the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the clerk willing read a comiewks to the senate. the clerk: washington, d.c., july 5, 20226789 under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3 of the standing rules of the senate. i hereby appoint the honorable jeff merkley, a senator from the state of oregon, to perform the duties of the chair, signed patrick j. leahy, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order very

cruel master who forbade him to read who whipped him, you know, it was a very is a time of suffering for that for this young man who left monticello. he tried to escape and was caught and brought back. eventually joseph foster joseph fawcett rather with the help of some friends was able to buy his son's freedom and they all the whole family moved to ohio peter fawcett became a reverend. he became a caterer had a successful business. he worked with the underground railroad. and years later it was in 1900. he was 85 at this time. he was invited back to monticello.

so by this time, you know, the jeffersons had long since lost the house the levy family a jewish family. that was very inspired by jefferson's commitment to religious freedom. they had bought it and they welcomed peter fawcett back. back home, so he had left auctioned off from the west lawn of monticello, and he walked back in as an old man through the front steps. so so the you know, the journeys brought me to many different places both in europe in my mind and considering this this man who had once been my hero, but i now saw more critically. but but at the end i think it left me, you know, very enriched. it definitely definitely thinking that you know, we do need to remember jefferson and along with all these other people at the mountain, you know on monticello mountain. it's a way of remembering this whole time period that we all share in our history as americans. and and it's still left me with many stories of jefferson. that i still that i still

enjoyed and and looked at despite all the problems thinking about him as well his commitment to science and to pushing that to public education to religious freedom. so, you know, so i left i left maybe with the deeper understanding of jefferson maybe understanding more as a person than i had before but very grateful that i went on the trip. which i've written about now in in this book in pursuit of jefferson traveling through europe with the most perplexing founding father. it's a combination of my own travel with jefferson's with the history. it's probably about half and half half travel half history. you can find out more if you're interested at jeffersontravels.com. that's my website where i've also written a lot more about our journeys and have other pictures and other other thoughts and some stuff that didn't make it into the book. so if you have any questions, i'm happy to take them. so he was in europe. what about the language capabilities of jefferson as he

went through to different countries was he rather fluent in foreign languages? yeah. that's a great question. um, well, he thought he was a little he thought he was a little more fluent than he was. he loved languages and he loved french. he had a real problem speaking french with with conversational french when he got there so he he read it fluently, but he had trouble making himself be understood so he would sometimes use an interpreter or a translator for his written documents. but still he worked very well in french he knew latin and greek. he he wrote that he taught himself spanish by reading don quixote on the ocean on the ship ride over. i don't know if you can completely learn spanish through that book, but it's a great start and he actually prized spanish. in fact, he told young americans that would ask him for advice. he definitely pointed in the direction of spanish knowing that this is going to be a very important language for for our country. so he did he did pretty well

overall getting around i think where he ran into trouble was when he went to germany and all of a sudden he didn't know german. he was just at a loss. he tried out all these languages that i mentioned including latin he would speak to people, you know in latin just trying desperately to make himself be understood, but that was a bit of an uphill battle. question, so he brought back a little architecture was the dome more or less from a mosque. the ottoman empire influence is was at the idea behind the dome. well, that's that's yeah, that's also a very interesting question. so the romans had domes so he you know, he he looked to he looked at classical architecture and he knew about domes from books, but the techniques were very difficult in terms of having them be built here in america and you know is the you know, it was a challenge to build with all that stone masonry, you know, so so heavy so jefferson came across in paris a wooden dome.

it was it was covering this grain market that had kind of interlocking wooden slats and he loved that idea. it's not there anymore. eventually it burned down. it was wooded out of wood, but jefferson love the technique so he studied that and got some materials about that so he brought back. he brought back those ideas. so he came back to monticello and with designs and he said he wanted a dome that that workers here who had never seen one before could nonetheless follow these plans and build one and he would have what he called his sky room. you know, he wanted that that room up top and i think he loved the geometry of it as well. so he wound up having a dome. obviously. i'm on a cello and then at the rotunda at the university of virginia the the school he founded you know, he put one there too, which is beautiful which is obviously still there today in the uva rotunda it has little touches from throughout his travels. it has carrara marble for

example, so it's really it's really i think one of his masterpieces. whatever so when he went to europe that was before the french revolution, he was back before the revolution and he really enjoyed the french. i i'm not real familiar with jefferson. so he liked the french so did that trip impact his politics a lot when he came back to the states and went on through the presidency yes. yes. absolutely. yes, i think in fact i talk about that. i have a whole chapter on jefferson and kind of the lead up to the french revolution the early days. i think this really propelled him into his politics. so so if you remember back on the the different eight subjects he set out for for the young americans politics was one of them and by this he meant how did common people live and how did the politics of a country affect them? so he loved traveling around and kind of just trying to guess the

politics or the political situation based on how people were living. so we went through germany that was a whole collection of states. it wasn't unified so he would go through one. that was you know, more capitalistic that had, you know free market, maybe some elements of democracy. he thought people were prosperous. he went to another one where it was just a complete autocracy and he wrote about how he saw a beggars, you know, so he's just really interested to kind of taking notes on how the the form of government affected how people lived and so then in france he had it was really a case study because jefferson was there, you know louis the 16th was an absolute monarch, but had run into major problems. he was deeply in debt because in part because of francis role in the american revolution, but for other reasons as well. and jefferson was following all this. and was there for the very first year or the french revolution? so this was more of the quote unquote moderate. times, you know, this is way

before the guillotine this jefferson's friend. the marquita lafayette was one of the leaders and became the leader for a brief period of time they were really trying to establish a constitutional monarchy and jefferson. in fact thought that was the best that france could do that they could hope for and he was very instrumental behind the scenes. in fact jefferson drafted an early version of the universal what became the universal declaration of human rights of you know, the the francis declaration rather of the of the rights of man, which also influenced the universal declaration. i should say to correct myself. so he's he's behind the scenes working with lafayette on you know, promoting liberty. and and promoting the the new the new national assembly into taking a greater role so he came back to america very inspired. he thought that he didn't for see the the reign of terror and the bloodshed that would happen. he didn't know about the wars the revolutionary wars that would happen in the 1790s yet. he just came back thinking that

france is basically going to do what we just did we're gonna have a successful republic. on and it took him a long time to stray from that idea. he was a very strong proponent of what the french were doing. he clashed with hamilton in the cabinet in hamilton much more pro-british, but it was eventually i think jefferson jefferson and madison formed what they called the republican party the democratic republican party, we often call it today and it was inspired in part by what happened in france. in fact, they were kind of sticking up for the french revolution and trying to keep us from aligning too closely with britain. so i think there's some parallels between the democratic republican party and lafayette's patriot party, which was also kind of, you know, moderate and democratic on so i think it did influence his ideals and i think it helps kind of give him the momentum because he wanted to recreate what he what he thought lafayette and others were doing in the us when he got here.

really brought that back with the poorest president to do that. he really brought. back, yes. and and that ultimately succeeded in what when he was elected president. he called it the revolution of 1800. he thought it was as important in his own way as the revolution of 1776. it was the first time there was a transfer of power obviously from one party to another but jefferson saw this as this was the voice of common people of of farmers of urban artisans very much carrying on the work of the french revolution. he wrote that the french revolution was just the first chapter in the history of european liberty. he thought it would spread to all the countries in europe one up taking a while. yeah touched on it just out of curiosity because it always i don't know very much about jefferson, but you said you know you you must have it in your book about enslaved people. and he wrote the declaration of

independence that all men are created equal so did you look at any of that contrast there and how he felt about that older as he aged in life and i can't remember and there was a lot of discussion between him and john adams as they got older. but is there discussion on that because he that this is a real contradiction. yeah, when you really look at it, isn't it? it's it's a tremendous contradiction. and certainly it's one that jefferson didn't resolve in his lifetime at all. and and as i said earlier he was he was pushing to do more on slavery. he was pushed he was an evil. he wrote that it was a hideous institution and he wrote that you know, god will will judge, you know people like him that were slave owners. so he knew we had to move on as a country from it, but he didn't find the means to do it for himself for sure and eventually as i said, he had been pushing more to end it earlier in his life and he walked that back. he only he only talked about that in private and and didn't and not in public with john adams. yes.

he they very famously rekindled their correspondence. they'd become good friends and it was here in france. actually adams was one of it was kind of an all-star lineup of diplomats when jefferson got there benjamin franklin and john adams were already there as ambassadors as ministers to france too. so he joined them and he they had you know, adams and jefferson had worked together in the continental continental congress. they bonded even more and and he with her whole family there in paris. he visited jefferson visited adams in england and they toured some of those english gardens together, so they were very close friends. they broke apart bitterly, you know over the politics of the 1790s and then in their retirement, they rekindled the correspondence. they did not talk about slavery almost never in in the letters and i suspect it was because atoms didn't bring it up because he knew this was a painful subject. it was one that jefferson didn't have a good answer for he didn't like confrontation jefferson didn't he was a wonderful. he's a magnificent letter

writer. they're almost like poetry and he was a wonderful conversation list, but he was certainly shy away from one-on-one confrontation on so adams in a way let jefferson off the hook. he didn't push him on slavery in the correspondence on and jefferson didn't act in his later years some some others did including edward coles a younger a younger slave owner in virginia who was an admirer of jefferson who did actually free his slaves and bring them bring them into freedom. so so he had he was able to take his convictions. you know that way jefferson had so many reasons. he rationalized to himself debt. what have you that that he didn't follow suit and he didn't resolve that contradiction, but he did leave us these words that obviously we're trying to live up to even today. so if you really think that his travels. through europe that you've documented really impacted and led him in his politics and just

changed our politics here today probably to some degree. i think they played some role. i don't want to say it's everything from his european travels, but i certainly think coming back on inspired by france a francophile definitely wanting, you know, american republicans, you know those interested in liberty to to rally around france. that was definitely one of one of several but one key rallying cry for the early democratic republicans. so yes, i think that played our role and i think his travels they certainly, you know, they certainly played a role into into many other fields as well into architecture. so we see all this jeffersonian neoclassical architecture, you know government buildings banks. what have you so much of that is due to jefferson and his travels even some landscape gardening ideas not all of this ideas panned out. i didn't actually tell the story during my talk, but but one thing jefferson tried to do was

bring italian rice back to america. he found this wonderful variety of of piedmont rice in the northwest of italy that he wanted to bring back so planters in the carolinas could plant it. he thought it was superior, but it was illegal to bring it out of italy under the pain of death even but jefferson actually stuffed his pockets full of this rice and smuggled it out and sent it to planters in south carolina who then said, thanks, but no thanks, you know you're is just going to intermingle with what we have so he kept experimenting and he kept trying and he found a different kind of rice that that he that he sent that actually didn't have to be grown in water that he wrote was maybe one of the greatest services he had ever rendered to his country was bringing this new plant back. so i think so much of jeff jefferson from a cultural side from a political side agricultural side, whatever. it's so much of it came from these travels and and i just encourage everyone to to find a way to you know to do some traveling like that yourself whetheit