Should read “aunt:nephew” coupling.
Your wife’s hot, teenaged sister. :eek:
Incidentally, my acquaintances in the multiracial movement insist with some vehemence that Sally Hemmings was a white woman, that is to say, she was about as black as Monica Belluci.
She was 1/4 black and 3/4 white. That makes her black in most US contexts. Her Children with Jefferson? Depends on if you are using the one-drop rule or “do they look like they have some African ancestry” rule. In fact, some might easily be classified as black while others white.
Of course, these days, it could largely be their choice-- how they self-identify.
I’m not particularly surprised by this. For the longest time, sex slaves were treated like the epitome of desirability and beauty, which is why so much art features these hot, curvy Hagar-like goddesses posed in demur fashion.
And I think people are fascinated with the Sally Hemming story largely because the “mixed-race sex slave = irresistable hotness” meme persists in our consciousness today. There is nothing particularly unique about Jefferson’s relationship with this woman, and while it would be nice to think love was involved on both sides, the sad truth is that it very well might been absent.
Personally, I think the master-slave relationship is so strong and so overshadowing, that any talk of “love” is just outside the bounds of that dynamic. Especially because the term “love” would mean something completely different than what we, as free people, experience.
I find Sally Hemings fascinating because ithe relationship between her and Jefferson wasn’t unique, rather commonplace at the time, yet involved an important figure in American history as well as an important thinker so we have a fair amount of information about it. Apart from the contrast between what Jefferson wrote and stood for and his conduct with respect to Sally (and the other people he owned), it’s interesting historically just because such relationships were possible and tolerated; the shame was about racial purity, not exploitation of enslaved women.
I think we should not over-interpret their relationship. While there may have been some good in it, I would expect that by far the vast majority of such “relationships” were horrible for the woman involved.
Far more “commonplace” was a situation that was much worse than rape, because rape is illegal. What was done was perfectly legal.
The long time relationship of Thaddeus Stevens and his housekeeper Lydia Hamilton has been much written about and gotten much more exposure due to the movie Lincoln. It’s interesting the comparison/contrast; like Sally, Lydia was more Euro than Afro in ancestry, but unlike her she was free, literate, and a very successful businesswoman, and she and Stevens were citizens of a free state when not being one of the worst kept secrets in D.C… They still had to officially keep the relationship a secret, though, and even in his will Stevens (who had no children) had to disguise the relationship in order to leave her his furniture (he claimed most of it was hers to begin with on loan to him) and make large bequests to his nephews and nieces along with the one he made her, probably to stop any challenging of the will. (Similar to gay relationships pre gay marriage; Raymond Burr, for instance, lived in an open-secret relationship with Robert Benevinides for decades and his niece and nephews seemed to accept him as Uncle Ray’s consort until Burr died and left the majority of his property to the man he’d lived with for 30 years, whereupon his relatives promptly sued.)
I was not using the word “relationship” to imply anything good or consensual about the fact that Jefferson had sex with his slave and fathered children with her, who were also his slaves.
I was not objecting to your use of that word-- I was objecting to the word “commonplace”. I don’t think we have any way of knowing for sure, but I suspect that the Jefferson/Hemmings relationship was rather rare, and the more commonplace one was where the woman involved and her children were in a much worse situation.
Perhaps the most pitiful case of a slave-master relationship was that of Celia and her bastard of a master Robert Newsom. Newsom was a middle aged man who bought Celia after his youngest daughter left home to marry (make of that what you will) and he raped her before they got home; she was 14. She had an ongoing sexual relationship with him, with his son, and with another slave. She bore two children and was pregnant with a third when, at 19, she begged her master to leave her alone because she was sick and he refused. A fight ensued and she killed him and burned his body.
She was hanged herself, of course, but at least- and it’s certainly not much to be glad about considering the cost, but still, at least during the trial the world learned what a child raping bastard and people were forced to hear the details of what went on nightly in every county.
Site about the trial. It’s really interesting and I think it would be one hell of a great (though brutal) movie or miniseries for HBO.
Re-read some of the accounts of Celia- Newsom was older than I remembered: 60 when he first bought and raped the 14 year old Celia and 65 when she bludgeoned him to death.
The criminal code of Missouri allowed a woman to kill a rapist, but the trial judge, who did not seem to have any doubt that Celia had been repeatedly raped, stated that this did not apply to slaves.
Off to find out if there’s a monument to Celia; there should be.
I’m not sure what you mean by the part in bold. While it is interesting that American race politics were so crazy that Sally and her children were considered lowly slaves despite being mostly white in appearance and heritage, the whole sordid affair would be no more or less shameful if Sally had been 100% black or 100% white.
I’m curious why you think the exploitation of enslaved women is of minor relevance. If Sally were a free black, we wouldn’t even be talking about this.
Is it really correct to call it rape, in the legal sense of the word? Rape is a legal term, and was it illegal for a man to force his slave to have sex with him? Perhaps it was a violation of anti-miscegenation laws…?
And yes, I realize that we still might want to call it “rape” in the non-legal sense, but I just want to add a point of clarity to the discussion.
Ah, I see. Well, I didn’t think you were objecting to anything. I meant commonplace int he sense of a man who owned another person sexuallyexploiting that person, then keeping the children resulting from that relationship as slaves also.
You misunderstand me. I don’t think any such thing.
I meant that at the time, the reason such relationships were kept mostly secret and viewed with shame was because of “mixing” the races, i.e. damaging the racial purity of the white race. In the mindset of the tim, there was nothing shameful about using your human property in whatever fashion you wished, including sexually.
Obviously, I personally consider slavery and its horrifying mindset among the most shameful chapters in U.S. history.
I disagree - I think people are mostly interested in the story because of the contrast between Jefferson’s high-minded idealism in his writings, and his sordidly exploitive personal life. The fact that a man who wrote so eloquently about freedom (well, for himself and those like him) had a sex slave, as well as many other slaves, strikes many as the very last word in hypocricy.
I don’t think it is interesting (to most, anyway) mainly because of salacious excitement over the hot, hot sex slavery. If that were the case, why Jefferson particularly and not the numerous other examples out there?
I don’t think the hypocrisy is totally irrelevant to America’s fascination with the Hemmings-Jefferson story. But the fact that the man owned slaves at all (and not just a few) does enough to illustrate this hypocrisy by itself. So you really have to wonder how much extra does Sally bring to the fore, objectively speaking.
There is nothing surprising or especially ironic in Jefferson having procreative sex with a slave (or even carrying on an extramarital affair with his sister in law), when we already know he had no compunction about owning and selling people like livestock.
huck, I understand now.
It’s a much more shocking, intimate and immediate (and so memorable) example.
Believe in freedom but own shares in a business that uses slaves somewhere far off in the West Indies (like many Englishmen of the period)? You’re a hypocrite all right, but outta sight outta mind - doesn’t excuse but is all too human to not care about evils you don’t actually see.
Believe in freedom but own a business or plantation using slaves right in front of you, and be waited on by slave servants? That’s even worse - because you are seeing the slavery right under your very nose every single day.
Believe in freedom but have a sex slave? That’s even worse than the above - you aren’t just seeing the slavery every single day, you are taking advantage of slavery in the most intimate way possible, by exploiting a slave in your very bed.
It isn’t that it is surprising that a hypocrite would take it that far (as you note, many did) - it is just that for us looking back on it, it’s a more memorable and shocking example of hyporicy.
Can I ask what makes it shocking to you? I’m not trying to be difficult, honestly. But there is nothing shocking to me about a slaveowner carrying on an affair with someone who happened to be a slave. Just because that slaveowner happened to be Jefferson makes it no more shocking to me.