On April 13, 1909, Maud Littleton, wife of a well known New York attorney and politician, fulfilled a life-long desire to visit Monticello. Despite a "kind and hospitable" reception by the house's then-owner Jefferson Monroe Levy, Littleton was not impressed and shortly after launched a years-long public campaign first to purchase and then to wrest Monticello from Levy, whose family had owned and preserved the property for nearly 80 years. For both Levy and Littleton, Monticello was a shrine to its original owner and national hero, Thomas Jefferson. For both it was a place worth fighting for "to the last ditch."

In this episode of our In the Course of Human Events podcast, journalist, author, documentary filmmaker, Steven Pressman -- with help from author Marc Leepson and Susan Stein, Monticello's Richard Gilder Senior Curator, Special Projects -- describes the battles that took place in Congress and across the nation in a time before national parks or the widespread appearance of privately operated historic sites.