 The objective in this area are several, number one to give you some sense of slavery in the Atlantic world, especially in the colonial period, then to give you some sense of Mr. Jefferson and the kind of background and upbringing he had, and then to suggest some sense about Jefferson's attitude towards slavery. At the beginning on the wall that I'm facing, you will see a variety of things that suggest the institution of slavery. There's a small map on the left hand side, there on the left hand side of the portrait by George Moreland that gives you some sense of the number of Africans who came to the New World. You will see that they came from all portions of Africa, from Senegal to the Bight of Biafra to the Bight of Benin, all the way over to West Central Africa, even Madagascar and other places, but the largest number comes from, as you will see, West Central Africa. Somewhere around 5 million Africans disembarked in places like Pernambuco, Brazil and South America. Somewhere around 4 million landed in the Caribbean, Jamaica, Barbados, Haiti, Cuba, those areas, 400,000 came to North America, 400,000. Whether they were dealing with building slave ships and transporting Africans back and forth, every American economy, the agricultural economy of America in some way, directly or indirectly, depended on the institution of slavery. And so Jefferson, from the very beginning of his life, there was an enslaved person who actually put him on a pillow and presented him to his father Peter and his mom Jane. And there was a slave at the end of his life who actually, his name was Burl Colbert, who actually fluffed up his pillow because he was the only one who understood what Jefferson was saying when he was at the end of his life and couldn't speak. He was the only one who understood that he was uncomfortable and needed his pillow adjusted. So from the time he was born until the time he died, slavery was a part of the world that he lived in. Here you see a series of items that relate to the period of the Enlightenment. You see Inkwell by Voltaire, that's an image of Voltaire's head. You see glasses and you see Jefferson, who was a voracious reader, by the way. You see this revolving book stand where he could read one, two, three, four, five books at a time. You know how he had that book stand where he could read five books at a time and keep them open so you don't lose your place? And then you walk like a couple feet that way and some guy, his whole day, every day, is the pound nails. So you get to do all of this fascinating stuff and the people working for you are pound nails. Over and over and you saw there were like five steps to making a nail and your sole goal is to make the most nails. So you get to be creative, thoughtful, and everybody around you has to be bored. You know I took away like the paradox of liberty that there's this really uncomfortable connection there that some people were freed to do all this grand philosophical thinking about politics and government and the nature of morals because other people were bored. The fact that the leisure time that Jefferson enjoyed was on the part built on the backs of enslaved people. Piling up all this wealth and stuff so that he was freed. You will see here some sense of what we're suggesting about his view of enslavement and you will find out as you read that Jefferson believed in emancipation. He did not believe that emancipation was something that could happen here. He believed in emancipation connected with colonization so that he felt that blacks and whites could not live together and once they were set free they should be delivered someplace else in order to enjoy their freedom. Interestingly, 1791 he has a letter somewhere around August. He has a letter from a man by the name of Benjamin Bannaker, an African American. He's a scientist. He is an author, a very, very learned person himself. He writes a letter. What he said was he wanted Jefferson to help and to assist in the liberation of his people. He sent him a copy of the Almanac. He used himself as a way of saying this is what's possible. Given the help, given the education, given the support, this is what's possible within the black community. Seven days later, Jefferson wrote him back and said, wonderful letter, wonderful Almanac, but I don't believe that the enslaved can in any way rise to the level of intelligence and the level of sophistication that you have risen to. I generally say to the folk when they ask me what I think about Jefferson, I say he was a man who was, in terms of his intellect, he was ahead of his time. In terms of his morality, he was a product of his time. And so I think more than most, though, Jefferson grappled with this issue. I think that kind of summarized the entire exhibit was that intellectually Jefferson was ahead of his time, but philosophically he was a product of his time. That's so current for today. He did a good job at not giving you the answer for how we should judge him. Not saying he was this or he was that. I think what it does effectively to us is we're all a product of our time now, and we might think, right, other people are wrong, and 200 years from now everyone might think we're all wrong. So it kind of makes you step back too and think, well, how am I seeing my time? I think it shows we're sometimes we forget, but we're a fairly young country. And now we're kind of looking at it and saying, yeah, well, you know, we got some things right, we got some things wrong, and it's okay to look at both of those so that maybe we can be more right the next time.