A Tale of Three Presidential Houses: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Bottom Line: In a new report, Brenda M. Hafera of The Heritage Foundation examines the exhibits and guided public tours of George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and James Madison’s Montpelier. She finds that while Mount Vernon is the “gold standard,” the other two houses fall short of educating its visitors using a complete, unbiased assemblage of historical facts. In both houses, Jefferson and Madison’s failures and shortcomings are featured – especially at Montpelier, which presents a heavily distorted view of Madison that fails to address his accomplishments and features curriculum infused with critical race theory that was developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In a new report, Brenda M. Hafera of The Heritage Foundation examines the educational content provided by George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and James Madison’s Montpelier. Her report examines in detail the content of the guided public tours (which she took many times) and the exhibits at each home.

Overall, she found that George Washington’s Mount Vernon is the best home of the three she visited. It pays careful attention “to Washington’s accomplishments, dedication to historical honesty and standards, and overall modest tone,” Hafera argues. She also found that the guides at Mount Vernon are “particularly well-informed. She notes that there are some “discordant notes” from time to time, such as selling the “1619 Project” book in its gift shop.

The content at Monticello and Montpelier, by contrast, is “decidedly mixed” in her view.

Hafera writes that both homes feature exhibits that “devote little time to Jefferson’s and Madison’s achievements” and focus almost exclusively on their failings and shortcomings, especially regarding slavery. For example, though the Thomas Jefferson Foundation issued a report in 2000 that did not conclusively find that Jefferson fathered a son with his slave, Sally Hemmings, both a new exhibit and Monticello's website have dropped previous qualifiers, treating it as an unmitigated fact. She notes that Montpelier does not have any exhibits showing Madison’s myriad accomplishments and instead focuses on his relationship to slavery. In fact, she writes that Montpelier’s presentations are “suffused with Critical Race Theory (CRT)” and features curriculum developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), “a political interest group widely regarded as extremist that maligns reputable organizations it disagrees with as ‘hate groups.’”

Read the full report here.