As our sole dissenting member correctly observes,43 the correlation between Thomas Jefferson’s presence at Monticello and Sally Hemings’ conceptions of children is nevertheless a significant argument in favor of the proposition that Thomas Jefferson was the father of some and perhaps all of her children. But the significance of these data has been overstated. Correlation does not necessarily prove causation.44 The evidentiary value of the correlation in this case is substantially lessened when one realizes that other potential fathers would not have behaved randomly, as Dr. Neiman postulates, but would likely have timed their own visits to Monticello to coincide with Thomas Jefferson’s return home or at least his presence at Monticello.
There is credible, eyewitness evidence that a man other than Thomas Jefferson often spent the night in Sally’s room. There are at least two reported confessions or admissions of paternity by Jefferson’s nephews involving at least some of Sally’s children.45 It is not unreasonable to expect that Sally may have lived or been forced to live as did her mother, who, according to an account attributed to Sally’s son Madison, produced children by at least four different men.46
On balance, there is clearly no reason to assume that Sally was monogamous. We simply do not know. As noted in Chapter Three, the originator of the allegation of a Jefferson-Hemings sexual relationship asserted that Sally Hemings was “a slut as common as the pavement.”47 Without the assumption of monogamy, the correlation between her pregnancies and Thomas Jefferson’s visits to Monticello (which would obviously trigger visits by his friends and relatives) is of limited probative value in the search for the paternity of Eston Hemings or any of Sally’s other children.
* * *
Footnotes
1. WINTHROP D. JORDAN, WHITE OVER BLACK 466 (1968). I have not researched this issue carefully enough to take a stand on whether Winthrop Jordan or Dumas Malone first noted this point. I know from a letter I received from Professor Forrest McDonald that Winthrop Jordan, as a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University in the 1960s, made the point to him. Other scholars have credited the discovery to Professor Malone. See, e.g., JOSEPH J. ELLIS, AMERICAN SPHINX 365 (1996). For present purposes, it is not necessary to resolve the matter.
2. Fraser D. Neiman, Coincidence or Causal Connection? The Relationship between Thomas Jefferson’s Visits to Monticello and Sally Hemings’s Conceptions, 57 WILLIAM & MARY QUARTERLY 198 (Jan. 2000).
3. “The probability of getting six visit-conception coincidences ranges between 0.8 and 1.5 percent.” Id. at 206. As discussed in Chapter Two, it is far from clearly established that Sally Hemings had more than five children.
4. Id. at 210.
5. Jan Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings Redux: Introduction, 57 WILLIAM & MARY QUARTERLY 122 (Jan. 2000).
6. ANNETTE GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS 195 (1997) (emphasis added.).
7. Eric S. Lander & Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Father, NATURE, Nov. 5, 1998, at 13.
8. Five months after our report was released, one of the few public criticisms of our work took us to task for describing the Neiman study as “the Monte Carlo study” and asserted “‘the Monte Carlo study’ is a nickname that the Commission itself gave to the article in the course of its meeting.” Thomas W. Jones, The “Scholars Commission” Report on the Jefferson-Hemings Matter: An Evaluation by Genealogical Proof Standards, NATIONAL GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY QUARTERLY 213 (Sept. 2001). In reality, Dr. Neiman himself described his methodology as “[t]he Monte Carlo study” on page 208 and used the term Monte Carlo more than two dozen times in just six pages to identify a major part of his work. I am told that Monte Carlo simulations are quite common in science.
9. Conversation with Dr. White McKenzie Wallenborn.
10. Neiman, Coincidence or Causal Connection 199.
11. Obviously, if Thomas Jefferson were the father of Sally Hemings’ male children they would pass down his Y chromosome; but no serious scientist would try to establish paternity by simply assuming such a relationship and then doing a scientific comparison of Eston Hemings’ DNA with Eston Hemings’ DNA and announcing a match. This would be but a logical tautology.
12. Neiman, Coincidence or Causal Connection 198. Various sources give the average human gestation period as 266 or 267 days, but the difference is of no significant relevance for our purposes. This “average” can vary by weeks in individual cases of full-term birth.
13. I am indebted to Dr. William C. Blackwelder, a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, for this observation.
14. In using the term monogamous I do not mean to imply that Sally Hemings necessarily had freedom to choose her sexual partner(s).
15. Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Research Committee, Report on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, Jan. 2000 (hereinafter referred to as Monticello Report) Appendix E.
16. LUCIA STANTON, SLAVERY AT MONTICELLO 21 (1996).
17. I refer here to his allegation that a child was born soon after Sally returned from Paris, without passing judgment on whether the “Tom” referred to by James Callender was Thomas Woodson, someone else, or a fabrication.
18. JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 102 (James A. Bear, Jr., ed. 1967). This statement will be addressed at greater length in Chapter Ten.
19. Historians have certainly quoted Thomas Jefferson Randolph’s assertion that Peter Carr said to his brother Samuel that “you and I” brought disgrace to Jefferson in the Hemings matter, as well as his letter to the Pike County Republican alleging that paternity of Sally’s children had been “admitted by others (rather than another).” See Chapter Ten. While some historians have casually speculated about who the “father” of Sally’s children might have been, I am unaware of any major Jefferson scholar before the 1990s actually concluding on the basis of scholarly research that Sally was monogamous.
20. MERRILL D. PETERSON, THOMAS JEFFERSON & THE NEW NATION 707 (1970) (emphasis added.).
21. Neiman, Coincidence or Causal Connection fn.12; see also p. 208 concerning the “pattern of Jefferson’s visits to Monticello, a pattern that is unlikely to have been identical to the pattern of arrivals and departures for his male-line relatives.” This requirement of an “identical pattern of presence” is also relied upon in the Monticello Report (at 7).
22. “In the Monte Carlo approach, the probability of an observed outcome is estimated by comparing it to a very large number of random outcomes generated by a simulation model of the process responsible for the observation.” Neiman, Coincidence or Causal Connection, at 203.
23. This is not to question that a relative or friend might not stop by briefly to pick up or drop off a document or for some other purpose while Jefferson was away.
24. Winthrop D. Jordan, Hemings and Jefferson: Redux, in SALLY HEMINGS AND THOMAS JEFFERSON 41 (Jan Ellen Lewis & Peter S. Onuf, eds. 1999) (emphasis added.).
25. Joshua D. Rothman, James Callender and Social Knowledge of Interracial Sex in Antebellum Virginia, in SALLY HEMINGS AND THOMAS JEFFERSON 8 (emphasis added.).
26. Professor McDonald notes that Jefferson’s letters indicate he left on 9 September for a nine-day trip to his Bedford property (Poplar Forest). I reached the same conclusion after examining several editions of Jefferson’s papers. However, Cynthia Burton wrote me just as this book was going to press that, after carefully examining Jefferson’s Memorandum Books for the period, she believes that Jefferson may have remained at Monticello until as late as September 10 and returned as early as the 17th.
27. Monticello Report, Appendix F at 1 (emphasis added.).
28. See, e.g., THE GARDEN AND FARM BOOKS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 304, 452 (Robert C. Baron, ed. 1987).
29. See, e.g., 1 JEFFERSON’S MEMORANDUM BOOKS 263 n.11 (“During Jefferson’s prolonged absences from Virginia after 1783, Martin [Hemings] apparently was at liberty to seek employment where he pleased, and at one point was in the service of James Monroe.”); and id. 342 n.36.
30. BURTON, JEFFERSON VINDICATED 106. Ms. Burton notes that in an Oc
tober 1790 letter to her brother-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph, Mary (Polly) Jefferson wrote “we were at Cumberland when you sent for [S]ally but she was not well enough to have gone. … ” The letter is available at http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mtj/mtj1/012/1300/1351.jpg.
31. Letter from Henry S. Randall to James Parton on Jefferson and the “Dusky Sally Story,” June 1, 1868, reprinted in MILTON E. FLOWER, JAMES PARTON: THE FATHER OF MODERN BIOGRAPHY 237 (1951), reprinted in Monticello Report, Appendix E at 25.
32. Id.
33. However, in this instance Martha Jefferson’s statement would still be inadmissible hearsay, as it was recounted years later by Henry Randall with the assertion that he had been told the story by Martha’s son. Even if Martha and Thomas Jefferson Randolph were known never to have told a lie, their credibility in this instance can be no greater than that of historian Henry Randall—who could have fabricated the entire matter.
34. See Chapter Ten.
35. As discussed in Chapter Two, there is serious question about whether Sally had a child in 1799.
36. However, in fairness, we have no information about whether Sally Hemings may have lost children due to miscarriage.
37. Jefferson to Van Hasselt, Aug. 27, 1797, reprinted in THE GARDEN BOOK 257 (Edwin Morris Betts, ed. 1974).
38. See Chapter Four.
39. W. C. L. Ford, et al., Increasing paternal age is associated with delayed conception in a large population of fertile couples: evidence for declining fecundity in older men, 15(8) HUMAN REPRODUCTION 1703–08 (Nov. 2000). This study received considerable attention in the popular media.
40. Id. at 1705.
41. Dr. Neiman asserts that “four out of five conceptions” by Sally Hemings occurred “within a month of Jefferson’s arrival.” Neiman, Coincidence or Causal Connection 209.
42. Again, we must be cautious about extrapolating these data to apply to a sixty-four-year-old man in the early nineteenth century, as this study involved modern men of a much younger age. Nor do the observed trends apply to every specific individual. But the general principle that fecundity decreases with advanced aging is nevertheless likely valid and significant.
43. See Minority Views of Professor Paul Rahe.
44. See Steven T. Corneliussen, Have Scientific Data Proved Hemings-Jefferson Link?, RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH, Jan. 14, 2007 at E1.
45. See Chapter Ten.
46. [Samuel F. Wetmore], Life Among the Lowly, No. 1, Madison Hemings, PIKE COUNTY REPUBLICAN, Mar. 13, 1873. “It is …a pattern observable in both historical and contemporary life that girls raised in a particular environment tend to grow up accepting that familiar lifestyle as both the norm and their fate.” Helen F. M. Leary, Sally Hemings’s Children: A Genealogical Analysis of the Evidence, JEFFERSON-HEMINGS: A SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE NATIONAL GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY QUARTERLY 197 (Sept. 2001). (Ms. Leary accepts the assertion that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by Sally Hemings, and identifies herself as a former four-term president of the Board for Certification of Genealogists. Id. at 165 n. Her article is discussed in the Postscript to this volume.)
47. [Callender,] More About Sally and the President, RICHMOND RECORDER, Sep. 22, 1802. See also, Rothman, James Callender and Social Knowledge of Interracial Sex in Antebellum Virginia 95.
6
“Extraordinary Privileges” for Sally Hemings and Her Children
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One of the greatest myths of this entire controversy is that Sally Hemings and her children received “extraordinary privileges” at Monticello. As descendants of Betty Hemings they were indeed treated better than Monticello field slaves; but, as compared to Sally’s ten siblings who lived to adulthood and their children, their treatment was at best average.
Yet, Professor Gordon-Reed contends the “strongest evidence for a relationship between [Thomas] Jefferson and [Sally] Hemings is what happened to Hemings’s children.”1 In her widely praised volume, she repeatedly refers to “Jefferson’s freeing of Hemings’s children”2 and asserts that “he freed them all.”3 The same claim is made by David Brion Davis, Sterling Professor of History, Emeritus, at Yale University.4
Similarly, in “A Review of the Documentary Evidence,” attached to the January 2000 report of a research committee of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, we find among the “UNQUESTIONED” evidence this statement:
Thomas Jefferson freed Sally Hemings’s children.
The children of Sally Hemings that are known from Jefferson’s records all became free by the age of twenty-one, the only case of an entire enslaved Monticello family achieving freedom.5
The first part of this statement is not only not “unquestioned”; it is demonstrably false. It is the 1873 allegation of Madison Hemings6 and Israel Jefferson7—and the legend of Hollywood fiction—but it is easily refuted by Thomas Jefferson’s meticulous records, which show, for example, that Sally’s oldest confirmed child, Beverly Hemings, was born on April 1, 1798,8 and left Monticello in 1822.9 These facts are admitted elsewhere in the Monticello Report10 and by Professor Gordon-Reed.11 The date of his departure in 1822 is not recorded, but it could not have been before January 1, at which time Beverly would have been three months short of his twenty-fourth birthday. The odds are three-to-one that he left after the first of April, which would have made him twenty-four, not twenty-one as is so commonly alleged and believed. When questioned about this point, Monticello’s respected senior historian Lucia Stanton acknowledged that “Beverly Hemings would thus have been between twenty-three and twenty-four when he left,” and confirms that the allegation in the Monticello Report that he left at age twenty-one “is not precisely accurate. … ”12 (More correctly, he would have been either twenty-three or twenty-four.)
Nor, despite common allegations to the contrary, is it clear that Beverly left Monticello in 1822 “evidently with Jefferson’s permission.” When I raised this issue with Ms. Stanton, she explained that there were two reasons for the conclusion. First, they had found “no record of any attempt to bring Beverly Hemings back to Monticello,” whereas in some other cases Jefferson had attempted to recover runaways.13 But these were cases where Jefferson either was expressly aware of where a slave had gone (e.g., when Beverly’s cousin Jamey, son of Critta, ran away after being punished by the overseer) or at least had a reasonable suspicion of where he might be found. If, as Madison alleged, Beverly left Virginia, the fact that Jefferson left no letters detailing efforts to locate and bring him back is hardly “proof” that Jefferson had approved his departure. Once again, the honest answer is that we really do not know.
Professor Gordon-Reed’s other piece of evidence is a letter from Jefferson’s granddaughter, Ellen Randolph Coolidge, who recounted that it was her grandfather’s “principle” to permit slaves who were light enough to pass for white to “withdraw quietly” from Monticello, after which he made no effort to reclaim them. This is a bit ambiguous, and could mean that Jefferson encouraged them to “run away,” or that if they did run and he thought they had a chance to make a new life he did not force them to return. At best, Beverly may have received the same treatment Jefferson gave to other light-skinned slaves who fled from Monticello, which is hardly convincing evidence that he was Thomas Jefferson’s son.
The theory that Beverly may have run away on his own initiative may be reinforced at least somewhat by a letter alleging that in July 1820, Beverly was “missing” from the carpentry shop for several days.14 The fact that he was reported missing without explanation does not prove that he had tried to run away, and in the absence of more details, its significance should not be overstated. But it certainly is consistent with the idea that Beverly was not a happy slave just putting in his time until he knew Jefferson would set him free.
According to John Cook Wyllie, perhaps in the mid-1960s the leading expert on slavery at Monticello,15 Sally’s daughter Harriet II “ran away in 1822 and then [was] freed by TJ.”16 This is presumably based in part upon Jefferson’s Farm Book, which contains a cryp
tic note next to Harriet’s name: “run. 22.”17 Presumably, 1822 was the year in which she ran away (which was also the year in which she turned twenty-one). While Wyllie seems to suggest that there may have been two distinct events, with Harriet being “freed” at some point after having “run away” (and presumably having returned or been brought back), many scholars have assumed that Jefferson’s “run” notation actually referred to his decision (which will be discussed in a moment) to facilitate her departure.
It seems clear that Harriet’s final departure—when overseer Bacon says he gave her fifty dollars and put her on a stage to Philadelphia—was with Jefferson’s approval.18 Whether it was the same incident Jefferson recorded as Harriet having “run” in 1822, or thereafter, since Edmund Bacon ended his service as Monticello overseer on October 8, 1822,19 it presumably had to have been prior to that date. Harriet was born during the month of May, so there would appear to be about a fifty-fifty chance that she left when she was twenty as opposed to when she was twenty-one years old. It is not unreasonable in this case to conclude that she probably left Monticello around the time she turned twenty-one—but she was the only one of Sally Hemings’ children to gain freedom, de facto or de jure, anywhere near that close to their twenty-first birthday.
Even if we accept that Harriet Hemings was allowed to leave Monticello about the time she turned twenty-one, that still is not serious evidence of the alleged “treaty” that Madison Hemings reportedly alleged that Thomas Jefferson was compelled to conclude with Sally Hemings—promising to free all of their children when they turned twenty-one—as a condition of her agreement to return with him from Paris to Monticello. Putting someone on a stage out of town is hardly satisfaction of a solemn contractual agreement to grant her “freedom.” The standard means of granting a slave legal “freedom” was manumission, which Jefferson used to free two of Sally’s brothers long before Harriet turned twenty-one. It is true that some slaves were informally “given their time”—an informal process in which slaves were permitted to live as if they were free without being legally manumitted in order to permit them to remain in Virginia following enactment of the 1806 removal statute, which required manumitted slaves to leave Virginia within one year. That would not have been a consideration in the case of Harriet, who was reportedly put on a stage to Philadelphia. It would be very difficult to argue that simply facilitating the “running away” of a slave fully satisfied the terms of a “treaty” or other formal agreement in which her mother was promised her children would be “freed.”20
The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy Page 25