A Visit to Jefferson’s Monticello

After writing more than a dozen stories on America’s 250th, and with July Fourth nearly here, where else would I go but Monticello? Through an extraordinary life — master of a plantation, chief author of the Declaration of Independence, diplomat, Washington’s secretary of state, Adams’s unhappy VP, a massively pivotal president, and university founder — Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) worked on Monticello for 50 years and with such passion that in the house he forged the best version of himself. Toward the end he was unfathomably in debt. Still, in 1822 he hired stonecutters to make the house’s portico bases, columns, and steps.