Episode 10 - You May Set To Win The Prize

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant
Episode 10: "You May Set To Win The Prize"
Published on October 27, 2020.

Note: This transcript was generated by Otter.ai with light human correction

Kathryn Gehred 

Hello, and welcome to Your Most Obedient and Humble Servant. This is Women's History podcast where we feature eighteenth and early nineteenth century women's letters that don't get as much attention as we think they should. I'm your host, Kathryn Gehred. Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Brandon Dillard. He's the manager of historic interpretation at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, where he's worked for ten years. So Brandon, hi.

Brandon Dillard

Hi, hi. Thank you,

Kathryn Gehred 

Brandon, tell me a little bit about the work that you do at Monticello, and the roles that you've taken at Monticello.

Brandon Dillard

Sure, we met when I was hired there, and I was initially hired to be a tour guide, part time tour guide. And I have a degree in philosophy, and I constantly make the joke that I graduated college and the philosophy firms didn't hire me. So I went to be a bartender, where I learned a lot about interacting with people. And, you know, I enjoy talking to people, it's probably the part of my work and all the different jobs, and things that I've done throughout my life, that's like the one strain that continues to go throughout all of it. And, so I worked as a tour guide for a couple of years. And as a bartender, and then full time position came available at Monticello, I applied. And I got that because I just love doing this, this job. And I quickly fell into mostly focusing on the stories at Monticello that I felt at the time, were not being told enough. And when they were being told, I felt that they weren't being told in a way that was sensitive to the hardships and the realities experienced by the people whose stories were mostly left out. And of course, I'm talking about people who were enslaved by Thomas Jefferson and his white family. And you know, over time, I just learned more and more about the people in bondage at Monticello, learned about their struggles and their triumphs, and it became a real career path for me to focus not only on, you know, the marginalized voices of Monticello, but marginalized voices overall. And so, I went back to grad school and I got a degree studying memory and the way that historic sites and power kind of run together. And now my job as manager, historic interpretation is sufficiently vague that I can wear a lot of different hats. But the biggest part of my job is that I work with the tour guides, and I work with the interpretive team, and sometimes with, you know, communication, sometimes with curatorial, but really focusing on some of these messages about how we talk about slavery, how we talk about the indigenous peoples of the United States, you know, the Americas during the colonial period, how we talked about women, how we talk about all the ways in which power and the intersections of memory play out at a place like Monticello.

Kathryn Gehred 

Having you on the podcast at that this, would be a great opportunity to use a letter from an enslaved woman at Monticello. Which I was aware that this letter existed when I worked there as a tour guide, but I didn't really do much of a deep dive into it. So it was kind of fun to be able to do a little bit of research and find out a little more about Hannah and her life and Jefferson. So coming into this. How familiar are you with Hannah, as a person?

Brandon Dillard

Her life is a fascinating one from what I know about it. I'm not as familiar with her as I am some of the people who were enslaved at Monticello.

Kathryn Gehred

Right.

Brandon Dillard

But, I do know enough about her and her son that I think we can have some bit of a conversation about it.

Kathryn Gehred 

Alright, so a little bit of context of the letter. This is from an enslaved woman named Hannah to Thomas Jefferson. The date is 15, November 1818. So, this is during Jefferson's retirement. He's pretty old at this point. Hannah was a laborer at Tomahawk plantation, which was part of that estate of Poplar Forest. I actually found a hand drawn map of the well, I didn't, I mean, I found it in my research. But there's a I will put the hand drawn map that Jefferson drew in the show notes, so you can take a look at that if you're interested. When Jefferson visited Poplar Forest, Hannah worked as the cook and washerwoman, as Jefferson put it, but when he wasn't visiting, she was a field laborer. So, she was switched roles. At the time she wrote this letter, she's 48 years old. She's married to a man named Hall, or Howe and a mother of six. She was born at Monticello, but she moved, Jefferson moved her at some point to Poplar Forest. And she'd been living there for about 25 years at this point. A little bit of background about Poplar Forest, the house, it was in the shape of an octagon, because Jefferson was weird like that. It was sort of his retreat vacation home he visited usually at least once a year from 1809 to 1823. So he was back and forth quite a bit. And after 1823 his grandson, Francis Epps, along with his wife, Elizabeth moved into the house permanently. I'll also have more show notes about a little of the timeline of the house which the Poplar Forest folks have made a really interesting timeline on their website for this. So, Hannah wrote this letter in November 1818, after she heard that Jefferson was not going to make his usual fall visit because he was sick. He had been there earlier in the year mid April with his granddaughter Ellen. And during that visit, Ellen writes a letter back home and she refers to and as aunt Hannah, she says that Aunt Hannah asked for Mary by name, which Mary should take as a compliment. Jefferson was back at Monticello by May 10. So sort of a short visit, and then he got very ill. Jefferson visited Warm Springs in August of 1818, to relieve his rheumatism and decided to stay there for three weeks where he took 98 degree baths three times a day for three weeks, and he ended up breaking out in boils, probably a staph infection. Again, back to that early 1800s. medical advice was generally just bad, it was just bad. So they thought that hanging out in these hot springs was good for your health, good for rheumatism. But they're filthy springs, they don't know what germs are yet. Jefferson gets a staph infection. They treated him with mercury when he got back from Monticello, and he actually almost died. So, he was planning another full visit to Poplar Forest, but he didn't make it and he was actually near death for quite a while he didn't fully recover until December. So this is written while Jefferson is very, very sick. And Hannah is writing it to him because they had been planning on him coming to visit and she must have found out that he was ill. Does that all sound about right Brandon?

Brandon Dillard

It does, and I was really wasn't 100% sure that that was the sickness that we were talking about? Really, I'm really pretty happy that it is because wow, what an insight and life 200 years ago, like one of the most powerful, wealthiest man in the nation, at age seventy-five, is breaking out into boils and very uncomfortable places and almost dies because they feed him mercury. It's It is a miracle that we have survived as a species. It really is.

Kathryn Gehred 

Something that I like about the way that the Jefferson retirement series does their annotation is they include little stories, and you can see a little bit of a sense of humor sometimes in the footnotes, and that just the poetic description of Jefferson's boils and his carriage ride back from the hot springs just really is sort of visceral, I really recommend that you read that.

Brandon Dillard

Oh, it's priceless. You know, I there was a Virginia Association of Museums conference at Hot Springs for some years back. And there was a whole host of Monticello nerds floating in a hot spring having a conversation about Jefferson's boils. It was one of the weirdest moments of my life, but pretty, pretty funny. Totally worth it. We all were fine. None of us had any any negative repercussion.

Kathryn Gehred 

Wow, you're just yeah, this is the same water that gave Thomas Jefferson boils.

Brandon Dillard

Soak, soak it in everybody. We're living history right now.

Kathryn Gehred 

So I think that gives sort of sufficient context. And I'm just gonna go ahead and read the letter. It's a pretty short one, but so I'm just going to read Hannah's letter to Thomas Jefferson.

"November 15 1818. 

I write you a few lines to let you know that your house and furniture are all safe as I expect you would be glad to know I heard that you did not expect to come up this fall I was sorry to hear that you was so unwell you could not come it greive me many time but I hope as you have been so blessed in this that you considered it was god that done it and no other one we all ought to be thankful for what he has done for us we ought to serve and obey his commandments that you may set to win the prize and after glory run

master I donot my ignorant letter will be much encouragement to you as know I am a poor ignorunt creature, this leaves us all well

I want to point out here that last sentence, she says Master, I'm disagreeing with the transcription on this one. If the official transcription says "Master, I do not my ignorant letter will be most encouragement to you." And I've looked at the words and I can completely understand why they transcribed it that way. But it could also be doubt with a 'W,' dowt. So I see why they made the decision. This is certainly in no way trying to start a beef with the Jefferson papers or their transcription. But just because I doubt my ignorant letter makes so much more sense than I do not my ignorant letter and also she doesn't blend any other words together like that throughout I think I'm gonna say that this is my my academic take because she said "Master I doubt my ignorant letter."

Brandon Dillard

Well, I have on good authority from the head of the Jefferson papers that they welcome open dialogue. So I heard on a live stream last week.

Kathryn Gehred 

I know people can be prickly about this coming from a world of documentary editing.

Brandon Dillard

I've heard I've heard it's ruthless in there. I'm wary of you guys. You look like a bunch of toughs hanging out around the libraries.

Kathryn Gehred 

So how would you interpret this letter, Brandon?

Brandon Dillard

So there's so there's so much going on in this letter. Right? And I think that, you know, getting back to your setup for you know, you're talking about Ellen Jefferson, later on Jefferson Coolidge, right. Okay, so yeah, Ellen Jefferson, referring to Hannah as Aunt Hannah and Eileen, like just beginning to unpack some of the like, very complicated, like terms that are endearing and diminutive, but totally paternalistic, and offensive, and just super loaded today. And, it's really interesting to have to have these conversations with people who don't have the background. And knowing why these are such loaded terms, you know, uh, you know, I can talk about this in a way that's different. But when people like visitors to one of these sites like Poplar and Monticello, like, oh, they must have really loved her. And it's like, Ah, so to quote Cinder Stanton, "While genuine affection between masters and slaves surely existed," you know, and that's true, I'm sure that sometimes human relationships are human relationships, but considering the power imbalance between a master and a slave, you know, someone owned by another human being, you know, the ways that these these terms were used, were so charged. And, you know, I mean, the most egregious, of course, is like Mammy, or Daddy. And, you know, we know that both of those terms were used in Monticello, by Jefferson's white grandchildren, about people who Jefferson enslaved. And, we do have a handful of letters from people who Jefferson held in bondage to him. But this one is telling in a really interesting way because of the position that she takes, and I think there's so many ways we can interpret it. I think that my hunch is to interpret it towards some genuine spiritual connection. You know, I think that the way that she writes about faith in the way that she writes about God, and this letter, I think, indicates that, you know, there's a good possibility this is a person who's motivated by faith, right? The way she positions herself as the humble and obedient servant, you know, there's so much to that, right. And I like that's a common way in which people addressed one another, you know, Jefferson himself often signed his letters, your your obedient servant,

Kathryn Gehred 

Right. That's the title of my podcast.

Brandon Dillard

I've heard. And I think I mean, there's just so much to it, right? But in this case, she is literally his servant, right? Like, that's what he would call her. You know, and we know today that servant is often even used as a euphemism to hide the fact that we're talking about people who are held in bondage. I just think that it's fascinating, you know, and the fact that she wrote it, that she talked to him about work first, you know, your house, your things are okay. Like, she's clearly acting in her capacity as the woman who's in charge of the house. And, you know, what is she really saying, underneath all that? You know, and that's the question, right? That's the question that historians have to think through every time they look at one of these primary documents. And somebody like me, as an interpreter, you know, I get to take the safe route out, which is to say, well never really know. Right? But historians say this, or this. So you know, I think that there are multiple interpretations. But no matter how you look at it, this letter is just a really rich example. It but it demonstrates the lie of slavery. Right? You know, slavery was supposed to say that human beings were not human. And here, here, Hannah's saying, very human, complete agency on my own, and I am acting in a way that says everything that you say about black people Thomas Jefferson, is wrong.

Kathryn Gehred 

Yep. One of my my personal favorite part is when she says, she finishes up with saying, I'm a poor, ignorant creature. So, I think that's interesting, because there's, I'm your humble servant, which is the thing that white people also everybody writes, your most obedient, all of that humble servant, but she is literally like servant, meaning slave, that's her position. And when she says, I'm a poor, ignorant creature, she's sort of playing into that expectation. This is what you're supposed to say to the person who owns you. This is what Jefferson wants to hear. But then she says adieu. Write in this beautifully well written letter that she writes, with beautiful handwriting and a French signature. She's performing both at the same time.

Brandon Dillard

Yeah, I mean, so one of the things that, you know, we we've had this conversation before you and I, about like agency and what that means, you know, and I can remember pretty explicitly, early on in our careers at Monticello, actually. So this is years ago, and we're were both young and full of life, and someone made a comment of like, 'Oh, we're giving agency back to the enslaved.' And I can remember you saying, No, you're not. You're Not you can't give that away. Because you can't take that away. You're recognizing the agency of people who are enslaved. And here, Hannah's really underscoring her.

Kathryn Gehred 

Yeah. And I also I think, I again, I don't know, Hannah. And I know that religion was an incredibly important part of a lot of enslaved people's lives. But I think the way that enslaved people use religion as a way of expressing themselves and agency is sometimes underlooked. It's sort of like, I guess the point I'm trying to make is when she says something along the lines of like, I'm sorry that you're sick, but it was God that done it.

Brandon Dillard

What did she really say?

Kathryn Gehred 

Yes, and we ought to be thankful for what he has done for us. There's definitely an eighteenth century everybody was talking would write as this is what God wills, we have to get over our own expectations for what life will be and submit completely to God's will. That is something that comes up whenever anything bad happens in a letter from an eighteenth century, the first thing you have to say it is, of course, I'm happy that God did this to me, I have to submit to it, which is different from the perspective of an enslaved person as well, but when an enslaved person is talking about how much they love God, and what things will be like an afterlife, to a person that has enslaved them, sometimes there's an undercurrent of, you're not going to be ending up in the same afterlife as me, right. It's a lot to read into a letter, and particularly this one, there's just not enough. And I don't know enough about Hannah to put that much into it. But, there's a lot of times where you can see like the the people, the enslaved people who give their children all biblical names, but it's like Moses, it's the names of people who escaped slavery yet at Mount Vernon, there's a child named Philadelphia, a free city. They named their child so you can see this sort of antagonism playing out in a really subtle in the ways that people were able to do it.

Brandon Dillard

Oh, yeah. Love that, seeing it as an as an act of resistance, which is, of course, how you know how enslaved people survive the horrors of their bondage, just these everyday acts of resistance against the system that tried to deny them who they were. I so I don't know if your interpretations right, but all by like it. Certainly a good possibility.

Kathryn Gehred 

The Jefferson papers made a footnote that when she says, You may set to win the prize, and after glory run that is a paraphrase of One Corinthians 9:24. "Know youe not, but they would run in a race run all but when receive it the prize. So runneth that you may obtain." I like the way she puts it. That's just I guess, in there is a fun fact. And they'll throw that out there.

Brandon Dillard

Yeah, that's yeah, it's fascinating, which also indicates, of course, that like, this is a woman who's well read with the Christian Bible.

Kathryn Gehred

Yes.

Brandon Dillard

And I think that, you know, you're talking about spirituality and what that means for enslaved people. You know, at Monticello, there's all kinds of interesting evidence for the popularity of Christian faith for exactly the reasons that you just noted, you know, there's this message of enslavement, you know, the Jews out of Egypt, and freedom and God being on their side. And, you know, there's also a pretty interesting evidence of the persistence of some kind of traditional spirituality and medical practices that might stem to Africa, is that we've got people living at Monticello, for the most part, they're four or five generations removed from from capture. So you know, you're talking about people who have lived as Americans, for generations. Now, not citizens, of course, but have lived on the continent of North America, and just very fascinating evidence, let you know, I mean, you know about the cowry shell that archaeologists found, you know, cowry shell exists only in the Indian Ocean, which means that, yeah, it's possible that like, somebody just bought that and it had showed up there, but probably not right, like it probably was passed down and held very dear, from one generation to the next. And understanding the cultural ramifications of what a cowry shell means it's often misinterpreted as like a form of currency. But that's, that's a very western capitalist way of describing it. It's not currency, it has spiritual value, and the gift itself is connected to the spirit of the giver. And, so you know, that kind of spiritual persistence is amazing. And then, a little bit of research that I briefly did about Hannah before we had this conversation indicates that she too would seek out the help of a traditional African healer during times of illness, which in Jefferson's letters are often referred to as conjurers. Because you know that dominant European medical practice at the time is really what you should have adhered to.

Kathryn Gehred 

You got it, you had to get that mercury for your boils, right?

Brandon Dillard

That's right. Maybe, you get a sore throat, cut open your veins, how many pints of blood, they bleed out of Washington?

Kathryn Gehred 

I don't know the exact number, but he died. 

Brandon Dillard

He died. He sure did. Leeches. You know, which is you know, I talked about this with the Evans Family, you know, because Jupiter Evans, also enslaved by Jefferson is a man who sought the help of a traditional African healer when he was ill. And, you know, thinking about weighing your options there with the dominant European medical advice at the time. You know, I mean,

Kathryn Gehred 

You might as well I, and this is also an area where historians and documentary editors are complicit because they'll write about, Jefferson called for the best doctor that he could find, which, like we know now was, again, just absolutely nothing. They're still dealing with basically humors at this point, like,

Brandon Dillard

Right? He knew it right, didn't he say, "If I ever see two doctors together at a time look into the sky for buzzards." Like he knew that medicine was crap. He was also hopeful guy progressive thought that maybe you know, medical science would get us there. But he wasn't there.

Kathryn Gehred 

Yeah, it wasn't there yet. But then, so So historians will be like, Well, this was the real doctor. And then literally, I've seen like historians and documentary editors identify because the this healer was black person as a witch doctor, like Jefferson might call them a conjurer. But like, we're the historians that are using this language at the same time. So it just backs that up. I mean, honestly, like Benjamin Rush was a witch doctor, essentially. He's not doing much better. 

Brandon Dillard

Well, you know, I mean, yes, bringing up Benjamin Rush, who, in his own writings about people of color, wrote an essay where he said that the black color, as it is called, is derived from a form of leprosy. And he believed that it could in fact, be cured. I mean, that that kind of stuff is just, like looking real deep into the ways in which like, enlightenment based racism would totally influence these people. And the impact that that has 200 years later you write about, are you talking about how historians are complicit? You know, one of the things that I see pretty often is that, you know, enslaved African Americans found solace in the Christian faith, and also an African superstitions and mythologies. So yeah, it's just this fascinating form of like, cultural dominance, that's so subtle, it's in the language. You know, it's in the, you know, I'm sure that you've talked about this before, but even the basic stuff like talking about a slave versus a person who is enslaved.

Kathryn Gehred

Yes.

Brandon Dillard

You know, these these subtle ways in which we can use the power of language to challenge those dominant narratives that have thrived for so long. And sometimes this the subtle ways in which the power of language keeps us trapped, and these ongoing legacies of racism and power dominance.

Kathryn Gehred 

I mean, if you look at a lot of the old his doctor documentary editing projects, not to put my own fields on blast, but to absolutely do that, they'll identify just about every person that's named in passing, and try to find somebody's birth and death date, and all this stuff like that. But when somebody mentions an enslaved person by name, even if we know their birth date, we know people's birth and death dates and their full full names. They're not identified as people within the volume it sometimes we'll just say, "a slave," like, that's all you need to know about somebody, the institution of slavery, obviously, the whole point of the institution was to humanize someone. And then we continue this dehumanization, in subtler ways.

Brandon Dillard

Yeah. And I mean, hey, that's not that's not just documentary editing, right? Like, there are some historic house museums that you can go to today, where they will talk to you all about the happy servants serving their masters. And this like antebellum moonlight and Magnolia is like nostalgia, that I think this country is finally starting to reckon with a little bit at least we've seen some evidence of that recently. But it's pervasive. And you know, when I started working in this field, you could hear similar kinds of things. And the ways in which it's radically changed in the last decade made me happy. I'd like to see it keep going. Obviously, we're not there yet. But strides have been made. And I think that, you know, I've said this before, I've probably said it to you, you know, we've talked about it. It's just a it's just another way to look at this as a form of race dominance, because white historians and white people are starting to recognize that maybe this whole antebellum nostalgia thing isn't that great. And maybe there's something that's really complex and bad about the ways in which people talk about racism, which you could have read in anything written by W.E.B. DuBois one hundred and twenty-five years ago, right. James Baldwin was saying the same thing seventy years ago. Lord was saying the same thing forty years ago, right. And it's like white historians and white scholars come up with these radical new ideas that they really could have read from a black scholar a century ago.

Kathryn Gehred 

Yep. Yeah.

Brandon Dillard

Not to not to call out all the white historians, because there's plenty of people who were totally radical there too, right. But, you know, and it's completely racist to want people together. But it's not racist to recognize the power. And it's, it's, I would humbly hope that it is an anti-racist act to explicitly call out the fact that many white people are only just now starting to wake up to something that people of color in this country had been crying for centuries.

Kathryn Gehred 

Well, I think a lot of looking at documents from this time period for like Jefferson, and Ellen and all the granddaughters, and I feature a lot of these granddaughters letters quite a bit in this podcast, what you notice is when you come at them from the perspective, that's different from the author of the letters perspective, which is that enslaved people are actual full human beings, you realize that they are, the enslaved people, are telling everyone that I'm a human being constantly. And people like Thomas Jefferson and his family are just choosing not to listen, because it doesn't fit their worldview, and they can't imagine it, and they just ignore it. So when you read these letters that you have two hundred years distance between you're like, come on Thomas Jefferson, like you're a smart person, you can figure this out. Why are you like, ignoring the fact that you're enslaved people are rebelling and running away and telling you a million times that slavery is wrong. And you yourself know that slavery is wrong, like what's wrong with you. And the thing that sort of hits you, when you're looking at somebody two hundred years ago is your like, oh, their mistake, is that they are not actually listening to enslaved people, as human beings. And then when you think, move that up two hundred years of our current lives as white people who don't always have to listen to a black people's perspective of things, the same thing happens, you're just not listening to black people talk about their own experiences in their own lives. And you're just ignoring it, because it's coming from a different source. And I think sometimes it's easier to see Thomas Jefferson being stupid and see this is wrong than to see it in your own actions.

Brandon Dillard

This isn't something in the past, right? This kind of racism is pervasive, and the incarceration rates among African Americans compared to whites in this country. There's no need to talk about it just looking at it shows that racism is such a pervasive and ongoing thing, and I think that when we look at Jefferson in particular, that like, it's not about Jefferson, right. And this is, this is something that I've said a few times, and I realized can be kind of misconstrued. When I say it's not about lionizing or demonizing Jefferson. What I'm saying there is I'm not saying you shouldn't demonize slavery, like slavery is abhorrent. And ,Thomas Jefferson made a personal choice to live a life of luxury based on the exploitation of human beings. But, why? You just said like, he's a smart man, like, say what you want about Jefferson? He was not dumb, right? There has to be a reason, a cultural reason why he could have these thoughts about people just based on the color of their skin. And that reason is, is racism. Yeah. And you know, like, even Kindy you know, he writes about this instead of him getting like, it's very clear, like, this has always been there. And this is the answer. But if you look at White historians writing about Jefferson, even fifteen-twenty years ago, it's like, oh, he's a great mystery. We'll never understand why it's such a mystery. It's like, did you read notes on the state of Virginia, because it's not a mystery. He's, he believes that he is morally right, because he was a racist. And if we're going to understand, like, why these things are still persistent problems today, we have to face that racism. And what I love about what you're doing here is that like that racism is there, and Jefferson is completely blinded by it. But you're so right, that every one of these letters is a way of looking at how someone is saying, 'Nope, you're wrong. You're wrong.' Thomas Jefferson says that black people can't care for themselves. And here they are saying, well, I'm still caring for all of your stuff, and you, just reminding you hope you're recovering well being cared for by a lot of black people.

Kathryn Gehred 

Well, I do want to get into before we finish. So you at the beginning of this podcast, you told me a little bit about Hannah's son. There's a story there. So, I just wanted to ask if you could elaborate on that a bit.

Brandon Dillard

Yeah, this is this is a horrifyingly tragic story that really underscores everything we've just been talking about, you know, I think the most visceral acts of resistance of enslaved people against those who enslave them, obviously, escape. You know, escape is something that we talk about a lot in our culture. And I think a lot of the memory of slavery focuses on escape. But every now and then there was violent rebellion, right, there was violent resist. stance, which is something that again, historians and especially white historians in this country are complicit and marginalizing the stories of black resistance, violent black resistance. Hannah's son, William, who Jefferson refers to as Hannah's Billy. He resists enslavement, he attacks on overseer he's he's young, he's really young. He's like a teenager, I think when this happens. And if we think about that, and really look at all the trauma that this this young man experienced throughout his life, just the violence that was constantly around him the threat of violence, and the forced labor that existed only through those kinds of abuse. It's amazing that these stories are not told more often because they did happen a lot. And of course, the retribution that takes place from enslavers was was pretty horrifying. In this case, you know, he attacked an overseer, the overseer, was not very badly hurt. He was arrested, along with a couple of other people who are eventually acquitted due to lack of evidence, if I'm not mistaken, but Billy was branded in the hand. So he was burned in the hand, and lashed and then sold. And from Hannah's perspective, here we have the most tragic aspect of enslavement, you know, Frederick Douglass wrote about this, he said, the greatest fear for a slave. It's not the fear of being beaten. It's not the fear of death. It's the fear of family separation. And so Jefferson is a man who for all of his rhetoric on enlightenment, amelioration of the people who he held in bondage, would nonetheless use this family separation as the ultimate tool. And he did that to Hannah. You know, they sold her son, because he violated that most sacred of lines, which is that if you are black and America, you are not allowed to rebel for your own freedom, despite the fact that Thomas Jefferson was a man who literally fought a war against other people, because of freedom.

Kathryn Gehred 

Rebelled against the state at the time, very, very explicitly.

Brandon Dillard

Very, very much treason. That's treason, right? Like, no way around it, it was treason. That's what he did. You know, and if we've lost that, or leaving America here, he would have been very dead.

Kathryn Gehred 

And going back to the previous mention of Ellen referring to Aunt Hannah, so here we have the immediate breakdown of that, oh, somebody might hear that Ellen referred to as Aunt Hannah and say, Oh, look how close this family was. Well, if you're really close with this woman, could you imagine selling her son said she could never see her own child again, that immediately shows what a facade this entire language, the paternalistic language of all these people are my family that I can punish in the most horrific way possible and do punish when my power is challenged.

Brandon Dillard

That's such an indication of like, how warped people were by this system.

Kathryn Gehred 

Okay, so I think we've gotten into some good stuff. Again, this is a short letter. This is something that's mostly just about hey, just letting you know, Thomas Jefferson, that your furniture is all well, sorry about the boils. God bless, Hannah. But, once you dig into these letters, there's always some interesting thing that you can get into and find something else. And, that's one of the reasons that I want to feature these women's letters in particular, because sometimes these aren't the ones that get cited as often. Is there any other sort of closing thoughts? Anything you think we didn't get into enough, Brandon?

Brandon Dillard

Yeah, I feel pretty, pretty passionately about a lot of this, obviously, you know, that you do, too. But this whole discourse that's happening in our country right now about what history means, and like, what history should be, you know, whether it's some fictionalized mythical narrative of, you know, concrete men on horseback, or, you know, whether it's like, Nah, tear it all down. I'm hoping that there's a place for this kind of conversation.

Kathryn Gehred 

Brandon, thank you so much for joining me today.

Brandon Dillard

My pleasure.

Kathryn Gehred

I hope you appreciated this conversation. I know you have many similar conversations to this every day. So I hope there's at least something interesting in this one for you.

Brandon Dillard

It was absolutely interesting. And I do have these conversations a lot, but I don't get to have them with friends often enough. So it's always it's always good to have it with with you, Katie. And you know, since you've left Monticello, you're in this whole other world now. So, I get to hear about something that's not Jefferson, even though you did call me to talk about Jefferson this time. It's still Of the, you know, we can talk about the broader world of eighteenth and nineteenth century and I'm always grateful for that always like to learn something new.

Kathryn Gehred 

Well, thank you very much, and everybody listening. Thank you so much for listening. Check the show notes for more notes and the text of this letter that you can read along with if you're interested. And as ever, I've always your most obedient and humble servant. Thank you very much.