought according to conventional rules of war as we know them. And I think that was true in many ways. So. Sarah Jencks: What else? What else is coming through here, in terms of the controversy of his theory, his controversial theory, or what his proposal was. What is the policy that he’s beginning to articulate here? Maybe we can move on to the policy. Yes. Teacher: The whole ’malice towards none, charity for all’ is remarkable. Sarah Jencks: So what’s he saying there? If you were thinking of it from policy terms? Teacher: Well, it’s directed towards the South. We’re not going to hang the leadership like many wanted to do up north, and after four years of hell, that’s pretty remarkable, that he would keep that focus, on reuniting the country. Sarah Jencks: Just to repeat myself, is it just directed towards the South, do you think? I mean, what about those Northerners? Teacher: Stop looking for revenge. Sarah Jencks: And the border states, it was a really big issue. As you begin to look at Andrew Johnson, one of the issues that we come up against with Andrew Johnson is that he was from a border state. He had been holding out for four years, as a member of the Union, as a legislator and a senator from a state that, essentially, had seceded. But he was maintaining his presence, which was why he was named vice president in the 1864 election. From a state that essentially had seceded from the Union, Tennessee. He was full of vengeance. He couldn’t have been more the opposite of Lincoln.

Sarah Jencks: So having thought about these two, having articulated this theory and then the resulting policy he’s proposing, I want you to take a look at these different Americans—almost all of them are Americans, one is not an American—that you have in front of you on these POV cards. And by the way, I have one more—if anybody needs one, I have one more. And take a moment to think both about how they would have responded to the speech and then, as a follow-up, how they would have responded to the assassination. Abraham Lincoln’s family was from Kentucky, originally, and they—his parents left their Baptist church because it was pro-slavery and they were not. So these are—and even if you can’t make a clear decision, start to think of what the questions are, you know. Okay, in his very last speech before he was assassinated, Lincoln proposed that what he described as ’very intelligent Negroes’ and those who had fought for the Union should be eligible for the vote. Teacher: Okay. Sarah Jencks: So. . . . Teacher: That would give hope, but— Teacher: Yeah. Teacher: But this is after the assassination, right? Sarah Jencks: What happened in South Carolina afterwards actually was that it became the state with the most black legislators during Reconstruction. Teacher: Right. Sarah Jencks: Right, so. . . . Teacher: And that only lasts about 10 years. Sarah Jencks: Right. Not even. Alright, so. Good questions you guys are bringing up, though. I’m not going to ask you to tell—to go around and say what your person would have thought. But instead, if you want to reflect on some of the questions that you were struggling with or that came up or some of the issues that you had to ask— Teacher: How about if we know what the person would have thought? Sarah Jencks: If you know? If you feel certain, then I think you should say what were some of the things that made you know. Okay? Alright. Go ahead. Whoever wants to start, raise your hand or just shout out. Anybody? Okay. Teacher: Well, we got Andrew Johnson the [unintelligible] legislator from Tennessee, so we already know that he was a little angry and wanted revenge, but was politically-minded enough to go with Lincoln until, you know, his time came. But then because I mouthed off, she gave me another one. And this one was a white merchant in San Francisco, formerly of Delaware. Apparently Delaware was a very small, slaveholding state— Sarah Jencks: Yeah, but border state. Teacher: —and this gentleman moved to San Francisco, obviously probably during the Gold Rush, so our idea was we really don’t think this guy cares. He’s in San Francisco, he’s trading, he’s involved with all sorts of ethnic groups and nationalities and he’s there just to make money. So I really don’t think his political opinions are going to be very strong, since he moved from a very small state to a state with more people where there could be more opportunity. Sarah Jencks: But California came—was strongly in which camp during— Teacher: In the free state category— Sarah Jencks: In the free state category. Teacher: —since the Compromise of 1850. Sarah Jencks: Okay. Excellent. Good thoughts. What else? Who else? What did you—what were you thinking about as you were going through this process? Teacher: Right. We were a white Georgetown DC dockworker. We’re wondering why we were unable to fight, but— Sarah Jencks: Maybe you had like a leg that had a—you broke your leg when you were little. Teacher:: You have to build your character. Teacher: Our options are really limited, so we’re really worried now with the freeing of slaves, because all this cheap black labor is going to be coming up from the South and if this—if what you’re saying is basically our case, we have very few options economically to turn to. So if we lose this job. . . . Sarah Jencks: Not to mention that the Potomac River is about to silt up and there isn’t going to be a dock in Georgetown in 10 years, but you don’t know that. Teacher: Man. Sarah Jencks: What else? Teacher: I just thought it was interesting how you guys think about their reaction to the speech and then to the assassination, and the role that we had was a Massachusetts writer with strong abolitionist ties. And we have very different reactions to the speech and the assassination, that, you know, they’re disillusioned by the speech, and this is not enough. You know, you’ve soft-pedaled down, you’ve taken more of a centrist stance. But the assassination still devastates them because this is, you know, your revered leader who did speak out. Sarah Jencks: Interesting. Teacher: We also struggled as an abolitionist with the idea of, you know, having a religious sort of approach to this whole thing, would we have been insulted that, okay, now we’re being lumped in with the sinners who perpetrated this horrible institution, and how dare you try to make us be with them. And then maybe we become more zealous once Lincoln was assassinated—see, now you didn’t want to punish them, now they killed the president on top of it, just sin upon sin on the South, and I’m not part of that. You know, even more stronger regional identity of not wanting to be seen as part of that bigger— Sarah Jencks: Yeah. Very interesting. Teacher: And one of our controversies was, just because you’re an abolitionist didn’t mean you believed in equal rights. Sarah Jencks: So true. That’s so true. Absolutely. There were a lot of Northerners who did not—we sort of tend to say that the Northerners were oh, they were antislavery. Not so much, you know. That was unusual. Absolutely. So the last thing I want to ask you all is if you were to take this into your classrooms, what kinds of things might you want to do to enhance your ability to assess students and/or to develop this into something that would actually work for you. And I know this is really fast, but let’s just quick do some popcorn ideas about this. And the last piece is if you were to use this, is there anything that you feel like you would need to do to scaffold it differently? Yeah. Teacher: I mean, I teach global, so we were thinking of ideas, possibly doing this with, like, the French Revolution and giving out different characters, or Caesar or any revolution for that matter, and really, you know, coming up with different types of characters and seeing what the kids do. Sarah Jencks: It does require some research, though. Because as you noticed as I was going—it can be your research or the kids’, you can decide, sort of. You can use it as an assessment tool, or you can give it to them and then say you need to go find out more about these people. Teacher: We had an Illinois regimental soldier, [unintelligible] Taylor, and we were trying to think what battles that soldier would have fought in. So that would be a springboard to do a little more research about that regiment, get background on— Sarah Jencks: One thing that has occurred to me just while we’ve been doing this here is that you could potentially do this in part as a Google map activity. You could use Google maps to actually pin where each of the different people were from, and to upload, you know, something so that you’re creating a class project as a result that might allow you to—everybody can make use of it as a tool, ultimately.