Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy

This is a very solid and well researched book. The author makes a very thorough and logical presentation to prove her case. Much in the manner of a courtroom argument. It is effective. I came away from reading the book convinced that Jefferson, in all reasonable liklihood, did father Sally Hemings five mixed race children. Sally Hemings was 1/4 African in descent, 3/4's European. By all accounts, she was a picture of beauty. Jefferson was, apparently, unexpectedly presented with her youthful beauty when Sally accompanied his youngest daughter from his former, deceased wife to France where Jefferson was representing US government interests. Some reviewers have referred to Jefferson as a rapist and a child molestor. I think that's a bit much. The "past is a different place" as some thoughtful historian once described it. Teenage girls in the 18th century--and for much of the 19th century--were seen as legitimate romantic interests and potential wives for middle aged men of substance. It, apparently, was not particularly frowned upon during that period. Gordon-Reed gives an example of this with Jefferson's friend James Madison who was hopelessly in love with a teenage girl. She rejected him for someone closer to her own age. However, he eventually wound up with a much younger Dolly Madison for a wife. And apparently was not socially condemned for it. The past is a different place. Not better by any means, necessarily, but different. Something to keep in mind.... The author makes the argument that Jefferson's real sin was not in loving a "slave girl." The real sin was his enslavement of other humans for his own financial benefit. He couldn't let go of the financial benefits and the ease of living that his slaves brought him. He could never close the distance between his high sounding and beautifully eloquent rhetoric about human equality, fraternity, and liberty and his actual practices--however relatively enlightened for the times--as a slave owner at Monticello. It's far from inconceivable that Jefferson and Hemings might have been lovers and even married in a social environment with slavery extinct. She was, after all, the 1/2 sister of his beloved deceased wife. And as stated, she was 3/4's European descent. If one--or society for that matter--wants to set up a binary system of black/white, then it sounds like Sally Hemings would logically be more closely classified as "white." However, Americans, then and even now, subscribed to the slavemaster's logic of "one drop of African blood" means that the person must be "black." An artifical social construct, but one tune many of us still dance to. I think humans are far more complicated and multi-faceted than "racial fundamentalists" would have us believe. Jefferson is guilty of being a slaveowner and of being a hypocrite given his political and philosophical idealism. However, if he did love and have affection for Sally Hemmings in the manner that the author implies

From the preface on, Annette Gordon Reed assures her readers that her intent is not to prove that Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings' four children. Instead, her thesis is to expose the racism that has clouded the argument for over 200 years; at that, she succeeds. Malone, Dumas, Wills, Adair - all have tried to paint "Dusky Sally" as a prostitute, and Jefferson as something akin to a saint. Using letters and their "intellectual imaginations" they surmise that someone as morally impeccable as Jefferson could not have been involved with a slave, although he evidently wasn't morally impeccable enough not to sell many of them on the auction block upon his death. I've always admired Jefferson for his contributions to American governance and culture - that he might have fathered children by Sally Hemings in a 38 year long affair only enhances his distinction for me. He was a man with needs - ok, a genius, but a man all the same. He promised his wife that he wouldn't remarry. And Sally, being the half sister of his wife, Martha, could have been the kind of arms he sought refuge in. Becoming lovers with a slave was not uncommon. Although it was rarely discussed in polite circles, "masters" often found that taking slaves as concubines limited their responsiblities, while at the same time helped fulfill their needs. One has to remember that many slaves looked very similar to their white "masters." Sally Hemings, for example, was 3/4 white, "with long, straight hair down her back." This doesn't negate her slave status, or make her more "acceptable"; rather, pointing out the "whiteness" of these slaves shows just how incredibly foreign the idea of slavery is to the natural state. Gordon Reed makes an excellent case in her book. She criticizes conventional (white, male) historians' views in that they did not look at all the evidence - like Madison Hemings' (Sally's youngest son) oral history - or found ways to dispute claims made by first-had accounts. For example, historians claim that Madison (by then living as a free man) supposedly pretends to be Jefferson's son to increase his social standing. Pray tell, just how could that be? He was still a black man, an old man, and had already the respect of the African American freedman community. I guess gaining respect of the white community just means so much more?! Read this book if you like a thorough discussion on historiography. Of course, bear in mind that Gordon Reed may have her own agenda (for one, she doesn't mention the Jefferson relatives living in the vicinity that might have been Hemings' lover). As usual, read evert book with a grain of salt, but read this book nonetheless - it'll open your eyes to the racism present in current historical discourse.

Gordon-Reed shows how many prominent historians have discounted evidence of a TJ-Sally liaison simply because it comes from, or is attributed to, African-American sources, while they eagerly rely on equally slim, or even slimmer, evidence from Euro-American sources. She also highlights the expressed reluctance of some "brand-name" Jefferson scholars to ascribe reprehensible conduct to Mr. Jefferson, regardless of evidence that it may have occurred. I read the first (1997) edition of this book, which appeared before the DNA study was released. The new information from the DNA results supports Ms. Gordon-Reed's cautionary proposition that we should not ignore or discard any evidence simply because of its source. I was glad to hear that the DNA results confirmed the long-standing oral tradition that Eston Hemings and his descendants are related to Thomas Jefferson. This new century needs people possessed of the Hemings' steadfast truthfulness.

Annette Gordon-Reed's book should be required reading in graduate history programs across the country. Not because of its topic, but because it is one of the finest, most careful and critical reading of documentary evidence I've ever encountered. By providing an outstanding example of how professional historians should operate, it also exposes one of the tragic weaknesses of the discipline of History--it has for too long been among the least intellectually rigorous of all the disciplines. The recent publication by the "scholar's commission," sponsored by the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society is a classic example of the problem. In finding Jefferson "innocent" of the charges, the commission ignores the most powerful arguments put forward in Gordon-Reed's book, and builds its authority mainly on the commission member's own pedigree (mostly aging white scholars from prestigious institutions). While the commission points out the real limitations of the DNA evidence, by ignoring Gordon-Reed's work, it fails to understand what an intelligent, open-minded reader of Gordon-Reed's work will quickly grasp: credible evidence pointing to Thomas Jefferson as the likely father of Sally Heming's children has been around for more than a century, but was until recently blithely dismissed by generations of historians who were prisoners of their own racist, and guild-protecting assumptions. Gordon-Reed raises the bar for serious historical inquiry in this book, and I beleive its importance will outlast the controversy it explores.

The Jeffersons'/Randolphs'/Coolidges' response to stories about their patriarch's relationship with Miss Hemings long had been to say that the Carr brothers actually had fathered the Hemings children. Sally Hemings, the typical account said, had (to borrow an image Gordon-Reed shows a famous historian using) lied about her children's parentage in much the manner that a nag's owner might lie about its being the offspring of a famous thoroughbred. Comes now the DNA evidence to back Gordon-Reed's strong proof that the Carrs were innocent of any such adultery, and the Jefferson family seems to want to blame yet another of its male forebears, Thomas Jefferson's brother. Why do they have such an emotional investment in Thomas's not having had black children? This is one of many interesting questions Gordon-Reed's book prompts one to consider. (For the history of historians' defense of Jefferson against this charge, see the essay by Ayers and French in _Jeffersonian Legacies_, edited by Peter S. Onuf.) Virginius Dabney, who was related to Jefferson on both sides of his family, is the outstanding example of a Jefferson flack in this regard, but there have been others. Kudos to Gordon-Reed for not losing her cool in wading through the insulting, demeaning, degrading things that historians have said about Sally Hemings -- whose personality remains obscure. Even those who detest Gordon-Reed must admit that the appendices to this book, which present the main primary sources regarding this question, are worth the book's price. If you care about Jefferson, race, public "education"/propaganda, or America, buy this book.