Rebecca Burgess is joined by Frank Cogliano to discuss Jefferson, Monticello, and the Jeffersonian legacy. Brian Smith: Welcome to Liberty Law Talk. This podcast is a production of the online journal, Law & Liberty, and hosted by our staff. Please visit us at lawliberty.org, and thank you for listening. Rebecca Burgess: We know this outline from every nickel we've ever handled, it's part and parcel of America's iconography, the pillared domed home Thomas Jefferson built on his mountaintop outside Charlottesville, Virginia, and named Monticello. Jefferson called his self-designed creation his "essay in architecture," but it is not just a thought-provoking essay in building materials and lines and perspectives, it's an essay in American political and social thought, not to mention America's political history. Welcome to Liberty Law Talk. My name is Rebecca Burgess. I'm a contributing editor at Law & Liberty, a senior fellow at the Yorktown Institute, and a visiting fellow with the Independent Women's Forum. For the next 30 to 40 or so minutes, discussing Jefferson's Monticello on the 100th anniversary of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, is Frank Cogliano, Interim Saunders Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. Cogliano is a professor of American history at the University of Edinburgh, where he serves as the University Dean International from North America. He's a specialist in the history of the American Revolution and the early United States and is the author or editor of nine books, including Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy and Emperor of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson's Foreign Policy. Welcome, Professor Cogliano. Frank Cogliano: Thank you, Rebecca. I'm thrilled to be here. Rebecca Burgess: Wonderful. And I should have asked you if you're coming from Scotland today or from Monticello, Charlottesville. Frank Cogliano: I'm coming to you from Charlottesville today, I'm pleased to say. I'm spending the current year here in Charlottesville at Monticello, directing the International Center for Jefferson Studies. Rebecca Burgess: Could you tell us just a quick little background about what the International Center for Jefferson Studies is? So many people know the building, Monticello, the home, but don't know that there is this whole study center. Frank Cogliano: Yes, I'd be happy to. So Monticello is the home, as you say, that many people will be familiar with and hopefully they've visited. But Monticello is much more than the house; and it's owned by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and run as a museum by the foundation. But the foundation has several other arms to it, if you will, one of which is the International Center for Jefferson Studies, which is located in another historic home, about a half mile or so beyond the main entrance to Monticello at a place called Kenwood. And the International Center for Jefferson Studies will celebrate its 30th anniversary next year in 2024. And it was set up to be a center for scholarship and research and to encourage scholarship and research into Jefferson and the world that Jefferson inhabited, not just on Jefferson himself, although we do a lot of research in that area, but also on the American Revolution, the era of the American Revolution, the history of plantation slavery. As I say, the world that Jefferson inhabited and helped to shape. For 30 years, the center, through promoting scholarship, both internally within Monticello but also externally through fellowships for scholars from all over the world, promoting conferences, promoting publication, and helping new scholars publish but also senior scholars, has really helped to shape our understanding of Jefferson and his time. And in so doing, has led... I mean in the past 30 years, and I hope we'll get to this, there's been a real kind of efflorescence of studies about Jefferson in his time, and I think ICJS and, in particular, Monticello generally has played a part in that. Rebecca Burgess: Don't worry, we will definitely get to the 30 years of efflorescence, as you call it. A wonderful word, wonderful image. So we'll probably go a little bit chronologically here, but I did kind of want to for our listeners start out by just saying the Thomas Jefferson Foundation has two twin pillars of its mission: preservation and education. And I'm hoping that our conversation touches on both, but really on the education element because it has become so vital towards America's understanding of Jefferson actually through the decades, through now a century as we are at the 100th anniversary this year. And it includes, as you mentioned, the other historic home, Kenwood. There's a fascinating presidential history that extends beyond Jefferson through Lincoln to the Civil War, obviously, to FDR in World War II, and that's a wonderful story as well. But if we want to start maybe at the beginning of the kind of conceptual question here, the history of presidential homes and ...
