Jefferson's Dirt ARCHAEOLOGISTS UNEARTH THE BURIED PAST AT MONTICELLO by Joe Maloney photo courtesy of the Archaeology Department at Monticello Without a doubt, the legacy of Thomas Jefferson receives an unusual amount of attention here at the University of Virginia. And from today's perspective, that attention has become tightly intertwined with the issue of slavery. Jefferson is more than an American icon; he is a Founding Father, a full-fledged member of our country's political pantheon. And like most of our founding fathers, he was also a slaveholder. This is particularly significant in Jefferson's case because of his fierce idealism. His slave ownership seems to flagrantly violate and call into question the ideals frequently associated with him: "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Questions regarding Jefferson's iconic status loom large here at the university; thus U.Va. seems a logical place for inquiry into Jefferson's relationships with his slaves. One such study attempts to determine the paternity of Sally Hemmings' mixed-race children using advanced DNA testing. Another study is a large-scale archeological dig of the Plantation Community at Monticello. The study is essentially an "archaeological survey,"an intensive project that involves digging test pits every 40 feet over the entire two thousand acres that remain of the Monticello Plantation. Teams of scientists and students began digging last January and have been working since then to find and date structures and artifacts that give some idea of the overall structure of the plantation. A large portion of this study, of course, deals with the life of slaves at Monticello. The southern plantation system of Jefferson's era was built on slave labor, and Monticello was one of the largest plantations in its the time. During much of Jefferson's career as a planter, the average slave holder in Virginia owned nine slaves; Jefferson owned over 200 at any one time, and over 500 in his life. Clearly, any study of Monticello as a plantation also doubles as a study of the slaves who lived there. Obviously, a project of this scope is enormously time consuming. In fact, the survey of the extant two thousand acres is only the first stage of the project, which hopes to ultimately encompass the entire five thousand acres that Jefferson inherited from his father, if not the whole ten thousand to which it eventually grew after Jefferson married. Although the project is still in its early stages, some useful information has already been found. According Frasier Neiman, to the head of archaeology at Monticello, the main goal of the survey is to accurately date and identify the structures. By dating the excavations, the archaeologist's findings can be cross-referenced with what is already known about artifacts of that era. The researchers hope to use these techniques to determine the nature of housing provided for the agricultural slaves. A great deal has been discovered about the living conditions of the "house slaves" at Monticello, thanks to major excavations and restorations conducted in the Mulberry Row area during the 1980s, but almost nothing is known about the agricultural quarters. According to Neiman, if the researchers can learn when they were built, they can probably determine whether the slaves who worked in the fields were provided with single-family units like the house slaves, or whether they were forced to live in quarters without respect to kinship. This question of living quarters is considered an important point in the question of how Jefferson treated his slaves. Smaller studies have revealed that when Monticello was converted from a tobacco farm to a wheat farm, many of the slave quarters were re-positioned, and therefore rebuilt. The quarters at Mulberry Row were re-built as single-family units, roughly comparable in size to the houses many free, white Virginians lived in at the time. Some tentative digging has been done at the field housing closest to the main building, but little remains of the structures and researchers are not sure exactly how they were organized. Thus, this large-scale archaeological dig at Monticello's Plantation Community could potentially have a profound historical impact in understanding not only Thomas Jefferson, but colonial slavery as well. Nevertheless, in spite of all this archaeological conjecture, the known specifics of Jefferson's treatment of his slaves are scarce, and we are no closer to reconciling his beliefs with his actions. Jefferson's ideology on the subject of slavery are clear; his first effort as a member of the House of Burgesses was a failed attempt to pass a law providing for the emancipation of all slaves in Virginia. Later he successfully passed a bill blocking the importation of slaves to the state. His legislative record is solid, and his words support the abolition of slavery just as fervently. The "all men are created equal" line from the Declaration of Independence is well-known, but it is also common knowledge that prior drafts of the Declaration contained even more ardent anti-slavery language. One draft included a passage wherein Jefferson referred to slavery as a "cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty." But Jefferson's actions stand in sharp contrast to these words. Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves in his lifetime, and at the time of his death, 130 of them had to be sold off and separated from their families to pay off the debts that he had accumulated through his extravagant lifestyle. How Jefferson treated his slaves isn't irrelevant, yet it is not the core issue, and neither is Sally Hemmings. All the research, investigation, and digging in the world won't change the fact that Jefferson had strong, brilliant ideals but didn't let them endanger his livelihood or his political career. It's true that the Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase and the dumb waiter, among other things, have secured Jefferson's iconic status. In spite of the controversy, there are no doubts about the status of Jefferson the Founding Father -- only about Jefferson the man.

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