MountainMornings

Tim and Anita

What a day. Not everyone can say that one of their best friends also happens to be a relative – and a very savvy, politico too. We had just sat down to lunch on the Mall when my cousin Anita’s eyes lit up and she said, “There’s our Governor.” He leaned in, shook my hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Tim!” Needless to say, we had a nice chat and told Tim Kaine we were happy he wanted to fill Senator Webb’s boots next year.

After lunch, we hopped over to the Jefferson Library for a book launch. Next door to Monticello, it is the repository of everything about our Third President. A gorgeous piece of architecture that was built in 2002, you feel celestial, embraced by the bookshelves in its main hall. Author and current Professor of “Imperial British History” at Harvard, Maya Jasanoff introduced the standing-room-only crowd to her new book, Liberty’s Exiles, American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World. Called an intimate narrative history, this is non-fiction you can sink your teeth into.

Maya signing books

I learned that on November, 25, 1783 our country was actually liberated. That was the date that General George Washington rode into New York City and proclaimed the British Occupation to be over. 60,000 Loyalists fled taking with them some 15,000 Black slaves. Less than 15% went to Great Britain, with about half going north to Eastern Canada, and the rest scattered throughout the Caribbean and West Africa and even India. Here is history from a different point of view, freedom was promised to those slaves who would follow. But as Ms Jasanoff said, “Lives that are once unsettled, cannot be easily put to right again.” This is a must read, about migration and tolerance; looking at freedom through the Loyalist lens. And Mr. Jefferson was hardly mentioned at all.