Monticello Quotes

This quotation was a the description of the nail manufacturing operation using slave labor on Thomas Jefferson’s plantation, Monticello. Note the almost romantic scene that the author paints of slavery and forced child labor. That is why this is a very important quotation. This biography of Jefferson, written for a young audience, was typical of material written about the South and slavery from the late 19th century till the late 20th century. The South was still resentful about losing the war, and there was still, late in the 19th century, negative feelings in the rest of the nation about the South’s lack of patriotism and worse their basic morality of having not only supported but fought to maintain the cruel, evil institution of slavery. Many wanted to get these sectional feelings behind them and move forward. One way was to do much revisionist history about the institution of slavery and the reasons for the Civil war. Books, plays, and later films, and the school curricula, were designed to edit out or minimize the brutality and cruelty of slavery. And the reasons for the Southern rebellion was not any longer only to maintain slavery, but more palatable, almost noble reasons were substituted for the reality that slavery was the only major reason for the Southern rebellion. Maintaining a different culture and way of life, freedom from Federal intrusion in state and local affairs, honor and others were then new given reasons, and the problems of Reconstruction for the South exaggerated to justify the then Jim Crow American era of legal discrimination and lynching. This passage came from a book that was so popular with young people, that it was published again in a new edition as late as 1961. Most white Americans, growing up in the 20th century learned this version of events and many vestiges of it could be seen, even in the 21st century. In the 1970s, with an end to legal segregation, attention turned to the culturally and historically distorted views, and slowly schools began to change curricula. However, in the Southern States, in order to prevent the schools from departing from the false, romantic view of Southern Slavery, local schools where not allowed to select their own textbooks and in many cases even their own library books.

Levy was the first Jewish naval captain of the United States Navy. He was acknowledged by the Secretary of the Navy to be qualified for promotion to Commodore, but there was much anti-Semitic opposition among the other senior officers. Levy was finally promoted to Commodore. He was so grateful for the freedom of America that he had purchased Thomas Jefferson's home Monticello and maintained it as a shrine to the author of the Declaration of Independence. See George Bancroft

Jefferson wrote more on more subjects than any other president in American history. For exa,ple, he wrote more letters during his presidency than any other president including the modern ones who had word processors and large staffs. So Jefferson wrote on almost every subject and expressed so many ideas that Lincoln could make this statement.