currency and measurements, and the swivel chair (yes, he invented it). There he’d be seen as the great Enlightenment figure pacing his balcony at dawn each morning, stewing over radical ideas about the separation of Church and State, the need for a decimal system in U.S. Judging historic figures by modern social standards can often be an illusory task, but in the case of Jefferson and the issue of slavery, even he was aware of the evil inherent in the South’s “peculiar institution.” A self-styled philosopher and American thinker, his habit for analyzing and self-reflection in the mold of post-Renaissance humanism was immortalized by the mansion on a hill he designed for himself: Monticello, Italian for “Little Mountain,” sat at the center of his 5,000-acre plantation. Sally Hemings and Jefferson’s Thoughts on Slavery So much so, even two of his own descendants, one descended from his white wife Martha Jefferson and one from his Black mistress, and Martha’s half-sister, Sally Hemings, have recently called for the possible removal of the Jefferson’s statue at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. Known by most products of the American education system only as the author of the soaring rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence-and it’s then-radical vision of these self-evident truths that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”-his obvious hypocrisy on not extending those ideals to the 200 people he owned at Monticello at the time can be overwhelming. In fact, Hamilton or not, Jefferson himself is at the forefront of this discussion with some voices calling for the general celebration of the founding father to end. Now five years since Hamilton’s first Off-Broadway performance, this is being viewed in a different light as more Americans confront the systemic racism that’s allowed anti-Black violence to fester and be normalized for centuries. “Sally be a lamb, darlin’ won’tcha open it?” is the lone winking acknowledgement Hemings is given by Diggs’ Jefferson. More upsetting still for some is how the musical characterizes Jefferson’s relationship with a Black woman he kept as property after returning from France: Sally Hemings, who was aged 16 when she got back to Monticello with the 46-year-old master. Otherwise Hamilton, and his 21st century musical, turn a largely blind eye. But like the real Hamilton, that hypocrisy is only used as a political cudgel during a larger argument on government.
Sure, Alexander calls him out for basking in the supposed agrarian ideals of Southern planters while willfully ignoring his paradise is built on the backs of Black slaves held in bondage. Because while much is made in the musical about Jefferson’s renown for writing the Declaration of Independence-which wasn’t actually well-known to the public until the 19th century-as well as his determination to protect farmers from moneyed interests, the show only lightly acknowledges his hypocrisy as a slave owner. After all, Hamilton sides with this political foe over Aaron Burr in the election of 1800 for Jefferson’s overall good intentions toward America.Īnd yet, it’s these good, if smug, intentions that Jefferson displays in Hamilton which have come under scrutiny as of late. Jefferson is an intellectual equal to Hamilton and thereby an audience favorite. He thus comes across as ultimately likable-and no less petty than the show’s main character who winds up dying in a duel.
And for those who are discovering Hamilton for the first time on Disney+, it’s a hell of an arrival as Daveed Diggs leaps across the stage with boundless confidence and swagger.Ĭlearly intended to be an antagonistic force, Jefferson enters stage right with an announcement that “someone must keep the American promise, you simply must meet Thomas, Thomas!” Yet even as the show depicts Jefferson as a prima donna, he is also an endearing one, draped in purple threads intentionally modeled after Prince and a glee from Diggs that’s infectious. For if Hamilton’s intro begins Act One, then Jefferson opens Act Two. After Alexander Hamilton, no character has a bigger entrance in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical than Thomas Jefferson.
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