Jefferson was a genuine, committed abolitionist ahead of his time whose original draft of the Declaration of Independence condemned slavery as a cruel war against human nature, a passage Congress deleted, which shows his devotion to liberty was sincere rather than a hypocritical front.

62:19its most sacred rights of life and liberties. and the other members of the Congress, most of them from the south and therefore from slaveowning states, had edited these passages out. And Jefferson had been absolutely furious about this. He'd felt that this was kind of morally unconscionable. So there can be no doubting that as a young man he had a passionate commitment to abolitionism. Nor I think when you

62:43look at his political career, his writings, the framing of his political principles, the ideal of liberty, I think did absolutely serve him as the great guiding light of everything that he wanted to achieve and to do. But can I just press you on this before I know you want to move on but just on this his commitment to the ideal of liberty. It's very common in American history

63:05certainly in the first let's say 100 years or 150 years or so for people to feel that they are genuinely committed to the ideal of liberty but they perceive it as having limits and that limit means you know it it extends to to white men largely but not to people beyond that. Does is Jefferson one of those people? >> No. Jefferson is much more committed to an ideal of liberty such as I think we

63:31would understand it today. >> Okay, >> he is a man of his time, but he is at the cutting edge. He is a committed abolitionist. He's not just written the the the the Declaration of Independence. He had put in huge passages saying that slavery should be abolished. >> Yeah. So, you're not giving him a pass, as it were, by saying, well, he's a product of 18th century Virginia, so

63:50you'd expect him to be >> No. Okay, fine. This is why I think it's so for admirers of Jefferson, it's so upsetting because to say to say he's merely a hypocrite >> that that all along his his devotion to liberty was a a a front a show isn't true. Jefferson is you know in his writings and in his many of his political actions he is committed to all

64:17kinds of ideals and these these ideals have many wellsprings. He has a very idiosyncratic understanding of Jesus as a kind of non-divine moralist, but he draws from the the the the teachings of the gospels a sense that all human beings should be free. >> Yeah. >> You know, he's he's got this kind of humanist understanding of the gospels. >> He's also a committed admirer of the more radical end of the enlightenment.