On Thomas Jefferson
If I want to tell the stories of Black winemakers, why am I starting with Thomas Jefferson?
If I want to tell the stories of Black American winemakers, why am I starting with Thomas Jefferson? It’s the question in the back of my mind, as I’ve become a second-hand Jeffersonian.
We know Jefferson for drafting the illusive words, “that all men are created equal… endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” for being the third U.S. president, designing the University of Virginia, and a slew of other accomplishments. It may be less known he was an avid wine collector and had a vineyard at Monticello. And even less, that his lavish lifestyle was indebted to the 600 or so Black Americans he enslaved.
Jefferson was a prolific writer and documentarian. He wrote over 19,000 letters.1 He had a Garden Book, keeping notes on his gardens, orchards, and vineyards, as well as a Farm book for his plantation operations.2 In an early entry of the Farm Book, Jefferson took a “roll of the slaves” after inheriting 135 enslaved people from his deceased father-in-law. Much of these materials have been preserved and digitized, making Monticello one of the most well-documented plantations in the world.
On the other hand, it was illegal for enslaved Black Americans to read or write. Israel Gillette, born at Monticello, said Jefferson was in favor of teaching the enslaved to read, but writing was too much of a risk.3 They learned anyway. The Hemings family was also the exception to the rule, creating a divide among the enslaved. John Hemmings sent updates from Jefferson’s retreat, Poplar Forest, and once reported that Nace was stealing vegetables from the garden.4
I recently hit a breaking point after coming across a specific letter. Jefferson was living in Paris and stressed over the “great debt” he’d accrued. The solution, he decided, was to lease out his land and labor force to other enslavers until his return. He sent word to his friend, Nicholas Lewis, at Monticello:5
The torment of mind I endure till the moment shall arrive when I shall not owe a shilling on earth is such really as to render life of little value. I cannot decide to sell my lands... Nor would I willingly sell the slaves as long as there remains any prospect of paying my debts with their labour. In this I am governed solely by views to their happiness which will render it worth their while... to enable me to put them ultimately on an easier footing, which I will do the moment they have paid the debts.
The enslaved community at Monticello spent their lives paying a debt that wasn’t theirs. When Jefferson died, the debt remained, leading to the inevitable sale of 130 enslaved people and, eventually, Monticello.6
As I’m doing this research, Jefferson is in my head every day. The man who thought abolishing slavery wasn’t feasible in his lifetime. “We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go,” he wrote. “Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”7 These words were especially true for Sally Hemings, the mother of Jefferson’s six enslaved children. She was never legally freed but “given her time,” as if that time could be given back.
It’s only in the past three decades that historians have looked beyond Jefferson to the people he enslaved. Without their words, knowing so little about who they were as individuals, or how they felt about their lives, I’m still honing my double consciousness. When Jefferson alludes to Gardener John's alcoholism, I think of the moments when I have also used drinking as a means of bodily escape.8 When Jefferson is dying, I imagine Burwell Colbert’s attentiveness is linked to the freedom he has been promised.
I believe this reassessment makes for a richer, more honest history that doesn’t shy away from critique. After all, Black writer James Baldwin said it was his love for America that gave him “the right to criticize her perpetually.” I believe that Jefferson can still be a guide. It’s not too late for him to make reparations or for his paper trail to reveal another story about American wine:
That Wormley Hughes weeded the vineyards, Gardener John trellised the vines, George Granger cared for the orchards and made the cider, that Ursula Granger, Sally Hemings, and other women then bottled it, that Burwell Colbert was Monticello’s cellar master, and their know-how remained alive through the grapevine. Because of Jefferson’s surviving documents and the scholars who studied them, I know we were winemakers.
Suggested Reading:
“Mourning at Monticello” by Andrew Davenport. Published as a chapter in Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture. Davenport is a descendant of the Hemings family.
Browse Jefferson’s letters on Founders Online.
Browse Jefferson’s Garden Book and Farm Book.
John Hemmings to Thomas Jefferson. November 29, 1821. Founders Online.
Thomas Jefferson to Nicholas Lewis. July 29, 1787. Founders Online.
The 1827 Monticello Dispersal Sale. Monticello Website.
Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes. April 22, 1820. Founders Online.
Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph. February 4, 1800. Founders Online.