Weather: Partly Cloudy 52/72F
Route: From Appomattox 60 miles NNE on VA-24 E and VA-20 N.
Significance: Yesterday we toured the site of the end of the Civil War. Today we tour a place built by a man who embodied the conflict that led to that war. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote "We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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." And yet, after writing these words, he returned to his plantation Monticello where he owned up to 130 slaves at any one time and over 600 in his lifetime. How can a man help to bring such progressive ideas into the world, but not recognize the conflict between his words and actions?
UNESCO recognizes Monticello and the University of Virginia as a World Heritage Site due to its example of neoclassical architecture. Jefferson's architecture was symbolic of his ideas on politics and human freedom, in that he took European ideas and then extended them to fit the American landscape. It is a beautiful place - both the architecture and the surrounding natural beauty, but I sense a feeling of isolated melancholy there as well. I imagine a man in his study, absorbed in his thoughts and plans - without consideration of the exploitation that makes his "tinkering" possible. His focus was on how to make his own life more comfortable and full of beauty in the micro sense and how to increase freedom and education in society in a macro sense. But he didn't seem to care much about the comfort or feelings of those around him.
Websites: UNESCO World Heritage Site, Monticello, University of Virginia.
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