Defending Jefferson

"This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."  - Thomas Jefferson to William Roscoe, December 27, 1820




Living so close to Monticello and UVA, and listening to Hamilton pretty much all the time, I decided I needed to finally figure out what the deal really WAS with Jefferson and Sally Hemings.  

I'd read the Wikipedia pages, and I knew there were plenty of books out there, but I didn't want to just read one historian's theory, I wanted the facts so I could try and sort it out for myself.  A quick Google search led me to The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy and it was exactly what I was looking for.

Basically, thirteen scholars were commissioned to look at all the evidence and weigh in with what they thought happened.  They were not to be swayed by any biases (and they weren't paid for their work), they were just to look at ALL the facts and draw conclusions.  And NONE of them felt there was conclusive evidence that Jefferson had children with Hemings.  In fact, twelve of them felt quite certain that he had no sexual relation with her at all, and the one dissenting view basically said that he didn't like Jefferson and felt he couldn't be trusted, but even he admitted that there wasn't enough evidence to conclude anything.

But-- wait-- DNA evidence proved it, right?!  

That's what you always hear.  But without exhuming Jefferson's remains (and some of the Hemings ancestors, too), we don't have any way to prove conclusively that Hemings' children were fathered by Thomas Jefferson.  The DNA testing done back in 1998 proved that one of Hemings' children* was a descendant of "a Jefferson male."  Unfortunately, there were at least 24 Jefferson males wandering around Monticello at any given time, so this still doesn't exactly prove anything.  When we toured Monticello, our guide explained that all of Hemings' children were conceived when Thomas Jefferson was around, and so between that fact and the DNA, it was certain they were his children.  But this book explained that yes, Jefferson was always around when Sally conceived, but so were all the other Jefferson males.  When Thomas wasn't at home, he kept Monticello locked up and no one came.  As soon as he returned to Monticello, everyone (seriously, SO MANY PEOPLE) came to visit.

Another interesting note about the DNA evidence is that it was very much used for other political purposes.  History professor Joseph Ellis pushed for the story to be published early so that it would come out the same day that Clinton's impeachment trial began.  Ellis was a huge fan of Bill Clinton and hoped that by "proving" that a founding father also had inappropriate relations, it would lessen the impact of Clinton's affair with Lewinsky.  Ellis greatly exaggerated what the DNA testing actually proved in order to further his political cause.  (It also came out later that he frequently lied during his lectures, telling stories about catching the winning touchdown in high school, being one of the civil rights Freedom Fighters, and even serving in Vietnam, when in reality he did none of these things.  He was suspended a year's pay for his indiscretions.)  This is not to say that the DNA evidence isn't important, but it never conclusively proved anything. 

Some of the other arguments that frequently come up concerning Jefferson and Hemings:

     "Jefferson freed all Hemings' children because they were his."  Not true.  He freed some of them, but not all of them and Sally herself was never freed.  A bunch of other members of the Hemings family (Sally's siblings) WERE freed, especially if they knew a trade and could support themselves.  Sally and a couple of her children were actually unusual in that they were some of the few Hemings family members not to be freed.

     "Servants such as Sally would have had access to Jefferson's bedroom."  Nope.  This one really bothers me: historian Annette Gordon-Reed had a primary source quote about how Sally would have had access to Jefferson's bedroom but she had removed and changed the order of at least a dozen words from the quote in order to completely change its meaning.  Now, it's certainly possible that this was an innocent mistake, but since Gordon-Reed worked on the Harvard Law Review, she ought to know how to properly cite her sources.  I think she was intentionally misleading her readers here, and that's a terrible thing for an historian to do.  The facts are that Jefferson rarely had servants in his room-- he made a point of lighting his own fire every day--  and servants were only allowed in if he wasn't around. 

     "Lots of people around Monticello said Jefferson was involved with Hemings."  The only people who ever made this claim were all people who absolutely hated Thomas Jefferson, and most of them were nowhere near Monticello.  No one who actually lived in Monticello and was close to Jefferson ever made any comment at all of something going on between Jefferson and Hemings.  Seriously-- NO ONE.  And there were THOUSANDS of people visiting and staying at Monticello throughout the course of Jefferson's life.  And they never mentioned Sally Hemings at all.  This astonishing lack of evidence is perhaps most critical.  Some people have tried to claim that this was a conspiracy to hush things up, but it would have had to have been pretty well organized for no one to ever have left any sort of evidence at all.

     "But Jefferson brought Sally to Paris with him!"  Yes, Sally accompanied Jefferson's daughter, Patty, to Paris about a year after Jefferson left.  It's fairly improbable that Sally ever lived with Jefferson, since he lived in a very small, very crowded 2-bedroom townhouse in Paris and there is no mention of her being there.  What's more likely is that Sally stayed with Patty at the boarding school she attended.  The boarding school had servants' quarters and one of Patty's schoolmates made a point of sending her regards to Sally in a letter, so clearly Patty's schoolmates were familiar with Sally.

     "Sally had an arrangement with Jefferson in Paris that any children conceived from their affair would go free.  That's why she stayed with him."  It's certainly possible, but there is no evidence of any of this-- there's no evidence that they had an affair, that there was an arrangement, and if there was an arrangement, certainly it wasn't followed.  This is an interesting story that seems to have been concocted by historians based on no evidence at all.

     "But then, who was the father???"  That's a really tough question, and it's heartbreaking, too.  The DNA evidence does prove that Hemings was involved with more than one man.  As a slave, she really would not have been allowed autonomy of her body-- just about any white man who came to Monticello probably could have used her for sex.  (I'm not even sure that she could refuse other slaves, for that matter.)  And while I'm anxious to not jump to the conclusion that it was Thomas Jefferson doing so, it still breaks my heart that he didn't protect her.  One of the most likely candidates for fathering some of her children is Thomas Jefferson's much younger brother Randolph.  Randolph was about the opposite of Thomas: completely uninterested in politics and current events.  There are eye witness accounts that Randolph enjoyed hanging out in the slave quarters at night (presumably while Thomas Jefferson was in the house talking politics with his many other guests) playing his fiddle and dancing with the slaves.  Also, all of Sally's children were conceived during the time that Randolph was a widower.  After he remarried, Sally never had any more children.  So that's interesting.  (It should also be noted that Thomas Jefferson remained at Monticello for many more years during which time Sally did not have any more children.)

     "There's an oral tradition from Sally's children that Thomas Jefferson was their father."  Sort of.  After the historian Fawn Brodie told them they were Jefferson's children, they began saying so.  Before Brodie told them her theories, their oral tradition was that their father was an uncle of Thomas Jefferson.  This is impossible, because none of Jefferson's uncles were still alive at that time.  BUT, Thomas Jefferson's younger brother, Randolph, was usually referred to as "Uncle Randolph" because he was uncle to Jefferson's children.  So this oral tradition might have referred to him.

      "Some of Sally's children played the fiddle because Jefferson taught them."  This wouldn't really persuade anyone, so it's kind of silly to address it, but I'm feeling feisty, so I will anyway.  Thomas Jefferson absolutely delighted in spending time with his children and grandchildren.  But there is no evidence of him spending any time (or even noticing) the children of his slaves.  It seems odd that there would be such a disconnect, but I guess if you believe he was sleeping with a slave, you've already accepted quite a bit of disconnect on Jefferson's part.  So, Yes, some of Sally's children played the fiddle, but there is no record of them being taught by Thomas.  Also, there weren't a lot of choices in musical instruments in Virginia at this time, so this isn't exactly a huge coincidence.  BUT, it should be noted that Jefferson didn't play the fiddle, he played the violin.  Who did play a fiddle?  Oh, that's right-- his brother, Randolph. 


So there you have it.  I know Jefferson wasn't perfect.  He certainly owned slaves, and while he spent a lot of time fretting about the immorality of the situation, he never freed them all (like Washington did, upon his death).  One of the slaves that Jefferson did free later committed suicide, so I wonder if this didn't make him question if freeing his slaves was even the right course of action.

I feel like our country has so little respect for Jefferson any more, and he deserves better than that.  It seems like the least we can do is try to accept him for who he actually was and stop assuming that these unsubstantiated rumors are true.  The courage it must have taken for him to write the Declaration of Independence still astonishes me-- I can't imagine risking my life and my home and property to stand up against a tyrannical government.  If England would have won, you know he would have been one of their first executions.


I love Jefferson for what he did for our country.  I hope we can honor him for that.

  

*The DNA also proved that another son was NOT a Jefferson at all, so it definitively proved that not all of Hemings' children were conceived by Thomas Jefferson, although it is still possible that some of them were.  Hemings had other children, but they were able to pass as white and disappeared into society, so we have no way of testing their descendants' DNA now.