pplpod Episode 44 traces Thomas Jefferson’s arc from Virginia prodigy and principal author of the Declaration of Independence to third President of the United States. We follow the architect of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, his years in Paris as minister to France, and the bruising birth of party politics alongside Hamilton. In office, we unpack the audacity of the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis & Clark expedition, the Barbary Wars, the judiciary battles, and the misstep of the Embargo. We also sit with the contradiction at the center of his life—Enlightenment ideals built atop enslaved labor at Monticello, the Sally Hemings relationship, and the long shadow of that reality. Finally: the University of Virginia, the late-life letters with Adams, and the contested legacy of a founder who changed the map and left the country wrestling with his ideas—and his compromises.

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