The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy
Page 24
It is also inaccurate to say that Thomas Jefferson was at Monticello nine months before each of Sally’s children was born—or even 267 days, to use Dr. Neiman’s figure for the human gestation period.12 Using Dr. Neiman’s figures, for example, we find an estimate that Beverly Hemings was conceived on July 8, 1797 (a nine-month gestation would have begun on July 1), and that Thomas Jefferson had not been at Monticello since May 5 and did not return until July 11. While it is certainly possible that Sally did not become pregnant until after the estimated conception date, it seems somewhat more likely statistically that she conceived prior to Jefferson’s return.
Roughly ninety percent of mothers give birth within two weeks of their estimated due date, permitting us to identify a four-week conception window during which Beverly was likely conceived. For more than sixty percent of this conception window, Thomas Jefferson was not present at Monticello.
Thus, statistically, one would presumably have to conclude that it was somewhat less rather than more likely that Thomas Jefferson was present at Monticello when Beverly Hemings was conceived. This observation is hardly dispositive of the issue, as the data do suggest that Thomas Jefferson could have been present at Monticello when Sally conceived Beverly. But if, based solely on his visitation patterns, the odds are that Jefferson was not the father of Beverly Hemings, it follows ipso facto that there is less than a fifty-fifty chance that he was the father of all of Sally Hemings’ children.13
The One-Father Assumption
Neither can science change the fact that any statistical study of the conception coincidences, whether or not it accounts for conception-window absences, must rely on numerous assumptions about circumstances two centuries ago. Some of these assumptions are far more than incidental. For example, the Neiman study simply assumes that all of Sally Hemings’ children must have had the same father. There is not only no reliable evidence to support this assumption, there is credible eyewitness testimony that, if Sally Hemings was monogamous,14 it was with someone other than Thomas Jefferson. And if either of these possibilities is true (that Sally was monogamous with someone else or had children by multiple fathers), then Dr. Neiman’s (or anyone else’s) statistical analysis based upon Jefferson’s presence at Monticello becomes irrelevant to our inquiry.
Two arguments have been offered to support the conclusion that Sally Hemings was monogamous. In 1873, her son Madison Hemings reportedly told a journalist that Thomas Jefferson was the father of all of his mother’s children.15 But he gives no source for that information, and it is clear from the circumstances that he could not possibly have known the truth from his own observations. As harsh a thought as it may be to ponder, Monticello scholar Lucia Stanton quotes former slave Henry Bibb as writing in 1849: “It is almost impossible for slaves to give a correct account of their male parentage. … ”16
Madison Hemings was not present at his own conception or that of any Hemings child born in 179017 or those of Harriet I, Beverly, or Harriet II. He would have been but an infant when Eston was conceived. One need not intend any disrespect for Madison Hemings, or doubt the sincerity of the statement attributed to him, to note that a statement that is either unsourced hearsay (possibly ultimately based upon his knowledge of the Callender charges) or supposition ought not be given greater weight than the eyewitness observations of Monticello overseer Edmund Bacon, who alleged that, early in the morning while arriving for work, he had repeatedly seen a man other than Thomas Jefferson leaving Sally Hemings’ room.18
Nor is the fact that Jefferson historians have not alleged that Sally was not monogamous—assuming for the moment it is even an accurate statement19—serious evidence of anything beyond the fact that their interest in Sally ended when they concluded that she was not Thomas Jefferson’s “concubine.” From the surviving documentary evidence, Sally Hemings and her children were very minor figures at Monticello—far less important than many of her relatives. (See Figure 7 on page 141.) As the late Professor Merrill Peterson—formerly the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia, and widely regarded as the dean of living Jefferson scholars following the death of Dumas Malone—wrote in his classic study, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: “It is of no historical importance, but the best guess is that Sally’s children were fathered by Peter Carr. … ”20
There is no evidence that any of the major Jefferson scholars who have consistently rejected the allegations about Sally Hemings reached serious conclusions about whether Sally had one or more sexual partners—their consensus conclusion was merely that Thomas Jefferson was not the father of her children. And again, obviously, if Sally was not monogamous, the factual foundation, such as it is, upon which the Neiman study is based collapses.
Stacking the Deck
Another problem with the Neiman study is its apparent assumption that any other candidate for paternity would have to have had “identical arrival and departure dates” as Thomas Jefferson at Monticello.21 This certainly would decrease the probability of a statistical match, but it is an unnecessary complication of the problem and essentially irrelevant. Obviously, all that would be necessary for someone other than Thomas Jefferson to have fathered any or all of Sally’s children would have been for that person to have been present (wherever Sally was) during the period of conception. To assume that he (or they) had to arrive on precisely the same day, remain the same amount of time, and then depart on the day Thomas Jefferson did, is to establish a condition that makes sense only if one is trying to increase the apparent probability that Thomas Jefferson was the father.
An even more serious flaw in the methodology is the assumption of “random”22 behavior on the part of other potential fathers. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that Thomas Jefferson’s friends and relatives would generally23 schedule their visits to Monticello to coincide with his presence there—their presumptive purpose being visiting with him, not taking part in a public tour of the plantation. Furthermore, they might be somewhat more likely to visit immediately after he returned home—to welcome him and perhaps receive the latest reports on events in Washington and the world—than during any other particular time of his visit. Depending upon the length of his visit, they might return again; but knowledge that he had arrived or was about to return would presumably precipitate a desire for a visit.
To illustrate the fallacy underlying Dr. Neiman’s approach, let us consider a slightly different hypothesis. Suppose it is learned that, on six occasions over a period of seven years, visitors to Monticello suffer some similar harm (food poisoning, stolen property, beatings by unknown assailants—it does not matter greatly for our purposes). During these seven years, Thomas Jefferson is present at Monticello approximately half of the time. A comparison of the dates of the harmful incidents shows that Jefferson was at Monticello when each visitor suffered harm. If we were following Dr. Neiman’s methodology, we would then simply assume that there had to be a single culprit, design a sophisticated statistical model, and learn that it is almost certain that Thomas Jefferson was poisoning, assaulting, or stealing the belongings of his visitors. This conclusion is supported by a scientific test simulating 400,000 possible scenarios, and figures do not lie. But then someone observes that the only time visitors came to Monticello was when Thomas Jefferson was present and there is no serious evidence the same individual committed every crime. Does that affect the reliability of our scientific study? Of course it does—and it would even if we identified a small number of exceptions when people did briefly stop in at Monticello when Jefferson was absent.
Cause and Effect
Discussing the assertion that Thomas Jefferson was at Monticello nine months before each of Sally’s children was born, Professor Winthrop Jordan commented in Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson that this “obviously …provided no firm proof of paternity. His presence at Monticello might well have resulted in rearrangements concerning who occupied what room and most certainly would have altered the pattern of
visits to the plantation not only from distant admirers and acquaintances but also from relatives and friends from the neighborhood.”24
Another contributor to this same volume—a book characterized by its contributors’ widespread acceptance of the Jefferson-Hemings story—added that “It was his [Jefferson’s] wont throughout his life to entertain large numbers of guests, and a constant stream of visitors made its way to Albemarle County to call whenever he was at Monticello.”25 And yet Dr. Neiman premised his statistical analysis on the assumption that visitors to Monticello would behave randomly.
Nor, for that matter, are the data being relied upon in these assessments totally accurate. With respect to Jefferson’s visits, the problems range from trivial to possibly significant. For example, in the calculations concerning the only Hemings child linked by DNA to a Jefferson male, my colleague in this inquiry, Professor Forrest McDonald, has observed both that the calculations ignored the fact that 1808 was a leap year; and, far more importantly, ignored the fact that Thomas Jefferson was away from Monticello for as much as nine days overlapping Sally’s probable conception window.26 Even a cursory review of the major collections of Jefferson’s writings would have revealed that trip.
Where Was Sally?
If the revisionist scholars have been careless with Jefferson’s visitation dates to Monticello, the lack of evidence in surviving records precludes anything more than guesswork on whether Sally Hemings may have been at Monticello on any given day. Indeed, it is remarkable how often the total absence of data is used as evidence to make an argument in the speculation about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Thus, the Monticello Report asserts: “There is no record that Sally Hemings was anywhere but at Monticello from 1790 to 1826.”27 Given the apparent dearth of documentation on Sally’s activities subsequent to her return from Paris, one might have argued with equal validity that “there is no record that Sally Hemings was clearly present at Monticello when Eston Hemings was conceived,” or “there is no evidence Sally Hemings was not in New York for two years between 1790 and 1826.” Thomas Jefferson both loaned and leased slaves to relatives, friends, and others,28 and some of the more privileged members of the Hemings family were even allowed to hire themselves out during his absence and keep their earned income.29 We know from surviving records that this occurred with respect to certain slaves, but we can not be sure it did not happen with others. There is no reason to be confident that a record of every such transaction would have survived after nearly two centuries.
The uncertainty about Sally’s presence at Monticello is not mere idle speculation: Cynthia Burton has documented at least one period during 1790 when Sally was apparently away from Monticello.30 There also exists a record of a death-bed statement attributed to Jefferson’s eldest daughter, Martha—reportedly confirmed by her son, Thomas Jefferson Randolph—that Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson were “far distant from each other …for fifteen months prior” to the birth of the child that most resembled the President.31 Historian Henry S. Randall, whose three-volume The Life of Thomas Jefferson was published in 1858, wrote in a letter a decade later that, while reviewing “an old account book of the Jeffersons” he was able “to prove the fifteen months separation.”32 Perhaps everyone is lying to cover up Thomas Jefferson’s indiscretions; or perhaps records that would document Sally Hemings’ absence from Monticello at the time one of her children was conceived have been lost or misplaced over the years. The point is that, given these statements and the total absence of documents clearly establishing that Sally was at Monticello when each of her children was conceived, we simply do not know the truth.
Deathbed testimony is often made an exception to the judicial prohibition against “hearsay” evidence because it is thought to be unusually reliable,33 and Martha Jefferson had a reputation for veracity and good character.34 If Martha Jefferson did make the statement, it does not sound like an intentional falsehood—as she is reminding her children of a fact she asserts they already knew. If they did not know that Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings had been separated, she would presumably have worded her statement differently to make it more credible. There is also no evidence that historian Henry Randall was not telling the truth. But at the same time, we cannot say with certainty that any or all three sources were not simply trying to protect Thomas Jefferson’s reputation.
Our obligation as students of history is to seek the truth on the basis of all of the available evidence—judging the veracity of each piece of evidence on the basis of the totality of the circumstances. But in this endeavor it is not clear that the absence of evidence (regarding Sally’s whereabouts for years at a time) ought to be regarded as superior in probative value to the reported death-bed testimony of one witness who was in a position to know the facts, reportedly confirmed by a second witness (also in a position to know the facts) to a prominent historian, who subsequently stated that he had independently confirmed the facts.
Cause or Catalyst?
Why did Sally Hemings tend to get pregnant shortly after Thomas Jefferson returned to Monticello? Perhaps it was because Thomas Jefferson was her lover and they consummated their relationship each time he returned to Monticello—although this theory does not explain the many times he was present when Sally did not become pregnant. According to Dr. Neiman’s calculations, Sally probably became pregnant with Beverly, Thenia,35 Madison, and Eston on the average about twelve days after Thomas Jefferson’s return to Monticello. This suggests that, if Jefferson’s return to Monticello was a factor in her conceptions, Sally and her sexual partner(s) were remarkably fertile. Yet during the time Sally was producing known children, Thomas Jefferson visited Monticello more than twenty times, and during the period of their alleged romance, he was present for hundreds of months during which she does not appear to have become pregnant.36 Some of these, to be sure, can be explained by the fact that she was already pregnant or had recently given birth when Jefferson returned. But for someone who routinely seems to have become pregnant within a few weeks after he returned home, what do we make of the numerous opportunities when they were both allegedly at Monticello and she did not conceive a child? And for that matter, why did it take her nearly a year to become pregnant in 1794–95, and nearly three months in 1800?
If we rephrase the inquiry, a simpler explanation may become evident. What if we ask: “Why did Sally Hemings not become pregnant when Thomas Jefferson was absent from Monticello?” If her sexual partner (or partners) was a relative of Thomas Jefferson’s who did not normally reside at Monticello, his presence at Monticello would likely occur during the President’s presence at Monticello.
Monticello Was “Shut Up” When Jefferson Was Away
Critically important in understanding the correlation between Jefferson’s visits to Monticello and Sally Hemings’ pregnancies is a fact not mentioned by the revisionist scholars: Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello was normally kept shut up and locked during Jefferson’s vice presidency (1797–1801) and presidency (1801–1809) when he was in Philadelphia and subsequently Washington, D.C. In a letter to W. H. Van Hasselt during the summer of 1797, for example, Jefferson wrote that “the office to which I have been called takes me from home all the winter during which time my daughters also go into the lower country to pass their winter, so that our house is shut up one half the year.”37 That this continued through his presidency has been confirmed to me by Lucia Stanton at Monticello and is apparent from other sources as well.
How can we account for the fact that most of Sally’s pregnancies occurred within a month of Jefferson’s return home? In the absence of birth-control medication or devices, if the flood of visiting friends and relatives resulted in Sally becoming pregnant shortly after Jefferson returned home, this would obviously preclude her getting pregnant during the ensuing year or so irrespective of the frequency of her sexual encounters or how long Thomas Jefferson remained at Monticello. Lacking firm evidence about the paternity of her children (and neither Sally nor any of her childr
en except Madison, whose reported claims are problematic,38 left any clear record of believing Thomas Jefferson was their father), we have no alternative but to resort to speculation on this point. But since Thomas Jefferson’s return to Monticello is well documented to have produced a flood of visiting friends and relatives, it does not seem that remarkable that Sally would often quickly become pregnant upon his return and would not—as far as we know—become pregnant when he or those who would come to visit him were not there.
Old Age and Fecundity
Thomas Jefferson would no doubt wish us to invoke the latest scientific findings in our quest to resolve this matter. Interestingly, modern scientific research does shed some light on our dilemma. A scientific paper published in the journal Human Reproduction39 while our inquiry was in progress examined the effects of aging on fecundity and concluded that “[I]f the man’s age was treated as a continuous variable there was a significant linear relationship” and his ability to father a child within twelve months decreases approximately three percent per year.40
This study did not include subjects nearly as old as the sixty-four-year-old Thomas Jefferson (his age at the time of Eston’s conception), and we cannot say with certainty that the results would continue precisely as they were observed among younger men; but it is reasonable to suspect that biologically the elderly Thomas Jefferson would have been far less likely to have impregnated Sally Hemings within a few weeks41 of his return to Monticello than any of his much younger male relatives who could have been present when she became pregnant with Eston Hemings.42