THE PERIODICAL OBSERVER Reviews of articles from periodicals and specialized journals here and abroad

Politics & Government 117 131 Religion & Philosophy Foreign Policy & Defense 119 132 Science, Technology Economics, Labor & Business 122 & Environment Society 125 135 Arts & Letters Press & Media 130 137 Other Nations

The Jefferson–Hemings Controversy A Survey of Recent Articles

he persuasive scientific evidence in the “reflects the pervasive presentism of our time.” TBritish journal Nature (Nov. 5, 1998) The question should be: “How did a man who that Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one was born into a slave holding society, whose child by his slave Sally Hemings is likely not to family and admired friends owned slaves, who end debate about the character of this inherited a fortune that was dependent on American demigod but only to carry it to a new slaves and slave labor, decide at an early age level—beyond the reach of DNA testing. that slavery was morally wrong and forcefully Jefferson’s character has come under declare that it ought to be abolished?” intense scrutiny in recent decades. Earlier in But while the argument against “presen- this century, historians looked upon American tism” seems to put Jefferson’s ownership of history as a titanic struggle between slaves in perspective, the contention that Jeffersonian democrats and Hamil- he had children by Sally Hemings tonian aristocrats, noted Peter S. (whose father was probably John Onuf, a historian at the University Wayles, Jefferson’s father-in-law) of Virginia, writing in the William may be a different matter. “If he and Mary Quarterly (Oct. 1993). did take advantage of Hemings But this neat scheme was thrown and father her children over a into confusion by the New Deal’s period of 20 years,” Wilson affirmative use of government, argued in his 1992 essay, “he was which New Dealers portrayed as acting completely out of character the employment of Hamiltonian and violating his own standards of means for Jeffersonian ends. In his honor and decency.” 1960 book The Jefferson Image in the First publicly aired in 1802 by James American Mind, Merrill Peterson wrote that Callender, a scandal-mongering journalist scholars were turning away from the partisan with a grudge against Jefferson, the allegation Jefferson to a new image, that of “the civilized about his relationship with his young slave was man,” with his many diverse interests and like “a tin can tied to Jefferson’s reputation that achievements. But even as Jefferson earned has continued to rattle through the ages,” his- such admiring attention, other historians torian Joseph J. Ellis observed in his National began to focus on the glaring discrepancy Book Award-winning American Sphinx: The between his idealistic pronouncements and his Character of Thomas Jefferson (1997). The rat- behavior as a slaveowner. tle grew very loud in 1974, when Fawn M. “How could the man who wrote that ‘All Brodie’s best-selling psychohistory, Thomas men are created equal’ own slaves? This, in Jefferson: An Intimate History, appeared. She essence, is the question...that contemporary accepted the truth of the allegation, but put it Americans find most vexing about him,” in a benign light: it was “not scandalous observed Douglas L. Wilson, director of the debauchery with an innocent slave victim, but International Center for Jefferson Studies at rather a serious passion that brought Jefferson Monticello, in the Atlantic Monthly (Nov. and the slave woman much private happiness 1992). In his view, asking the question that way over a period lasting 38 years.”

Periodicals 115 Though Brodie’s interpretation proved pop- Malone, who spent more than 40 years writing ular, inspiring several novels as well as a movie, his magisterial six-volume biography of most historians were unpersuaded. Among Jefferson, dismissed the possibility of a “vulgar scholars, particularly Jefferson specialists, said liaison” as “virtually unthinkable in a man of Ellis in his book, “there seems a clear consen- Jefferson’s moral standards.” sus that the story is almost certainly not true.” Ironically, noted Princeton University histo- He called the likelihood of a liaison “remote.” rian Sean Wilentz, reviewing Gordon-Reed’s book and others in the New Republic (Mar. 10, ow, thanks to the inspired genetic 1997) prior to the DNA bombshell, the “most Nsleuthing of Eugene A. Foster, a retired compelling evidence” of a Jefferson-Hemings professor of pathology at the University of liaison was assembled by Malone himself. It Virginia, and his British colleagues, the evi- showed that Jefferson, who was with Hemings dence is clear that Jefferson was the father of at in Paris in 1789 but later spent only occasional least Hemings’s last son, Eston, born in 1808. stretches of time at Monticello until he finished Ellis, adroitly adapting to this turn of events, his second presidential term in 1809, always appears with a co-author, geneticist Eric S. Lan- happened to be visiting when she conceived a der, in the Nature issue and alone in U.S. News child. “After finishing Gordon-Reed,” Wilentz & World Report (Nov. 9, 1998) to embrace the said, “it is difficult to avoid thinking in terms of new truth. “Within the scholarly world,” he the probability, and not merely the possibility, writes, “the acceptance of a Jefferson-Hemings of a Jefferson-Hemings liaison.” liaison had been gaining ground over recent years. Now that it is proven beyond any reason- ow, in the New Republic (Nov. 30, able doubt, the net effect is to reinforce the crit- N1998), with the liaison a virtual certain- ical picture of Jefferson as an inherently elusive ty, Wilentz concludes that the story “is about a and deeply duplicitous character.” slave-holding widower who, having promised Although freelance writer Christopher Shea his dying wife that he would never remarry, takes Ellis to task in the on-line magazine Salon struck up a covert relationship with his wife’s (www.salonmagazine.com) for fancy footwork, half-sister, of partial African descent, who was the historian may have been right in both of his also one of his house slaves. It is the stuff of accounts of the pre-DNA scholarly consensus. great history and great art. . . . And, though we But if a Jefferson-Hemings liaison “had been may never know how much love, if any, Tom gaining ground,” the reason, unmentioned by and Sally shared, the record shows at least an Ellis, is clear: Annette Gordon-Reed’s devastat- element of decency,” in that at his death, ing analysis of historians’ treatment of the evi- Jefferson freed Hemings’s children. dence, in her 1997 book Thomas Jefferson and Yet Patricia J. Williams, a law professor at Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. Columbia University, writing in the Nation In an op-ed essay in the New York Times (Nov. 23, 1998), questions the rush to “love.” (Nov. 3, 1998), Gordon-Reed, a professor at Jefferson “owned Sally Hemings,” she notes. New York Law School, says that the new scien- “[Let] us not project modern notions of tific evidence “squares perfectly with over- romance upon unions born of trauma, of whelming circumstantial evidence that has dependence and constraint.” been available for well over a century.... The Nearly a quarter-century ago, in a contemp- trouble is that the scholars who fashioned tuously dismissive review of Brodie’s book in the Jefferson’s image were either unwilling or New York Review of Books (Apr. 18, 1974), jour- unable to weigh the matter objectively.” In an nalist-historian Garry Wills agreed. He judged 1873 interview, published in an Ohio newspa- the contention that Jefferson fathered children per, Madison Hemings said that he and three by Hemings “reasonable”—but not the notion siblings were the children of Jefferson and Sally that it was a romantic attachment. To Wills, Hemings. Yet many historians, Gordon-Reed writing more recently in The New York Review asserts, discounted his claim because of his race of Books (Aug. 12, 1993), it was “psychological- and status as a former slave, choosing instead to ly implausible that [Jefferson] had a love affair believe Jefferson’s aristocratic white relatives. with one of his slaves. He tried to suppress their Indeed, Merrill Peterson, in his 1960 book, existence, so far as that was possible, from his wrote that the Sally Hemings story persisted in consciousness.” Many historians who admired part because of the “Negroes’ pathetic wish for him seem to have done the same with Sally a little pride.” The late historian Dumas Hemings. But no more.

116 WQ Winter 1999