saturday, 12 p.m. and 9 p.m. on sunday and 12 a.m. on monday. you can also watch "after words" on line. go to booktv.org and click on "after words" in the book tv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. .. of his most recent book, i'm not sure, but iconoclastic it

certainly is. i am talking about a master of a mountain which had just come out in paperback. and that don't think i can do any better than to quote my colleague, jonathan yardley, who placed the book on his best books of 2012 list, so here is his castle description of the book and the controversy that it set off. a fine book that fits no precise category, master of the mountain , thomas jefferson and his life's. the devastating picture of the slavocracy maintained by the author of the declaration of independence of his plantations at monticello and elsewhere. the complexities of race in america have preoccupied when sec for years and have now produced three exceptional books . the others by the harrison, an american family in black and

white, and an imperfect god, george washington, his slaves, and the creation of americans of which this may be the best. it is beyond the much told story to leave no doubt that given the choice between economic well-being of his holdings and the rights of the enslaved people who kept them bombing, the slaves did not come first. it is not a pretty story, but henry wiencek tells it very well. i might add that the jeffersonian establishment has taken issue, to put it mildly, with the take of wiencek on their man. for the harrisons wiencek won a national book critics circle award and for an imperfect god he won a los angeles times book price. he lives and works at an independent scholar in a place where thomas jefferson has a stronger presence than perhaps anywhere but monticello itself.

please welcome henry wiencek. [applause] >> thank you very much, dennis. the jesuits certainly do have an effect on me. i think that one of the things they gave me was something of a stood me in good stead during my george washington book and jefferson book. to take a careful look at the text go back to the original documents, look at them yourself one bylined award by word, and see what has been left out breezy if somebody else who purports to be an expert has twisted, omitted, or in some way distorted with the original says. that was the path that i took

which turned out to be a very different creature from what i thought it would be. no one wants to write a book that is perceived as iconoclastic about mr. jefferson living in mr. jefferson's town. but -- believe me, it's true. i did not start out wanting to do a book on jefferson at all. it was suggested to me by a librarian. i was at a conference in richmond. he should do a book on jefferson. was talking about all the new information that turned up when i was writing a book about george washington. it did not take me the hour in ten minutes to decide that i would make that my next project because there was some much about jefferson that i did not understand. i did not understand, for example the mile he could have a mixed race lover and mixed-race children and continue to say and do the things that he did to black people. that did not understand the so-called paradox about him that on the one hand he could write

the declaration of independence and and continue to at that stage of paradox which. everyone said he was a man of contradiction and a man of great complexity. i knew all of the major historians who have spent their lives and careers studying jefferson. i lived in monticello since 92. and i fully expected their view of jefferson that he was a very highly moral and conflicted man on the subject. he earns two but could not because it was hampered by these terrible burdens in debts and was also hampered by a primitive racism that was typical of many 18th-century people. he simply thought that black people were inferior and the kid never throw off this idea. also that he was hampered by political considerations.

he treated slaves well and yearned to find an opportunity somehow to free them. well, i spent about two years researching and writing a book that was really very much along those lines when things began to fall apart. as the jesuits a tommy, i spent a lot of time looking at the original documents, some of which are at the library of congress and were available online. and what i began to find really disturbs me. for one thing one of the first things i found is that there was a document that showed the the regime at monticello was not as a benevolent and kind as we have been led to believe. i found a note about the young boys being whipped to get them to work in mr. jefferson's nail factory at the top of the mountain. this line had been deliberately omitted when that letter was

first published in 1953 by monticello and in addition prepared by a you be a editor. and it was initially published the last line was just three dots. no one is being whipped. well, when the full text was published it turned out to say no one is being whipped except a small ones. now, that changes the meaning. no one is being worked except the children to get them to work. and the head historian at monticello who had been basing all for research on this letter did not know that until i mentioned it in a public talk in charlottesville. and i discovered that much of the writing about jefferson's vision was based on this one letter which was fast times. but what really shook my thinking about jefferson and brought me into very sharp conflict with the jefferson establishment was my her

discovery of two letters that were actually in plain sight. there were not something -- there are not items that were buried in boxes and head to the dugout. they have been published, should have been known, but there weren't. one of them in a 1790's, jefferson was writing a profit and loss memo about his plantation to george washington of all people. jefferson said that the increase in the slave population was part of the profit. i allow nothing for losses the will take credit for percent per annum for the increase in keeping up their own numbers. this is an extraordinary formula i have not seen anyone else state it so bluntly. literally counting the babies and calculating how much the increased every year and put it down and the profit column of the plantation. at first about this might just be in out liar. maybe it does not mean what i

think it means. two years later he wrote letters to a neighboring family and said, if you have any money invested in slaves. he was advancing the idea of slavery as a strategic investment strategy of the future. he said, slave property increases from five to 10% to year. he called it the "silent profits." i began to see in jefferson's thinking something that george washington had ruled against, this notion of turning people into money. once you turn a person into money, into a commodity you can do anything to read you turn them into a non being. jefferson had done that, and it began -- it coincided and a 79 these with a marked decline in his statements about emancipation. the young jefferson had been a very fiery immense better. in the 1760's he proposed that emancipation bills that have

failed to get passed in the house of burgesses in virginia. before he wrote the declaration of independence he wrote a political manifesto calling for the enfranchisement of the slaves and virginia. now, enfranchisement is a legal term that means to give the rights of citizenship. this was in 1774, the run-up to the revolution. if we had done something like that it would have changed our history. now when jefferson wrote the declaration of independence is two years after he talked about enfranchisement and wrote that all men are created equal, i fully believe that he meant to include african-americans in that formula. other scholars believe it as well. it is interesting to note that when the constitutions of 67 states were written based on the declaration they had to change the language. it did not say all men are created equal. they said all free men are created equal because they knew what jefferson meant and did not want to see that carried into effect in their own borders.

so recede a couple of different jeffersons. a young man who was a fiery emancipated. in the 1790's we see revolutionary rhetoric and idealism begins to go downhill. a different jefferson takes command. there were strong feelings during a revolution that we might actually begin to see in emancipation movement. george washington so thoroughly integrated the united states army that one member of congress said that he was laying the basis for the emancipation of slaves. alexander hamilton and washington's aid called for freeing 5,000 slaves in georgia and south carolina and giving them their freedom. unfortunately this plan went nowhere. after the war there was tremendous pressure on people

like washington and jefferson to free slaves. george washington and first in york, but then he began to lay plans in secret. he tried to get the financing together by selling land out west but could not find a buyer. that plan went away. staring his presidency he was appalled to find that one of his and loss was taking 5-year-old girls, 60 cheryl crow's and selling them on the open market not far from here and what was then just called the federal city. he tried to give some of those slaves back and railed against when one -- another one of his relatives talked about selling slaves, he railed against turning people into cattle in the marketplace. finally in his well he did free his slaves. so jefferson likewise came under a lot of pressure from a lot of people, even people in his own family free slaves. his cousin richard randolph street office liz and give them

land. jefferson mysteriously always backed off. as one scholar has said, the more power rehab to do something lsc actually did not. the reason is because he was finding slavery so profitable. we can see this at monticello and the processes being repeated all across the south. one of the most interesting of those processes was a shift from planting tobacco to planting wheat. i can hear you thinking, the sky will talk agriculture. this is get to be one of the most boring things we have ever been hit with. it is crucial to understanding the early history of slavery. lots of planters were shifting to wheat. it required a different kind of work force, people who have a great variety of skills and

required a whole different set of skills and enslaved work force that had been asked to do very, very basic things working in the field under an overseer raising tobacco was summit called upon in a few short years to learn a whole range of skill that were technical and very profitable. jefferson's work force, like many of the others responded with amazing rapidity and showed themselves to be highly amenable to education and training. if you look at the monticello website underemployment you will find that there were some 26 different skills the jeffersons people acquired in an it 1790's. when jefferson had been in france he told the french, would love to free slaves, train them and set them free, but they're stupid, like children, they cannot plan. a few years later on of his

french friends came over to visit when jefferson had finished the transition from planting tobacco to week and he was amazed the and all the professions that are held. he said that his negroes or cabinetmakers, shoemakers, harvesters. it performed every sort of task. and so then he began to talk to mr. jefferson about the possibility of emancipation. jefferson said now. you understand. vienna much deeper problem. it's called race. these people are dark skinned, and if we set them three it will mingle with white people and the race will be ruined. now the frenchman and other people will it come to visit could look around and see that this board no relationship to reality. jefferson's also was already staffed with very light skinned people.

you cannot even tell that they had any trace of african blood. this is an example of a new era that we were getting into where slaveholders had the power from a peculiar species of power to declare what was real and what was not. a visitor could look upon the faces of slaves who were almost white and the master was say, they are white. they're black. and we can't let the mixing of the races. it was an extreme form of power at its most unfettered. the slaveholders enjoyed it throughout the slavery. it's an example of what they could do. they could bend reality and make people believe exactly what they said was true just because they had the power to say it. their power over slaves was absolute. they had power over their families, where they live, what they ate, war, where they

worked. there's a lot of talk now about the agency of the slaves. house ways currencies although certain patterns of life they could choose to worship are not too, choose their spousal partners, resist the masters and fighting back to work and slowing down and pretending to be sick and stealing things. all of this affected slavery merely at the margins. the master always remained firmly in control. one of the things that he even tried to control and jefferson shows as very vividly, the mind of the slave. as benjamin franklin of all people said, the one thing that a slave really counts is his good will. he can be so that wherever he or she wants to. but that good will can be purchased at a very cheap price. a few encouraging words, a little bit of the treatment and you will grant that could well, the control of that could well

away from the slave. suddenly musket to have left is much easier. thomas jefferson tried. he said, i'm going to motivate my people as much as possible with rewards and incentives. these rewards or poultry. he had a magnificent cabinetmaker, one of the members of the headings family. this man made some of the finest woodwork to be seen in the united states. jefferson gave him an incentive. $20 a year. jefferson and his own records and said that he paid johnny having studied dollars per year which he admitted was one month's salary for years work which i give him as an encouragement. and he paid tips or gratuities to a few other of the special house of slaves, but some of his slaves could earn a small amount of money by doing extra work, extra charcoal burning in making

extra barrels, that sort of thing. it was never enough to get them out of slavery, never enough to win the masters confidence to an extent that he would let you go. there was one slave he did use the opportunities, a man named james hubbard to buy clothing and free papers in managed to escape. he did it twice. both times jefferson had him hunted down. the second time he was sold. we don't really know what happened to have. the thing about jefferson politically is that we can see in his career to put in the events that show how much he had changed. in 1784 when he was still in his young ensign pater facie was a member of the continent congress he proposed a radical bit of legislation. essentially he was drawing a white line.

he said, if we ever acquire new territories beyond that line we will only allow slaves in until 1800. essentially he was putting a time line on slavery, deadline. he said, if we have it now it will end in 18 under. flash forward. what is one of jefferson's greatest achievements? the purchase of the louisiana territory. congress decides it would put severe restrictions on slavery because it was generally recognized that the purchase of louisiana represented a test for the united states. are we going to expand slavery or curtail it as we have been saying we want to? there was tremendous pressure to introduce slavery. they were when the once and had ready access to cash and credit to go and and emigrate in what

they called a torrent of immigration. , 160, 200 acres and open it up for small farmers. jefferson's friend of the one who wrote these are the times that try men's souls three he wrote an impassioned letter to the president, his old revolutionary friend begging jefferson not to send people into louisiana in what he called the state of wretchedness and slavery. this is the chance to put into practice the plan which you yourself president jefferson have talked about. we will send free people into louisiana, put them side by side with white farmers cannot teach them self-reliance and independence. after two or three years there will be ready to take there place.

what did jefferson do? he sent a message to his former manager, slaves to be a admitted to the territory. he changed entirely from the man he was just 20 years before. the interesting thing is it never occurred gym to do what he proposed. set the timeline, a deadline. one not put a deadline of 20, 25, 30 years? three would have slavery indefinitely. one of the primary effect was that it opened a vast internal market to the slave trade. president jefferson in 1807 signed the enabling legislation that ended the international slave trade. what that did immediately. jefferson understood this. the slave owners understood it. when he opened the louisiana he opened a vast market for the

domestic slave trade. and it became something like "we think of today as the nasdaq. there was an active secondary market, and people with prices fluctuating up and down for my first learned about the effect of this when i was writing my book and george russian. and the quakers came to the first congress and the pros and emancipation law it sure of the market insane. president washington got a letter from one of his relatives and market has collapsed. people are selling slaves for a song because they think the congress is going to do something to force the emancipation of slaves. he spoke about in exactly the way. stop talking about this particular piece of legislation. i began to see that this marketplace is just like a modern stock market.

interestingly enough much of the research going on now in the history of slavery is more market-based and economic base. we are seeing it as something that was to the burgeoning growth of the south and united states. when jefferson was our minister to france he carried over a figure in his head, 30 million. that was the value of tobacco exports to france. most of that, as you know, was raised by slaves. as i mentioned, jefferson throughout his life received appeals from various emancipate years, various old friends of the revolution who begged him to do something about slavery came from is all revolutionary fringe that is. when i put this in the book is particularly enraged jeffersonian scholars because they had managed to bury it. there was no mention of it in any of the -- any part of the

monticello website, and none of the jefferson scholars have written about it. i first learned about the relationship with jefferson when i was in philadelphia and stopped at his house which has been restored. i found a pamphlet that said that thaddeus who served as a military engineer had left a will with some almost $20,000 that he left to jefferson. i lived in charlottesville for 20 years and i never heard it. i looked up the documents. lo and behold it was true. in 1798 or when he was leaving the united states he sat down with thomas jefferson and rode out a well in which he said, i want you to take my money when i die and uses much of it is possible to free is many slaves as you want to free of

monticello and provide them with land and livestock to set them up the street people. now, when he died some 20 years later jefferson was presented with this will. this gave him exactly the opportunity to do what he had been saying that he would do. he said at least four times that you would make any sacrifice to personally advance the cause of emancipation. this man that would give jefferson whatever compensation he wanted for slaves, and it would enable jefferson to satisfy the new virginia law that forced emancipated to send slaves out of the state. he could have bought the land in illinois, ohio, or anywhere you wanted. jefferson walked away from. and i wonder why. well, the people who are most qualified under the terms of the will would be jefferson's most

valuable slaves. his world-class -- his national joiner and cabinetmaker. no. innings could read and write, support himself. jefferson is not going to give them up. but jefferson with his cooks go? no, they were trained in the white house. two women trained as teenagers by his french professional chefs. their husbands, one of them was the top like smith and the other was the top wagon driver. jefferson was not going to give them of. you get down the roster and find that everybody who was ready to give freedom and do well is just too valuable. said jefferson walks away. the scholars would say, well, eventually the will was found to be invalid. yes, but jefferson never knew that. that judgment was made in the 1850's. when it first went to court the well was found to be valid and

the administrator went to jefferson and said you have a second shot at this this will is valid. it will stand up. i don't want to carry it out. and the interesting thing is after jefferson died his grandson tried to get the money to keep the slaves did jefferson died running off the auction block, but the administrators of the money is in the bank but it's too late. you really can't touch it anymore. one of the unfortunate results of jefferson's public policies and private policies was seeing from monticello by his daughter after his death. she remarked, the country is overrun with those traffickers and human blood, the negro buyers. and she regretted that her dear virginia had been turned into one big market and so did her son. that was one of the results of

his decision about the louisiana purchase command it was the result of what you do when you turn people into money. i'll stop so we have about 15 minutes for questions. thank you very much. if you have a question please step to the microphone. [applause] >> i think you were first. >> isn't it true that by the time of jefferson's death his slaves were considered property, mortgage, and he could not have set them free if you want to. >> go ahead. >> and with regard to selling innings, that she was the randolph reportedly, the half-sister of his life and

although he did not set her children freak by law, he did not hunt them down when they fled away. >> that's right. he allowed her children to go left. she was not a randolph, she was a whale's. you make an interest in -- your question about the mortgaging of slaves is interesting. if you've ever visited monticello, the building uc was filled with the sleeve and equity loan. jefferson got his debt under control and decided that he could take on more debt to expand and wanted to rebuild monticello and needed to finance his shift to we. he wrote to the banking house and said, would you take 150 american slaves as collateral for a loan. they said they would. he wrote of the documents and said the title. they opened a line of credit, an equity line for $2,000 a

merchant house in philadelphia. it was not money the jefferson drew upon to build monticello. and that was my point. he offered him $20,000 that jefferson could have used to pay off part of the debt that was constraining him from freeing slaves. jefferson loved the money on the table of because the slaves were so valuable. i want to address the question of debt. his debt has been greatly exaggerated. the amended complaint about it is a life but build monticello twice and when he decided he needed more space to build another mansion a man and he spent $30,000 building a canal at the foot of monticello mountain in the teens, early 1800's. and if he had not spent the $30,000 which was more than a year of his presidential salary,

he would have had the money to do what he always said he wanted to, free slaves. but his debt never stopped him from doing what you wanted to do. >> my question is about the speed with which he changed from apparently sincerely believing that slaves should be free and given a chance in life. the opposite. can you? >> one of this changes in attitude had to do with in the 17 70's and in the 80's, talking about freeing slaves. but also he began to talk about the impossibility of freeing slaves because of the mixing a blood. and that they did that the

mixing of blood grew stronger after his wife died because picking up what this previous questioner asked, they were related to jefferson through his life. that blood connection by marriage, the blood and marriage connection give them a claim over jefferson that i don't think he ever really liked. after his wife died he lost his personal connection to the slaves, but they still had a claim on him. he always resented that and it was one of the reasons that he stood so strongly against racial mixing. the other was economic, holding on to slaves increased his own economic power and especially virginia. as long as the south enslaves extended to the economic power of the north.

>> american history, they had an exhibit on monticello. one of the books said that when he died he freed his ballet from his 45, 50 years of service. but he sell-off this man's wife and children. always haunted me. i was wondering if he knew what happened to the poor guy? is a master freedom that sold his wife and kids. was he ever will to get them back? >> i don't know. jefferson freedom and is low

point in their seven our eight children still in slaves. and they were sold to six or seven different buyers. it was really, you know, terrible tragedy right away and disappeared he opened the store with one of his sons who ran away twice. both times he was brought back in handcuffs and sold. one point he said that he was determined to give free or die. >> in their long correspondence did john adams or to effort to the thomas jefferson ever discuss jefferson's slave? >> to my knowledge it did not. adams took a hands-off approach during the revolution and later on the slavery question.

like many northerners he said, let's leave this to the seveners he came up in an interesting way during the revolution because there was a proposal to arm african americans in new jersey to form a home guard during the revolution. john adams opposed it. south carolina will be thrown out of its wits if we do this. it was an interesting example of the most extreme elements setting national policy because somebody else where was afraid of how they would react. >> enjoyed both of the book's very much on washington and jefferson. >> thank you. >> the question i had, relative to the paradox. as you said, all manner created equal and engaging in such extensive human bondage. is this true of all of jefferson's life? he was against a centralized government and then does the louisiana purchase. said i'm not opposing adams and

yet is supporting the newspaper war. i've seen this over and over again. my question to you is what you think you have received such strong criticism for someone who has so many character flaws? >> i think in part because my book runs counter to the public history presentation we seeing now at monticello. fabulous research. spin years resurrecting the lives of the slaves from complete obscurity. they have done an excellent job of presenting the way of life of the slaves of there. i don't think that they have crossed the final line. they concede that the slaves or highly intelligent and amenable to training, very accomplished. it then never challenged the interpretation, jefferson himself. wendy continue to say that these people were stupid? my answer is because there were profitable.

well, monticello does not want to you that. they want to keep everything in a state of paradox. that is the approach to that. it is a refusal to come to judgment. >> the criticism of your work. scholars who are not apologists. the new york times ran a piece of the your book in which they quoted scholars, you cited in your work. a very unhappy with how you portrayed her work in your scholarship. and i actually met her recently and asked her about that. she says she is very unhappy and feels like you are distorting her work and that you have gone further than other historians in criticizing jefferson. these are very well respected scholars who are not apologists. >> i quoted her at one point which they feel like you are distorting there work. how do you respond? >> i know that i'm not because

of allied it is quoted verbatim. she is the one that said jefferson devised a kinder, gentler slavery. that's in her book. it's not true. it's a fabrication. it is what they want to believe i believe that he was the father of all of sammy amin's children. this is not just my opinion. and following the text, what their son madison hemming said in his 1873 newspaper interview. referred to his mother as jefferson's concubine which is a harsh word to use. jefferson all but ignored him and his siblings.

not in the habit of displaying affection. and analysis, well, it does not mean never. and she uses the tiny opening to project the idea that they had quality time together and jefferson's plantation. a loving and doting father. no evidence for it. it's a fantasy. because i knew after that you ride on pacific -- specifically go after her. >> yeah, that was my question. i will ask another one. [laughter] >> i have forgotten what it was. i am just curious to know how jefferson could be so against racial mixing when he was elected chief racial mixture of north america. that was one of the questions i set out to explore, one of the things i was going to put under the umbrella of paradox.

i began to see that this is really a story about power. when you have total power over all class of people you can do whatever you want and get away with it. and there were a couple of he be a professors who visited monticello. they commented obliquely on the fact that there were so many people who resembled jefferson and said that he was held in such an all and such veneration they you would never think of bringing it up. and that is the kind of power he had. he could distort reality. people could look it things and not process it. we refuse to see it. >> my question for you is, if jefferson was so opposed to slavery as a young man, when and how did he acquire his slaves in the first place and if he was still young why did he to set them free immediately? >> that is a good question.

the revolution really changed everything. jefferson began talking about freeing slaves in the run-up to the revolution in a 1760's. and he said that the ending of the slave trade would be a condition of that. he said that -- he implied it would not make sense to free slaves if we are still importing them. that is what he called to an end to the slave trade he acquired most of his slaves by inheritance from his own parents and from his wife's parents. then the slaves increased, as i mentioned, at a rate of about 4 percent per year. an extraordinary number of people were born into his ownership. he had such a surplus that he was able to sell and give away a hundred and 605 slaves are something like that. we only have time for one more question. over here. >> i have a question about his personal views on slavery and

what he did and how he thought about the black man and what the pressures of the time and political pressures, whom he represented in the united states government, do you in your book separate what politically he could or could not have done because he did represent the seven states more than anything at one. >> right. >> and his personal decision to whether he could free are not free the slaves. i understand your criticism of him not doing it personally, but does your book put him in the historical time in which he lived until he represented an been for emancipation. >> right.

i will give you an answer quickly. i tried to judge jefferson by the standards of his time and contemporaries read he came under tremendous pressure from people, the apostle of liberty. you should free slaves. other people in his time and place in virginia did free slaves, and he did not. as to what jefferson thought about black people, we really don't know. what i talk about in the book is that what he wrote and what he said is completely at odds with the reality that when he was -- as i said a couple of times. when he said that black people were incompetent, like children, they were extremely skilled and valuable people. it is impossible to get inside his head. go ahead. >> said think is unfair to say that everyone around him would

have been for him to do this. >> not everyone. no. >> you are saying that people would have been. i would argue that knowing a little bit about the history of that time, there were too many people who had too much to lose to a supported the idea of emancipation in general. >> i have been signaled that we are off. thank you very much for coming. [applause] >> this event was part of the 2013 national book festival in washington d.c. for more information visit loc dot of / book fest.