Click here to check out a fascinating new Smithsonian article about Thomas Jefferson’s plantation, Monticello, and the new information that challenges the long held perception that he had been a benevolent slaveholder.

The piece indicates that, around 1792, Jefferson worked to make a 4 percent profit every year on the birth of the black children who were his slaves. Jefferson also mortgaged his slaves as collateral in order to build Monticello, and he created a virtual occupied country which made it practically impossible to escape.

The article even notes that Jefferson was so intent on not freeing his slaves that he refused a lavish inheritance from revolutionary war hero Thaddeus Kos­ciuszko because it was designed to free Jefferson’s slaves and purchase land and farming equipment for them to begin a life on their own.