In this audio clip, Monticello’s Chad Wollerton introduces a dramatic reading of a letter Jefferson wrote to Roger Weightman, the mayor of Washington, DC. In the letter, Jefferson declined an invitation to Washington, D.C.’s celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of American independence. From his deathbed, he reiterated his lifelong belief in human freedom. Though superstition and ignorance oppressed many, he argued, reason (and the liberty it promoted) was the natural state of humankind.