27. See, e.g., THE CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE: THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE FOR WRITERS, EDITORS, AND PUBLISHERS 357–58 (15th ed. 2003).
28. THE BLUEBOOK 69 § 5.2.
29. One might argue that this error is understandable, since the events in question occurred years before Madison’s birth. But virtually all of the relevant statements attributed to Madison in this story fall in that same category.
30. The original (or more likely a copy made at the same time in her own handwriting) of this letter is in the Coolidge Family Papers, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library, Acc. No. 9090.
31. The original Gordon-Reed transcription of this letter was still on the PBS Frontline “Jefferson’s Blood” website in late 2009. See: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/cron/ 1858ellenlett.html (last checked August 25, 2009).
32. As already noted, even minor corrections in punctuation or spelling are supposed to be indicated in scholarly writings by the use of brackets, ellipses, or other standard markings. However, occasional “errors” are not uncommon. (There will no doubt be several in this volume, despite efforts to avoid them.) Attorney Richard Dixon pointed out to me that, in his 1966 edition of The Federalist Papers, Professor Benjamin F. Wright observed that an 1864 edition edited by Alexander Hamilton’s son included more than a thousand departures from the original texts. Wright adds, however, that “[I]n no instance is the subject of an argument or interpretation changed” by the alterations. THE FEDERALIST PAPERS 11 (Benjamin F. Wright ed., 1966). What is especially alarming about the Gordon-Reed alterations is that most of them involve changing factual assertions to make her evidence more credible or her case stronger.
33. GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS unnumbered page following preface.
34. Id. at 285 (the index entries go from “Jefferson, Peter” to “Jefferson, Thomas,” with no mention of Randolph). In addition, at least four of Randolph’s five sons were clearly old enough to have fathered Eston. While the Monticello Report suggests that James Lilburne Jefferson, Randolph’s youngest son, was born circa 1789 (and thus would have been seventeen or eighteen when Eston was conceived), I have some doubts about whether he was this old, which will be addressed in Chapter Ten.
35. JAMES A BEAR, JR., JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 275 (1967).
36. The full text of this volume is available at http://www.archive.org/stream/thomasjefferson h00jeff/thomasjeffersonh00jeff_djvu.txt.
37. Id. at 278.
38. See, e.g., BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD, SALLY HEMINGS (1992); and BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD, THE PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER (1994).
39. GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS 158.
40. Id. at 162.
41. After admitting that “very little is known about” Sally (id. at 158), Professor Gordon-Reed peppers her chapter on Sally with speculations about what “may have” or “might have” been true or been thought or felt by various actors.
42. Daniel P. Jordan, Statement on the Monticello Research Committee Report (Jan. 26, 2000), in Monticello Report at 1.
43. See page 31.
44. Both Sides with Jesse Jackson: Verdict Is Issued on Relationship Between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (CNN television broadcast), Nov. 8, 1998.
45. Id.
46. To his credit, in an accompanying footnote Professor Ellis added: “Unlike Professors Lewis and Onuf, I am unpersuaded that previous scholars who rejected or doubted the liaison were covert racists or blind defenders of Jefferson.” Joseph J. Ellis, Jefferson: Post-DNA, 57 WILLIAM & MARY QUARTERLY 136 (Jan. 2000).
47. Some would date the modern, more critical, trend in Jefferson scholarship to the 1963 publication of Professor Leonard W. Levy’s Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side. But, despite his criticism, Professor Levy was an admirer of Thomas Jefferson. For example, he wrote: “I would strongly agree with anyone who contended that much of Jefferson was the best of his day and that the best of Jefferson was often the best of America.” Professor Levy argues that Jefferson “cannot be held responsible for having been born a white man in eighteenth century Virginia.” LEONARD W. LEVY, JEFFERSON AND CIVIL LIBERTIES viii–x (1989). As Professor Levy notes with obvious displeasure in the Preface to the paperback edition of his book, his criticisms of Jefferson were not widely embraced by his reviewers. Id. at xi–xxvi.
48. See, e.g., ELLIS, AMERICAN SPHINX 15 (acknowledging Merrill Peterson as being “the best Jefferson biographer alive. … ”). Malone, who died a decade before Professor Ellis’ book was published—was widely recognized as the world’s preeminent Jefferson scholar even before publication of most of his six-volume biography, which won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for History based upon the volumes published to that point. For example, in a 1956 introduction to a collection of letters between two nineteenth century historians, one scholar remarked that Henry S. Randall’s work “will probably remain unsurpassed as a biography of the third president until the completion of Jefferson and His Time by Dumas Malone.” George Green Shackelford (ed.), New Letters between Hugh Blair Grigsby and Henry Stephens Randall, 1858–1861, VIRGINIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY, July 1956 at 327.
49. Ellis, Jefferson: Post-DNA at 129–30.
50. My primary source for this alarming statement was Dr. Wallenborn, but another member of the Monticello committee who did not want to be identified recalled it as well. Professor Onuf has more recently written: “If further evidence was needed to banish Jefferson from the national pantheon, the recent confirmation of his relationship with his slave Sally Hemings provides it. … ” PETER S. ONUF, JEFFERSON’S EMPIRE 3 (2000).
51. LuAnn Bishop, Untangling “Historical Jumble” About Jefferson No Easy Feat, Say Scholars: The Portrait That Historians Have Traditionally Painted of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson is Long Overdue for a Major Overhaul, YALE BULLETIN & CALENDAR, Feb. 22–Mar. 1, 1999, vol. 27, no. 22.
52. This account was provided to me by a Monticello guide who values her or his job under an assurance that I would not identify my source.
53. Two months after release of the Monticello Report, Dr. Wallenborn’s minority report was posted on the Monticello website. See: http://www.monticello.org/plantation/minority_report.html.
54. I knew none of these people prior to being invited (along with some very distinguished local Jefferson scholars) to attend a March 7, 2000, luncheon at the Boar’s Head Inn in Charlottesville to discuss the Monticello Report. I had never set eyes on or spoken to Mr. Works until he telephoned me after receiving our final report. With the exception of Dr. Michael Moffitt (who has been wonderfully helpful in managing the Scholars Commission’s financial account—making hotel reservations, reimbursing members for air travel, assisting with mailings, and the like), I did not to my knowledge personally meet with anyone in the group between that luncheon and the release of our report on April 12, 2001.
55. Some may ask why Thomas Jefferson would need to be “defended” for having a sexual relationship with an African-American woman following the death of his wife; were that the issue I would respond, “I hope they both found love and happiness” and continue my work on more serious matters. But, like many Americans, I have serious moral problems with the idea of a forty-five-year-old man “seducing” (or permitting himself to be “seduced” by) a thirteen-to-fifteen-year-old child (who, in this case, Abigail Adams tells us, lacked the maturity of Jefferson’s own eight-year-old daughter). Far more importantly, while the common-law “age of consent” during Jefferson’s lifetime ranged from ten to twelve, I find the concept of consent in the master-slave relationship very difficult to comprehend. In my view, if the relationship began in Paris as alleged, Thomas Jefferson was both a child molester and a rapist. Neither role is easy for me to accept based upon my understanding of the man following more than three decades of study.
56. This is meant to exclude the 1873 Pike County Republican article alleging that Madison Hemings made such a charge. There is a notation in an 1870 census record
alleging that Madison was Thomas Jefferson’s son, which could reasonably be interpreted as indicating that Madison made such a claim, so perhaps it would be more accurate to say “sixty-nine” years.
57. Peter Onuf, Adair, The Intellectual Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, 63 WM. & MARY Q. 1035, 1038 (2001).
58. DOUGLASS ADAIR, FAME AND THE FOUNDING FATHERS 181 (Trevor Colbourn ed., 1974).
59. Many of the statements by Jefferson’s descendants are, of course, subject to similar risks of bias.
60. Not only do we have the eye-witness statement by Edmund Bacon that he frequently observed another man leaving Sally’s room early in the morning, but two of the sources relied upon by advocates of Jefferson’s paternity (Callender and Gibbons) specifically referred to Sally as being a “slut” or a “prostitute.” Since there is no reason to believe that either “source” had any reliable information on the matter, and both had clear motives to portray Sally Hemings in an unfavorable light, their statements are entitled to very little weight. As will be discussed in Chapter Ten, Edmund Bacon’s statement is perhaps the most valuable bit of evidence existent on this issue.
61. It is not surprising that several of the top Soviet spies discovered in recent years were employed by the CIA, the FBI, or a military intelligence agency. See, e.g., TIM WEINER, BETRAYAL: THE STORY OF ALDRICH AMES (1995); ADRIAN HAVILL, THE SPY WHO STAYED OUT IN THE COLD: THE SECRET LIFE OF FBI DOUBLE AGENT ROBERT HANSSEN (2001).
62. GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS 163.
63. Id.
64. There are situations, of course, where observable consequences are so likely to follow an event that the absence of those consequences may be valuable evidence that the event did not occur. Thus, if we are asked to believe that the accused murdered his lover in a crowded hotel by shooting her with a twelve-gauge shotgun while she stood on a white carpet moments before the police arrived, the lack of bloodstains on the carpet or walls, and testimony by occupants of adjacent rooms that they heard no noise, might be powerful evidence for the defense.
65. Monticello Report at 9.
66. GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS 184.
67. Eric S. Lander & Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Father, NATURE, Nov. 5, 1998, at 13.
68. Gordon S. Wood, The Ghosts of Monticello, in SALLY HEMINGS & THOMAS JEFFERSON 27 (Jan Ellen Lewis & Peter S. Onuf, eds., 1999).
69. I first encountered the concept from my father when I was a young student. He told me of an incident during his medical residency in which a colleague had listened to the symptoms of a patient—symptoms of a rather common disorder—and suggested a diagnosis of a very rare illness having similar symptoms. The presiding physician looked at him and said: “Mr. Jones. When you hear hoof beats, think of horses, not unicorns.”
70. I am pleased to report that, when this comment came to the attention of members of the Society after our report was released in April 2001, I was invited to address the group (of which I had been an active member as a law student many years earlier) on the work of the Scholars Commission, and several members of the group volunteered to help if further research was necessary.
71. Even after Professor Joseph Ellis had admitted to repeated falsehoods and been suspended without pay by his college (a development discussed in the Postscript to this volume), and our report had pointed out at least one major alteration of an historical document in Professor Annette Gordon-Reed’s documentation, both were hired by the University of Virginia to join other Jefferson critics in a June 2002 program on Jefferson. Responding to public pressures, two members of the Scholars Commission were added to the program at the last minute to provide balance.
72. The title “Rector” was held by University of Virginia founder Thomas Jefferson from the University’s establishment in 1819 until his death in 1826, at which time James Madison became the second Rector. The University was run by the “Rector and Board of Visitors” (still the corporate board) until 1904, when Edwin Alderman became its first President.
73. Robert F. Turner, The Truth About Jefferson, WALL STREET JOURNAL, July 3, 2001.
74. After thirty-five years as a historical researcher in the Charlottesville area, Ms. Burton is certainly among the nation’s leading genealogist specializing in the Jefferson family. In 2005 she published an excellent book entitled Jefferson Vindicated: Fallacies, Omissions, and Contradictions in the Hemings Genealogical Search, featuring a Foreword by former Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Curator and Resident Director, Emeritus, James A. Bear, Jr., that is available for sale through the Monticello Gift Shop or on amazon.com.
75. Sadly, Eyler Robert Coates, Sr., passed away on January 10, 2002. He was a truly remarkable human being, a man of strong character and conviction, and one of the finest “natural scholars” it has been my pleasure to encounter during my professional life. He served the cause of truth admirably, and he will be missed.
76. THE JEFFERSON-HEMINGS MYTH: AN AMERICAN TRAVESTY (Eyler Robert Coates, Sr., ed. 2001). Particularly helpful, in addition to those already mentioned, have been (in alphabetical order): Mr. Herbert Barger; Mr. Bahman Batmanghelidj; Ms. Pamela Buell; Richard Dixon, Esq.; James F. McMurry, M.D.; and Ms. Rebecca L. McMurry. (I understand that not all of these people are formally associated with the TJHS, but I trust they will not object to being grouped together since they have all been associated in the same effort.)
77. Particularly helpful was Christopher Posteraro, at the time a student at Harvard Law School (and editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, to which I have occasionally contributed articles), who volunteered to do some research for me in a Harvard library and located an important issue of the Virginia Federalist that contained perhaps the first published reference to the possibility that Jefferson had fathered children by a slave. Other new-found friends, including Donais Lee and Barbara Frank, have provided helpful comments on drafts.
78. Despite his later difficulties and my own frustration at trying to reconcile his reputation as an excellent scholar with what seemed to be obvious errors in his post-DNA writings on the Hemings issue, I must note that Dr. Ellis’ letter to me of October 31, 2000, could not have been more gracious. I had written to him (along with several others who had embraced the view that Thomas Jefferson probably fathered children by Sally Hemings) to ask whether he had found new information or come up with new arguments that might assist us in our inquiry. To quote a portion of his hand-written letter, Professor Ellis replied:
I’m not sure we will end up in the same camp, but I do respect and admire the integrity of your motives and the depth of your inquiry.
I think you’re right—that you are pretty much in the same position I was pre-DNA. And you do a better job than I did (in the appendix of Sphinx) in assembling the dog-that-didn’t-bark evidence. The civility of your dialogue with and about the evidence truly impresses me.
Such civility was not possible in the immediate aftermath of the DNA announcement. I was dismayed by the racial politics surrounding all discussions, the Gordon-Reed innuendo about those who “got it wrong” being racists, the preference of black oral history over other forms of evidence. But I was also struck by the filiopietistic motives of the Jefferson defenders, who seemed like trial lawyers defending a client.
My still current position: that before the DNA the judgment of a liaison was impossible to render clearly or authoritatively, but the preponderance of evidence was against. And that after the DNA the balance has shifted in favor of the liaison, though certainty is not in the cards.
There was not a sentence here that struck me as unreasonable. But it did not explain to me why he repeatedly said to other audiences that the case against Jefferson had been established “beyond reasonable doubt” or had failed to discuss other possible Jeffersons as Eston’s father. Nevertheless, I was deeply impressed by his candor and graciousness, and therefore in many ways saddened over his subsequent difficulties.
79. Despite our common last name, I have no reason t
o believe Dr. Turner and I are related.
80. See my Postscript at the back of this volume.
81. “Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision.” Jefferson to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787, in 6 WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 261 (Mem. ed. 1904).
82. Jefferson to William Roscoe, Dec. 27, 1820, in 15 id. 302.
83. I had earlier expressed a desire to Dr. Jordan for their comments and for them to identify any errors they perceived in our report so that we could consider and perhaps correct them before the book version was published.
1
Understanding the DNA Evidence Linking Eston Hemings to Thomas Jefferson’s Cousins
* * *
One of the most influential pieces of evidence in this controversy was the 1998 DNA study, performed by eight scientists led by Dr. Eugene Foster and reported in the November 5, 1998, issue of the journal Nature,1 showing that someone with the male Jefferson Y chromosome was probably the father of Eston, the youngest son of Sally Hemings. Sadly, it is also perhaps the most misunderstood piece of evidence—in part because the scientific protocol was arguably flawed,2 but far more importantly because of the unprofessional manner in which the research results were sensationalized by the prestigious, London-based international science journal.
For example, while the Foster article acknowledged that their study showed Thomas Jefferson might have fathered one of Hemings’ children, Nature entitled the article: “Jefferson fathered slave’s last child.”3 An accompanying commentary by Professors Eric S. Lander and Joseph J. Ellis was prefaced by a bold-type summary which proclaimed that the “DNA analysis confirms that Jefferson was indeed the father of at least one of Hemings’ children.”4
Professor Ellis, the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College, was a very important participant in the controversy. In 1996, he won the prestigious National Book Award for his Jefferson biography, American Sphinx. In that volume, Ellis had dismissed the likelihood of a sexual relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings as being “remote” and based upon “flimsy and wholly circumstantial” evidence.5 When such a respected historian who was known to be critical of the allegation announced that the 1998 DNA evidence had forced him to not just reconsider but completely reverse his position, many assumed the debate was over and did not bother to look closely at the evidence. Professor Ellis’ prestige increased early the following year with publication of his Founding Brothers,6 which won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in History.
The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy Page 10