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Special Report
Challenging the Jefferson-Hemings Orthodoxy
A scholars commission lays a controversy to rest.
Claims that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by his slave Sally Hemings had circulated for almost 200 years when 1998 DNA tests showed descendants of one Hemings child were related to Jefferson. Conveniently timed during the Clinton-Monica scandal, it was supposedly proof that Jefferson, like Clinton, was brilliant but morally flawed.
The DNA test only proved that one of Hemings' children was fathered by one of potentially two dozen Jefferson men in possible proximity to Monticello at the time. But headlines were deceptively more emphatic. And popular culture, with many historians, has eagerly embraced the salacious prospect that a Founding Father bedded a slave mistress.
Now some historians are challenging the supposed consensus. Last week, a "Scholars Commission" released a 400-page book, The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy, disputing the assumption. It is a sweeping update of an initial report released 10 years ago. The 13 member group, of whom 2 are now deceased, included Harvard government professor Harvey Mansfield, historian Forrest McDonald, Claremont Review of Books editor Charles Kesler, and economist Walter Williams.
Although lacking formal funding, the Scholars Commission, with the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society, organized a news conference at the National Press Club, complete with sandwiches and drinks. The son of the late famed Jefferson scholar Dumas Malone even attended, almost as if to convey his father's blessing from beyond. The elder Malone, who always disputed the Sally Hemings story, famously completed the sixth volume of his magisterial Jefferson biography while in his ninth decade.
These scholars, with some dissent, point to Jefferson's younger brother Randolph as a likely father of one or more Hemings children. Randolph was recorded as having socialized with the slaves at Monticello, may have fathered other slave children, and was at Monticello during the conception time of at least one Hemings child. All of the Hemings children may have been born between Randolph's two marriages. Randolph also had five sons who are themselves candidates for paternity. Two of Thomas Jefferson's nephews by a sister have long been thought possible suspects, including by Jefferson's grandson. The DNA test disproved they could have fathered one child but not the others.
Infamously, the Hemings story was birthed by a former Jefferson protégé, whom Jefferson had used to muckrake against Federalist enemies, and who promised "vengeance" against his patron when refused a political appointment. The evident payback was an 1802 newspaper column accusing Jefferson of fathering a "Tom" by a slave mistress. The Scholars Commission and others insist there's no evidence Hemings ever had a son named Tom. And DNA disproved that descendants of a Thomas Woodson, ostensibly a Jefferson-Hemings child, were related to any Jefferson. A Jefferson overseer later disputed claims of his overlord's intimate ties to Hemings, reporting he regularly saw another man leave Hemings' quarters in the morning. According to the Scholars Commission, the descendants of the only Hemings child DNA links to a Jefferson long believed their ancestor was Jefferson's "uncle," a likely reference to Jefferson's brother.
The scholars believe Jefferson tacitly denied the Hemings allegation to his friends while maintaining public silence. He was publicly candid about an indiscretion with another woman earlier in life. And he carefully preserved, as did his descendants, record of his dalliance with a married English woman he knew in Paris. When 13- or 14-year-old Sally Hemings came to Paris to serve as maid to Jefferson's daughters, she almost certainly lived with them at their convent school, not with Jefferson at his diplomatic residence. Jefferson never lived alone. His daughters, sons in law and grandchildren were almost constantly with him at Monticello, as were hundreds, if not thousands, of relatives, friends, and uninvited house guests across the decades he supposedly romanced Hemings.
How would the increasingly aged and unhealthy Jefferson have trysted with a slave woman in his mansion while surrounded by his extended family? Did he tiptoe out to the slave cabins in his night shirt always unseen? None of these Jefferson intimates who lived or stayed with him left any letters or diaries recording America's most prominent statesman's sexual involvement with a slave. Either they were all clueless, blind or inhumanly discrete. Jefferson took a number of slaves to the White House during his presidency but never the woman purportedly his mistress. Jefferson left almost no mention of Sally or her children in his extensive records and voluminous correspondence. The Scholars Commission insists he gave more preferential treatment to other slaves.
Disproving Jefferson's ties to Sally Hemings is virtually impossible. Possibly he fooled all his family and friends while secretly cavorting with a slave woman across two decades. But the truth is probably much sadder than fictional images of Jefferson dancing with a beautiful Sally in Paris, or of her lovingly tending him at his death bed. Among slavery's many other evils, slave women were often sexually exploited not just by their masters but also by the masters' family and friends, often producing children who never knew their fathers. More considerate masters recognized marriages among slaves, but these unions had no legal standing.
Jefferson's great sin was probably not cavorting with Hemings but, unlike George Washington, never freeing all his slaves. Like all people, especially great ones, he was complex and flawed. But he did pen the words of human equality in the Declaration ensuring slavery's ultimate demise. He did help ban the slave trade. He was the last U.S. President until Abraham Lincoln publicly to denounce slavery while still in office. His life and words pointed to slavery's injustice even if he failed to abide his own lofty vision.
The Scholars Commission, if nothing else, challenges a sloppy and unhistorical consensus and recalls a man and a time, like our own, that sustained both evil and heroic virtue.
About the Author
Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Taking Back the United Methodist Church.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (37) | Leave a comment
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Steve| 9.7.11 @ 9:05AM
"... often producing children who never knew their fathers."
'Plus ça change.... '
Doctor Right| 9.7.11 @ 11:48AM
...Do behave!
Alan Brooks| 9.7.11 @ 9:54PM
Yellow journalism, Tooley.
And white, as well.
Alan Brooks| 9.7.11 @ 11:48PM
"The DNA test only proved that one of Hemings' children was fathered by one of potentially two dozen Jefferson men"
But it also means the main author of the Declaration of Independence at the least had relatives whose idea of independence was boinking slave women (or even girls).
It doesn't bother me, because I do not think sex is all that important, however many conservatives are overly sensitive about sexual matters.
Jive Bomber| 9.8.11 @ 3:56AM
If you don't think sex is all that important, try it sometime and then get back to us.
loulou| 9.7.11 @ 9:12AM
A lot of blacks are going to be upset--there's a whole family numbering in the thousands who claim to be descendants of Thomas Jefferson.
So sorry. I wonder if this affects any lawsuits they have in the pipeline.
John Navratil| 9.7.11 @ 10:02AM
Have you noticed that people work diligently to determine that they are the 18-th generation descendant of William the Conqueror, that they are fifth-cousins twice removed from the President but no one cares that their fourth cousin, thrice removed was hanged as a horse thief or what their relationship to Ted Bundy was?
It may be fun as an idle curiosity but it's sad if anyone takes any self-worth from this.
Doctor Right| 9.7.11 @ 11:47AM
Kind of like how everyone who has any Native American blood in them is descended from "an Indian Princess"..??
(This, despite the fact that, as my Native American history professor in college once told us "Native Americans didn't have Kings, Queens, Princes, or Princesses...")
RCV| 9.7.11 @ 3:15PM
There was a wonderful book a few years back called "The Mountain of Names" on how interrelated most of humanity is even just a half-dozen generations back. The author explained how most Americans with English antecedents can in fact trace their ancestry back to William the Conqueror.
C Smith| 9.7.11 @ 10:15AM
Jefferson's greater sin:
All those who reverence Jefferson's Declaration and alter ego as "American Scripture," and eulogize the like-minded pseudo sainthood of our founding fathers, would do well to read the "Jefferson Bible." Eliminating angels, miracles, and concluding with the stone sealed sepulcher in his final verse, Jefferson created a "sanitized" version of Scripture to fit his "faith":
"... the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus... will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" (Jefferson to Adams, April 11, 1823).
Jefferson has since discovered that it is not a fable:
"Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).
"For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1Timothy 2:5).
Dave Williams| 9.7.11 @ 12:50PM
Sorry, I can't let the above nonsense stand. Jefferson, being dead, now knows exactly NOTHING, as we all will after death. Unless you can PROVE otherwise -- using the methods of science, which provides the ONLY true map of the world -- your credibility is exactly zero.
Steve A| 9.7.11 @ 2:55PM
Hey Dave, You are way ahead of the curve. You know exactly NOTHING already.
Margie| 9.7.11 @ 3:20PM
"And just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment.." Heb. 9:27.
That destroys the phony doctrine of "reincarnation" that some supposed Christians take to believing, and it also states that after we die physically, comes Judgment.
Either you believe what God says, or you're calling Him a liar, Dave Williams.
Al Adab| 9.7.11 @ 12:58PM
That particular theological quote is a reference to the "virgin birth" of Jesus not to the historicity of the man. Jefferson had no doubt but that Jesus did exist and teach. He redacted any references to "miraculous" happenings in his bible. As a man of the enlightenment he disallowed the supernatural.
As to the Hemmings family they are related to the Jefferson family through some member of the clan so their claim is still good. Most long time American families are related to important historical figures one way or another. Most are in that sense mongrels rather than purebreds, but so what? In fact that may very well be one of the strengths of the American person.
RCV| 9.7.11 @ 3:16PM
Well said, Adab.
Al Adab| 9.7.11 @ 3:41PM
Thanks RCV. You are being quite cogent and civil today.
Rick| 9.7.11 @ 12:06PM
Jefferson is to Sally Hemings kids father! Your a bigget and a rasist!
Dick Nome| 9.7.11 @ 1:15PM
Are you repeating 3rd grade this year??
Kingofthenet| 9.7.11 @ 1:03PM
As far as i am concerned he IS the father of those kids. He took part in an abomination ,any collateral damage is on him, no different than Saddam Hussiens kids torturing people with the tacit blessing of the father.
Al Adab| 9.7.11 @ 1:53PM
Interestingly put King. Never let facts interfer with preferred beliefs. Maybe you can debate science as the "ONLY true map of the world" with Dave Williams above. He is wrong as well. Remember Ptolemy or Piltdown man? That was Science too.
PaleRider1861| 9.7.11 @ 3:37PM
Absolute garbage.
Smearing Southerners has been going on since before the War of Northern Aggression, continuing today, aided and abetted by our so-called popular culture.
You will not find the truth by watching either TV or most movies; for instance, many, if not most, believe that slavery in the South as depicted in the miniseries 'Roots' was historical. Ridiculous!
The truth requires work, reading and rereading authoritative works, then applying what you learn with as much objectivity as possible.
The idea that the white 'masters' or their family would engage in sexual conduct with a slave is absolutely preposterous, yet believed by the masses because that's what every one else believes.
Were there ever any instances of abuse?Undoubtedly, though primarily from the Yankee overseers attending the plantation, and not the owners charged with maintaining their very expensive property.
By the way, if you don't understand the process owners went through to care and feed their slaves, to keep them in health and mete out discipline only when necessary, you really have no clue what really transpired in the Old South.
Kingofthenet| 9.7.11 @ 6:37PM
Not sure if Serious?
Mike Giles| 9.8.11 @ 9:14PM
So all those autobiographies by ex slaves, about their treatment were false? And the entire mulatto population of the South came from where exactly?
Cleo| 9.9.11 @ 9:38AM
Pale Rider had better do some more reading. White masters, and their sons, and their overseers, were infamous for taking advantage of slave women - whether in regular concubine relationships, such as that of Jefferson (and of his father-in-law John Wayles, who had a mixed-race slave, Betty Hemings, as his concubine. He was Sally Hemings father), or others. Foreign visitors noted the many "white" slaves in Virginia. Southern wives and writers such as Fanny Kemble and Mary Chesnut noted the abuses and the many mixed-race children who resembled their masters. In 1860, most of the 200 students at Wilberforce College (Ohio), founded for black education, were mixed-race sons of wealthy white southern planters, who at least were giving their children the social capital of education.
Jefferson freed all of Sally Hemings' four surviving children as they came of age; no other slave family went free from Monticello. He freed some other male slaves, but not until they had served him for decades, and he freed no other female slave but his daughter, Harriet Hemings. His children were 7/8 white - legally white in VA at the time, but born into slavery. Three of the four entered white society (according to their appearance and preponderance of ancestry) after leaving Monticello.
Greg| 9.7.11 @ 4:58PM
"... even if he failed to abide his own lofty vision."
Sounds like the common plight of every Christian.
POST American| 9.7.11 @ 10:49PM
--------------------BOTTOM LINE----------------------
'Failed in their lofty vision like so many Christians'???
-----------UH, as true, scriptural Christianity
makes no bones that no one is capable of
anything worthwhile as ALLLL is but by the
Grace of God.
You are speaking rather of the Arminian Heresy
(Arminius being a front man for 'onthe go'
Luciferian Freemasonry).
You are speaking of the deadly 'Doctrine
of Works' and 'benny violence' ---which,
IN FACT, rules the roost today-----
Remember, from our ultra rich, TAX FREE
foundations and NGOs ---to Bolshevism,
Nazism, and Mao Tse Tung ---(btw all lavishly
enabled by those same foundations) ---it is
the Luciferian 'Doctrine of Works' which masks
a very dark agenda indeed.
-----------------'Chair--IT---he' if you will.
Let's, for a moment, imagine a world in which
there had been NO legislative coup d'etat
against the American central bank in 1913,
NO formented World War I to generate
debt serfdom and bring on standardization,
NO Wall Street and London funded and directed
Bolshevik coup to create the dialectic, NO
Great Depression to further centralize and
standardize, NO enabling of the Nazis, and Mao Tse Tung, and hence NO Korea or Viet Nam -------------NO EUGENISTS at the helm of policy
-------------NO EUGENICS AT ALL!
---What kind of world would that be?
-------------------HEAVEN HELP US!
general summerall| 9.8.11 @ 1:54AM
If you double the number of people who were in your linage as grandparents every 20 or so years, by the early 1300s (30 generations back) you arrive at 1,073,741,824 people who could be your forebears. Hard to grasp the idea of having that many people scattered through the world making whoopee in 1340 to make enought babies to 600 years later produce Me. I do have John Lithgow, Admiral Dewey, and maybe the Tom Dewey family and the Patsy Cline family on my family tree. Maybe way way back there is a Jefferson.
Jesse| 9.8.11 @ 6:37AM
If you don't think sex is all that important, try it sometime and then get back to us.
http://www.summer-products.com
http://www.discountsunglassesforsale.com
Wilfred| 9.8.11 @ 12:51PM
When Fawn Brodie back in the '70s opened the buried details of the Tom and Sally story the most interesting angle of the story was that Sally was supposedly 1/8 Black, and was supposedly very light skinned, but in Virginia any drop of Black blood made you one of Them. There is an interesting chapter in an old book called The Leopard's Spots, about Old South race and science, on a slave named Henry Moss, whose skin one day began turning white. Jefferson was very interested in the science of what was happening to Henry Moss.
Bugs| 9.8.11 @ 5:03PM
Wonder what Jefferson would have thought about Michael Jackson.
Mike Giles| 9.8.11 @ 9:04PM
Not only was Hemmings only 1/8 black, she was probably the late Mrs. Jefferson's half sister. I've always wondered why historians go to such great lengths, to disprove that Jefferson acted in a manner which was common to Southern landowners. His neighbors wouldn't have thought about Jefferson sleeping with some slave women, for all intents and purposes slaves were invisible. Besides slave masters have slept with slave women, for time immemorial. What is the big deal about Jefferson?
Cleo| 9.9.11 @ 9:42AM
The big deal about Jefferson is that his family and historians for so long tried to deny it. As you remarked, widowers' taking concubines was common - his father-in-law John Wayles had done that, which is why Sally Hemings was the half-sister to Jefferson's wife. She was 3/4 white; the children she and Jefferson had were 7/8 white, legally white in VA at the time, although born into slavery. Those are two different status issues. The one-drop rule was not adopted into VA law until 1924, under the Racial Integrity Act.
Wilfred| 9.8.11 @ 7:33PM
Jefferson would probably have been interested in king of pop's skin-lightening situation, but if they had (in fantasy) ever met they would probably have discussed the huge debts they both had piled up keeping up their estates and mansions.
POST American| 9.9.11 @ 12:16AM
---------------------FINAL WORD----------------------
AGAIN, the Jefferson-Hemmngs thing's been
DONE to DEATH.
Besides, Jafferson, who dabbled in NON-Illuminati American Freemasonry ---would have been into selective breeding.
Flit Andersen| 9.9.11 @ 5:44AM
Gosh, does this mean that "Slick" ISN'T just like Thomas Jefferson?
Oh, NO!!!!!!!
Wilfred| 9.10.11 @ 6:58PM
Any episode of Love--Early American Style must include something about Gouverneur Morris, who was right up there with Dr. Franklin in showing the French How to do It. His peg leg probably drove the mamzells wild. Poking around even killed him. Wikipedia notes that in 1816 he died "after sticking a piece of whale bone through his urinary tract to relieve a blockage." Top that one, Jefferson and Clinton!
Herbert Barger| 11.29.11 @ 1:41PM
I assisted Dr Foster with the DNA Study and the study "JUMPED TRACK" when he knowenly proceeded to DNA test, John Weeks Jeferson, descendant of Eston Hemings (Sally Hemings youngest son), an did not reveal to Nature Journal that this family had always claimed descent from "a Jefferson uncle or nephew", a reference to TJ's younger brother, Randolph, and his sons. I cautioned him to so inform Nature but he went ahead and worked closely with them to perfect a FALSE headline, "Jefferson fathers slave's last child. He knew in testing John that there would automatically be a match, and there was, but t wasn't Thomas, it was much younger brother, Randolph, who frequented Monticello and danced and played the fiddle with the slaves until late hours. He was known by the Jefferson and Hemings children as, "uncle Randolph."
Monticello took the false story and appointed an African-American Chairman to head their "study" and Dan Jordan, then Monticello President "hid uner the rug" a vital Minority Report until I complained to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Board who then had Dr Jordan apologize toDr Ken Wallenborn, a valued Monticello employee. Dr Wallenborn and two other valuable employees resigned rather that present incorrect inforation to the public. The public is being "CONNED."
Herb Barger
Founder, Thomas Jefferson Heritage Socety (www.tjheritage.org)