We know that Thomas Jefferson’s stirring words on equality and inalienable rights do not comport with his own history. Over his lifetime, 600 enslaved people toiled at his home, Monticello, and, after his death there, on July 4, 1826, he did not free those who remained in his will, as George Washington had done at Mount Vernon. Instead, almost all were sold to pay Jefferson’s debts, with many families cruelly broken up on the auction block. A Virginia abolitionist later remarked, “Never did a man achieve more fame for what he did not do.”
Jefferson’s conflicts as a man and thinker are even embedded in his architecture—as majestic as his words but also masking ugly truths. His crowning achievement is the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville, which he founded, designed, and began building in 1817. With its magnificent Rotunda, based on the Pantheon, overlooking a terraced lawn lined with colonnaded classical pavilions, the historic campus is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
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