The point isn’t whether or not Thomas Jefferson fathered children by Sally Hemings as Cecil discussed here. The point is that he could have if he wanted to. He also could have beaten her to within an inch of her life, starved her, deprived her of medical care, food, clothing and housing, or killed her outright.
He owned her. She was his property. He could have done anything he liked with her with no consequences other than the possible risk of being left off the invitation lists to the parties of his fellow plantation owners.
Romanticizing or trivializing the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings – which was essentially a relationship of an owner to his property – gets in the way of our understanding what was really going on in the antebellum South. People were holding other people as their personal property, a great and tragic wrong of historic proportions. All the valuable contributions Jefferson made to his country and its early development can’t obscure that fact.
Your point, that TJ owned slaves and that slavery is horrible, is well taken (let’s not pretend that slavery is a ghost of the dim past. It goes on even today.) However, that stuff was never in doubt. The mystery, until recent DNA technology gave us a pretty-sure answer, was whether TJ sired any of Ms. Hemings’s children. Jefferson’s rivals made the charge back then, and he did his denial dances. The public belief in his denials was apparent. And so, it now seems, was Tom.
I had always been under the impression that one of Thomas’s nephews was the most likely candidate as the child’s father. Would the DNA tests rule that out?
If I can remember to look at home for the book where I saw this speculation, I’ll try to get more details.
RR
RiverRunner, the DNA tests would not rule out one of Jefferson’s nephews. In the Straight Dope article Cecil says
I do have one question though - Cecil also says
For the test, why didn’t they choose Y-chromosome DNA from one of Randolph’s descendants? I suppose it’s because none of Randolph’s descendants was available, and not because Y-DNA from one of Randolph’s descendants is significantly different than Thomas Jefferson’s Y-DNA.
Tom-- while I might generally agree with you that Thomas Jefferson’s real sin was the purported ownership of his fellow human beings, I think that you don’t understand why the Sally Hemmings story is important. A key component of the romanticization of the antebellum south is the depiction of the plantation owner as a beneficent patriarch. Sex with slaves (whether “consensual” or not) definitely falls outside the bounds of that role. Jefferson’s descendants have denied for nearly two centuries that he could possibly have sired Sally Hemmings’ children. Of course, they are defending a man who committed much greater wrongs, but I think that the DNA tests are nevertheless useful in demolishing the myth.
The real tragedy of Jefferson is that he was smart enough to understand that the system was wrong, but failed to act courageously. The only thing that prevented him from freeing his slaves was his love of the lifestyle he created; it must have been wonderful to have the resources to be a Renaissance Man, but I think he knew in his heart that it was ultimately selfish and that those resources were morally indefensible. Apparently, Lafayette argued with him over this very issue on his last visit to Monticello and left in anger, never to see Jefferson again.
I live near Washington, D.C., and so I have been to Monticello a few times in recent years. Five years ago, the tour guides were denying absolutely the possibility that Sally Hemmings could have borne Jefferson’s children. I was surprised during a visit two months ago when they stated that it appeared based on DNA that he was the children’s father. They mentioned this in one room, then went on to his library, where the guide asked rhetorically: “So, if you are Thomas Jefferson, what would you do to amuse yourself during a cold winter’s night?” Of course, the answer she then gave was “Why, read a book!”, but both my guest from England and I turned to each other and whispered: “Why, go bonk Sally Hemmings!”
I’m sure there were winks and nods and under-the-breath I-told-you-so’s among Jefferson scholars when the DNA evidence became apparent, even if the Monticello Ladies’ Association may have been less than thrilled. The last time I visited Monticello, a few years back, the docent, a graduate student, was pretty open about the possibility of intimate relations between Mr. Jefferson and his Sally. I think we can agree that slaveholders weren’t exercizing a benign dictatorship over their property though we disagree on the affect holding slave mistresses has on that perception. It’s interesting to note in passing that H.L. Mencken wrote (in his “The Sahara of the Bozart”) that most of the real cultural advances in the South during his time were due to the efforts of precisely those people who could trace their lineages back to both slaves and their masters.
While I am certain that this played a major role in his decision, there are other reasons involved. Jefferson was a complex man, and his life was equally complex. While I still remember when, more than 20 years ago, my respect for Jefferson was shattered when I realized he was a slave owner, I must acknowledge that there was more to it than that he liked his creature comforts.
One was that he only released slaves who could pass, and who had skills that would allow them to get along successfully as free men. Jefferson believed that blacks and whites would never get along in the same country after kidnapping and slavery.
More importantly, Jefferson could not free his slaves. They were mortgaged. He could sell them, and hope they got good masters, or keep them as his own. Freeing them was not an option open to him; it was beyond his power for much of his later life, at least.
None of this is a defense of Jefferson, or of slavery. It took me many years to admit that I could admire a man’s ideals while hating things he did, and slavery appalls me. It took me even longer to admit that, no matter what I though of some aspects of his life, this didn’t mean he was guilty of every crime laid at his doorstep.
I think that the considerations you cite, Filksinger, are rationalizations. As for the fact that he couldn’t free them into a potentially hostile Virginia, I always was under the impression (misimpression?) that there were free blacks living in Virginia already at the time, and that in any event, freed blacks in Virginia could always migrate to more friendly states.
As for the slaves being mortgaged, who was the mortgagor, Jefferson, or his father? If he inherited the slaves as mortgaged “goods”, I think you may have a point, but if he pledged them himself as security for a debt, I don’t think it gets beyond the point I made earlier.
I understand that Jefferson’s financial troubles are what prevented him from freeing his slaves upon his death, but I suspect that a critical analysis of his plantation records would demonstrate that had he made freedom for these human beings a priority, he could have made it happen. He certainly found the resources to complete Monticello (nearly tripling the core house’s size), his retreat Poplar Forest, and extensive landscaping at both locations.
There’s no escaping having really mixed feelings about Jefferson, and no denying his incredible contributions to the nation, but I think that there’s also no point in cutting him slack for failing to do what he knew was right.
All of this is true, but saying they were “just” rationalizations is, I believe, a bit simplistic. Most human beings have multiple reasons for what they do, rather than just one, with different ones having different impact. “Just”, when applied to motives, always indicates two things, first, that there are no other reasons for an action, at all, and secondly that the motive is somehow worthless or unworthy.
In this case, the second is true, but arguably, the first is not. Maybe it was his only real reason that he wanted to live rich and in dominion on his lands, true, but his writings seem to indicate the possibility of something much more complex going on in his mind.
As to slaves being able to leave Virginia once freed, he wasn’t just talking about Virginia, he was talking about the entire United States. He wrote that he believed that mass releases of slaves would create a large and angry underclass. It is also implied by some of his writings that he didn’t think freeing slaves to be wanderers with no means of support and no marketable skills to be a viable alternative for the slaves to slavery itself.
On the subject of the mortgage, I have no idea when the slaves were mortgaged. However, it must be remembered that, even when they were not mortgaged, the freeing of all those slaves would have decimated him financially, and would have probably forced him into bankruptcy and destitution irregardless.
None of these, of course, are excuse enough. But they do show that there might have been more going on than he just liked the power/creature comforts of being a slave owner. Perhaps he considered himself trapped, possibly he wanted the law to take them away, absolving him of responsibility when his creditors discovered that he had freely given away much of (most?) of his estate. It is certain that the first law he ever introduced was a law freeing all slaves in Virginia, and that his legislative record was consistently anti-slavery, so it could be that he felt trapped and wanted to be freed by legal fiat. Or maybe he just couldn’t stand the idea of not being a lord and master, and wanted the law to save him from himself. I don’t know. All that is really known is that he loudly denounced slavery, and tried to free all slaves legally, but didn’t free his own slaves directly.
However, your reply has caused me to review what I typed. As I entered this board, I was already involved in a debate as to why many scholars did not accept that it was proven that Thomas Jefferson had an affair with Sally Hemmings. The statements I made, while still somewhat applicable to the discussion at present, are more a response to the question “Why did Thomas Jefferson only free Sally Hemmings’ children when he died?” The answer is he didn’t, he freed light-skinned slaves who would do well as free men (including some of Sally Hemmings’ children, but also including some others), and that he couldn’t free more than a few, because they were mortgaged. For that question, my answer is a better one.
Just so I am not misunderstood, I don’t believe that Jefferson’s selfish reasons in remaining a slaveholder were to be a lord and master over his estate while keeping his fingernails clean and drinking Chateau Haut Brion. I think that he, perhaps more than any other American before or since, was driven to create a physical and intellectual world for himself, that consisted of his studies, his circle of friends, his scientific and agricultural experiments, his library, his homes and their gardens and grounds (and, perhaps one might include a country, as well). He succeeded wonderfully, but that success depended to a very great (and largely unacknowledged) extent on the black people who carried out his instructions and kept it together for him. I think that he understood that he could free them if he were to value their freedom more than his created world.
Quite possibly. It would probably be impossible to determine for certain after this time what he did and did not have the power to do; most financial records were shredded long ago, and I can’t even find out if his slaves were mortgaged when he got them, or after, much less how much after.
His created world was certainly at risk, and one way or another undoubtedly biased him towards keeping the slaves. Of course, without that created world, his political power and probably his entire fortune would have been toast, so it is easy to see the rationalizations possible. “If I free my slaves, I will loose the power to fight for the freeing of all slaves.” “If I free my slaves, both I and they will live in abject poverty.” Etc., etc.
For what its worth, I didn’t think that you were suggesting that being “lord and master” was his motivation. I was just pointing out that, for all we know, he could secretly have been making grand but useless public gestures to hide the fact that he just wanted to be a little god. Without retrocognitive telepathy, it is a little hard to say for sure.
No, Jefferson’s will of 1826 freed three adults and two children. The adults freed were Burwell Colbert (Jefferson’s personal servant), John Hemings (Sally Heming’s brother), and Joe Fosset. All three adults were long time slaves and closely associated with Jefferson.
The only children freed were Eston and Madison Hemmings. The freeing of Eston and Madison was significant since by contemporary Virginia law, freed slaves could not live in Virginia without dispensation from the Virginia legislature. Jefferson requested and received permission to live in Virginia from the legislature for Eston and Madison.
One can’t claim that all of Sally Hemings children weren’t equally treated by Jefferson’s final will. Two of Hemings’s children, Beverley and Harriet, had already unofficially obtained their freedom. Both had supposedly ‘escaped’ but Jefferson made no attempt to track them down. In the case of Harriet Hemings, one of Jefferson’s overseers claimed that Harriet ‘escaped’ with the collusion of Jefferson. He claimed that he arranged for her transportation to Philadelphia.
What we know Jefferson/Hemings relationship does not fit comfortably into the ‘master/slave’ stereotype. The relationship lasted decades and at least entailed concessions on Jefferson’s part - the preferential treatment of her children for example - that don’t seem to point to an entirely coerced and one-sided affair.
That is to say, I am riding on the coattails of others. While I do know something about Jefferson, I have recently gotten an influx of information myself by reading reports by scholars on the Jefferson/Hemmings matter, and critiques of the same.
There may be some confusion here. I didn’t say that he freed other children. I said that the people freed were not all Sally Hemmings’ children. I also said that those who were freed were generally light skinnned, which, while I am not certain of Joe Fosset, was certainly true of the others, and had skills to get by as freemen, which admittedly was probably not true of the children.
The preferential treatment of her children could, if Jefferson was the father, be explained by the simple fact that they were Jefferson’s children, even in a coerced affair. Furthermore, coercion becomes a matter of viewpoint and degreed when dealing with a situation like this. He could have given no pressure at all, only showed interest, and she might have felt coerced. She was, after all, a slave; owned property.
Additionally, she may have been quite willing to enter the relationship, or even been forward about it, in the hopes of getting preferential treatment, without Jefferson even suspecting that she wasn’t his eager lover. She might have started it, and he thought she was in love with him, when in fact she just wanted to secure her place and free her children.
OTOH, Jefferson may not have been the father. The jury is still out on that one. If that were the case, Sally’s children could have gotten preferential treatment based upon another relationship.
There is evidence that Sally and her brother were half-sister and brother to Jefferson’s wife, which would explain preferential treatment just as easily. Sally, then, would have been his sister-in-law. Preferential treatment would then be easily explained.
Alternately, there is reason to believe that Jefferson’s brother was the father rather than Jefferson. Again, this would explain Jefferson’s behavior towards Sally’s children.
Slaves freed by Jefferson were a rather select group. Jefferson freed only seven slaves in his lifetime, only two prior to his final will out the hundreds he owned in his life and the 130 slaves sold at auction on his death.
Saying that Jefferson generally freed light skinned slaves does not distinguish them from freed members of the Hemmings family, in fact, they are pretty much one and the same.
Of the seven slaves Jefferson freed, five were related to the Hemmings family: John Hemmings (brother of Sally), Eston Hemmings (son of Sally), Madison Hemmings (son of Sally) and Burwell Colbert (blood relative of Sally and so presumably light skinned as well). It’s also interesting to note that Jefferson’s will granted John Hemmings (a carpenter) the services of Eston and Madison as apprentices until they were 21, so, yes, all the Hemmings children did have a marketable skill and one that was expressly provided at Jefferson’s behest.
I strongly disagree. While there may be alternative explanations for individual pieces of evidence in the Jefferson/Hemmings puzzle, taken as a whole there is no other plausible, supported alternative explanation.
It’s a curious kind of preferential treatment that earns freedom for Sally Hemmings, half sister to Martha Wayles, but allows Peter Hemmings, half brother to Martha Wayles, to continue in servitude to the Jeffersons. Jefferson did not grant Peter Hemmings his freedom, despite having a marketable skill (he was a trained chef) and being as related to Martha Wayles as Sally was.
There is little reason credit that claim.
There is no documentary evidence confirming that Randolph Jefferson or any of his sons were present at Monticello at the times Sally Hemmings conceived. In fact, the only documented instances of Randolph Jefferson being present at Monticello, Sally Hemmings did not become pregnant. It is also significant that no contemporary of Jefferson ever named Randolph Jefferson as the father of Sally’s children. The inclusion of Randolph Jefferson in the paternity lineup is only due to the theoretical possibility that he was a potential carrier of the genetic trait identified as common between the Jefferson family and the descendants of Madison Hemmings.
The notion that Jefferson would act as a constant benefactor to Sally Hemmings and her children fathered by more than one male relatives, none of whom seem to have been particularly liked or favored by Jefferson, strains credulity.
The great weight of evidence, both scientific and historical, has always pointed to Thomas Jefferson as the father of Sally Hemmings’s six children. It takes a willing suspension of disbelief to entertain other theories.
I happen to believe that Jefferson was the father of Eston Hemings, and probably Sally’s other children, but I can hardly agree that there is “no other plausible, supported alternative explanation”. Certainly, it is true that reports that Jefferson was the father were dismissed unfairly in the past, but that hardly justifies doing the same to alternate explanations today.
A number of prominent scholars have analyzed this issue and found the evidence for Thomas Jefferson being the father to be weak at best. Most notably, the The Jefferson-Hemings Scholars Commission’s Report on the Jefferson-Hemings Matter http://www.tjheritage.org/scholars.html was complete, thorough, and scholarly, and came to the conclusion that the evidence did not support the claim that Thomas Jefferson was the father.
The Commision consisted of thirteen eminent scholars, of whom only one dissented, saying that one of Sally Hemings children, Eston Hemings, was “more likely” Thomas Jefferson’s, saying, “I am still inclined, on balance, to think it more likely than not that he was the father of Eston Hemings, but I can now understand why honest and reasonable human beings can be deeply skeptical. On the available evidence, the charge remains unproven.”
OTOH, the formost experts who claim that Thomas Jefferson was the father, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation http://www.monticello.org produced a report so baldly biased and badly done that they themselves nearly convinced me to switch sides. It is an embarassment to those of us who happen to believe its conclusions are correct.
The evidence, at this time, clearly shows other possibilities, and no firm conclusions are possible either way.
You noted above that Jefferson released two relatives of Sally that were clearly not Jefferson’s sons. Either he didn’t release them because of his relationship to Sally, or his relationship to Sally prompted him to release her brother and one other relative not his son, but not her other brother.
So, yes, it is an odd sort of bias. But it cuts both ways.
Documented evidence of one’s brother visiting one’s house is hardly a likely thing to find. Indeed, I do not believe that there is a single piece of documentary evidence that I have, even once, visited the house of a single one of my relatives since the day I moved out of my parent’s house.
It is documented that Randolph Jefferson was invited to Monticello at the time of the conception of the only one of Sally Hemings’ children proven to be related to Jefferson. It is also a known fact that he was a frequent visitor, that he was frequently accompanied by his sons, and that visitors of any sort were uncommon except when Thomas Jefferson was himself in residence, thus accounting for the timing. This is evidence far better than many of the things presented as “evidence” by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
No contemporary of Jefferson ever questioned the claim that some slave named “Tom” was the son of Sally Hemings, either. However, as soon as it was discovered that the best candidate known wasn’t the son of Thomas Jefferson, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation started claiming he wasn’t her son, to prevent his paternety from interfering with their theory that all of Sally Hemings’ children were Jefferson’s.
However, there is evidence, from contemporaries, that shows that Randolph Jefferson visited the slave quarters at Monticello, frequently visited Monticello with his sons, and was invited at the time of the conception of the only one of Sally Hemings children proven to be related to Jefferson.
Really? I, personally, despise my brother Ed, yet, if I had the resources, would willingly have paid his child support in his place. It is a matter of family honor, taking care of children who are related to me, regardless of what I think of their father. Even more would I find it a matter of personal honor that close relatives of mine, regardless of paternity, not live in slavery.
The great weight of the evidence, before the DNA testing, pointed to others being the father, specifically the Carrs. Of the evidence that points to Thomas Jefferson himself, it was always shaky, and the most damning piece of all, the birth of Thomas Jefferson Woodson, has been proven false.
As to the subject of “willing suspension of disbelief”, since I believe in the “Thomas Jefferson was the father” theory of the paternities in question, I could hardly be suffering from that. Or perhaps I am. After reading the critiques of the report of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, I must admit that it might be a “willing suspension of disbelief” that allows me to continue to believe that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings’ children.
“I am still inclined, on balance, to think it more likely than not that he was the father of Eston Hemings, but I can now understand why honest and reasonable human beings can be deeply skeptical. On the available evidence, the charge remains unproven.”
Paul Rahe
Jay P. Walker Professor of History
The University of Tulsa
Sole dissenting opinion of the “Scholar’s Commission report on the Jefferson-Hemings Affair”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Filksinger
(edited to fix links - you may want to read the page on vB code)
[Edited by Arnold Winkelried on 12-04-2001 at 09:33 PM]
I think the speculation about Jefferson’s brother or nephews overlooks the relative improbability of such a liaison. If the relationship with “consensual,” isn’t it more likely that it would develop between two persons with greater opportunity for daily interaction, than with a visitor? If Sally Hemmings was raped multiple times, then isn’t it more likely that the perpetrator was the same person?
I’m not familiar with all the research, but have other slaves (who, if fathered by Jefferson’s father would carry Jefferson’s Y-chromosome), been ruled out as potential fathers? The summaries I’ve read seem to focus on the free sons (i.e., Thomas and Randolph, and descendants); are researchers sure that there weren’t slave sons, as well?
No historian that I am aware of has argued so or admitted considering the possibility.
It’s a theoretical possibility but a couple of points of evidence cut against it.
First, Sally Hemmings has been described by contemporaries as ‘light colored’ [Thomas J. Randolph] and ‘mighty near white’ [Isaac Jefferson]. But three of Sally’s children, Beverly, Harriet and Eston, chose to live as white and were even listed as white in official records. Madison, the remaining Hemmings son, chose not to live as white but physical descriptions of him do not imply that he could not pass for white.
Second, physical descriptions of both Eston and Madison Hemmings note that they both strongly resembled Thomas Jefferson. A more distant connection that preserved the genetic trait identified would also make at least Eston more distantly related to Thomas Jefferson and so presumably less likely to bear some family resemblance.
In this case, neither rape nor “consensual” properly fits. If propositioned, a slave woman in that society was in no possition to refuse. It was virtually inevitable that she accept, regardless of her opinion of the matter. Any man visiting for any length of time could have had her, pretty much at will, and he would probably never know if she was truly willing or not, since she would say little to object.
When Jefferson visited, many other men also visited, including Jefferson’s relatives. When Jefferson wasn’t in residence, few visitors came by. All we actually know at this time was that Sally was most likely to conceive when there were many male visitors.
It is also interesting to note that one of these visitors, Thomas’s brother Randolph, is reported by an eyewitness to have attended dances in the slave quarters, which Thomas himself wrote kept him up at night. He is also, by virtue of being Thomas’s brother, genetically as capable of being the father as Thomas himself. In spite of what one poster said, Randolph was suggested as a possible candidate by at least one person ten years before the DNA tests.
While this doesn’t exonorate Jefferson (as I said, I believe that he is guilty, in one or more cases), it does show that there was plenty of opportunity otherwise.
Actually, no, slaves are not ruled out. It would be difficult or impossible to rule them out, after all, as no record of the fathers of such births would have existed anywhere except as gossip. As a result, it is all but impossible for researchers to test this theory. There may have been many slave relatives to Jefferson on his estate, but we would find it difficult to prove even one, now.
However, it is unlikely. Conceptions only took place when Jefferson was in residence. (One of Jefferson’s daughters claimed that Sally herself wasn’t in residence in one such case, but she gave no details, verifiable or otherwise, and may have been lying or mistaken.) This points strongly towards the children being Jefferson’s, or visitors who came because of Jefferson, or someone whose sleeping arrangements were changed because Jefferson was in residence. While the second is theoretically possible for a slave, and the third a bit more likely for a slave, neither is probable.