The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy
Page 32
12. Colonel Beverly Jefferson, Veteran Hackman, MADISON DEMOCRAT, Nov. 12, 1908 (emphasis added).
13. JUDITH P. JUSTUS, DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN 93 (1991). See also, id. at 101.
14. One colleague who has examined this issue more thoroughly than I have has observed that Beverly’s older brother served as a colonel during the Civil War (Obituary of Col. John W. Jefferson, MADISON DEMOCRAT, June 14, 1892) and his brother-in-law was a captain. She speculates that, “like his Uncle Madison,” Beverly Jefferson “may have felt inferior to the rest of his family” and thus embellished his record. That is as plausible as much of the speculation circulating as fact in this dispute (although Beverly seems to have been genuinely successful in his life), but speculation is no substitute for facts. All we really seem to know here is that Beverly was not a colonel, but some people called him “Colonel” and at least one of his friends—of whose veracity we know absolutely nothing—claimed that Beverly was also the grandson of Thomas Jefferson. This is at best third- or fourth-degree hearsay involving sources of unknown veracity.
15. There is a great risk in suggesting that someone “never said” something. All we can reasonably say is that there does not appear to be any clear surviving record of such a statement, despite the fact that Eston was asked about the rumor and had decades in which to make such a claim.
16. This is discussed in Chapter Four. If the story came from Madison, that does not make it false; but it does mean that it is no more reliable that Madison’s original story, despite the number of times it may have been repeated by Eston’s descendants.
17. Much of the writing of Fawn Brodie, Annette Gordon-Reed, and other revisionists is founded on just this sort of speculation. As with their other hypotheticals, the fact remains that there is no way to confirm that this is in fact an accurate account of what happened.
18. Peter Field Jefferson grew up to become a successful businessman in Scottsville, Virginia, and died in 1861. I vaguely recall seeing a reference somewhere, from a source of unknown reliability, to Randolph Jefferson’s “third son” having fathered “colored children” by slaves, but have not been able to find my note. I mention this as a point other scholars may wish to pursue, and not as a fact to be accepted as true. I do not personally view Field as a particularly likely candidate for Eston’s paternity.
19. See also Chapter Ten.
20. Some descendants of Eston Hemings claim the original family oral history was that Eston was the child of “an uncle or cousin” of President Jefferson.
21. This may be an overstatement, as there is at least some chance that the Wetmore article alleging to represent the views of Madison Hemings did not, in fact, reflect those views. As was discussed in Chapter Four, Wetmore appears to have had a strong political agenda of his own. However, I am prepared to assume, for the moment, that the views represented in the article were based upon statements actually made by Madison Hemings.
22. Jan Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings Redux: Introduction, in 57 WILLIAM & MARY QUARTERLY 121 (Jan. 2000, no. 1).
23. Id. at 122.
24. Genealogical Research Tips, Other Danger Zones, FAMILY TREE MAKER, (Broderbund software version 6.0, 1999).
25. This document is reprinted in various sources, including S. N. RANDOLPH, THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 18 (1871) (emphasis added).
26. Annette Gordon-Reed, When the Past Speaks to the Present: A Cautionary Tale about Evidence, HISTORY NOW (Dec. 2004), available at http://www.historynow.org/12_2004/print/historian4.html.
27. Id.
28. Id.
29. [Samuel E. Wetmore], Life Among the Lowly, Number 1. Madison Hemings, PIKE COUNTY REPUBLICAN (Waverly, Ohio), Mar. 13, 1873 at 4, reprinted in Monticello Report, Appendix E at 27–28.
30. Annette Gordon-Reed, When the Past Speaks to the Present: A Cautionary Tale about Evidence, HISTORY NOW (Dec. 2004), Appendix E at 27–28.
31. Joshua D. Rothman, James Callender and Social Knowledge of Interracial Sex in Antebellum Virginia, in SALLY HEMINGS AND THOMAS JEFFERSON 102 (Jan Ellen Lewis & Peter S. Onuf, eds. 1999).
32. Lucia Stanton & Dianne Swann-Wright, Bonds of Memory, in id. at 171.
33. Quoted in Lucia Stanton, The Other End of the Telescope, WILLIAM & MARY QUARTERLY 145 (Jan. 2000).
34. Id. This quotation is attributed to hearsay evidence provided by a “Charlottesville resident.”
35. Madison J. Gray, A Founding Father and His Family Ties, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 3, 2001.
36. Dinitia Smith & Nicholas Wade, DNA Test Finds Evidence of Jefferson Child by Slave, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 1, 1998 at 24.
37. Oprah Winfrey Show, Transcript of Nov. 12, 1998, pp. 7, 10–11. (The statement “we thought we were distantly related” prior to the publication of Fawn Brodie’s book was made by Ms. Westerinen’s son, Art, but Julia Westerinen interjected “Yes” in response to the comment.)
38. For Professor Brodie’s account of her role, see Fawn Brodie, Jefferson’s Unknown Grandchildren, AMERICAN HERITAGE, Oct. 1976, at 94–95.
39. JUSTUS, DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN 93.
40. Let me stress that I am not accusing Ms. Westerinen or any of her relatives of dishonesty. I’ve never met them. I have absolutely no reason to believe she is not telling the truth to the best of her knowledge. My concern is not about her as an individual, but about the changing nature of the story that is being told. The reality is that, at any stage of the process, anyone involved can—honestly or otherwise—conclude that the story they were told was erroneous (or not impressive enough) and alter or embellish it, telling the next generation that the new story has been passed down through many generations.
41. [Samuel E. Wetmore], Life Among the Lowly, Number 1. Madison Hemings, PIKE COUNTY REPUBLICAN (Waverly, Ohio), Mar. 13, 1873 at 4, reprinted in Monticello Report, Appendix E at 27–28.
42. CINCINNATI’S COLORED CITIZENS: HISTORICAL, SOCIOLOGICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL 180 (Wendell P. Dambey, ed. 1926).
43. The Vice-President’s Colored Wife, WASHINGTON AFRO-AMERICAN, n.d. (I am in possession of a photocopy of this article that is not dated.)
44. Lerone Bennett, Thomas Jefferson’s Negro Grandchildren, EBONY, vol. X, no. 1, Nov. 1954 at 78.
45. Family Tradition Kept Alive by Some of Descendants, EBONY, Nov. 1954 at 80.
46. Laura B. Randolph, Thomas Jefferson’s Black and White descendants debate his lineage and legacy, EBONY, July 1993 at 25–26.
47. Id. at 26.
48. Laura B. Randolph, The Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings Controversy: Did Jefferson Also Father Children By Sally Hemings’ Sister?, EBONY, Feb. 1999 at 189.
49. Id. at 190.
50. Id.
51. Id.
52. JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 22 (James A. Bear, Jr. ed. 1967).
53. Id. at 129 n.89.
54. Id. at 123 n.3.
55. See Chapter Six.
56. He was, for example, fully aware of Jefferson’s love for agriculture and gardening, and of various health problems during his life. See JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 12, 18, 19, 128 n.73. This is not to say that Isaac made no errors. Several are pointed out by Bear in the footnotes. But his errors are almost always explained by Bear as matters of understandable confusion—such as mistaking wild dogs for wolves (id. at 128 n.85) and confusing the names of the children of Jefferson’s father and father-in-law (id. at 128–29 n.86).
57. Once the Slave of Thomas Jefferson: The Rev. Mr. Fossett, of Cincinnati, Recalls the Sage of Monticello—Reminiscences of Jefferson, Lafayette, Madison and Monroe, THE WORLD (New York), Jan. 30, 1898, at 33.
9
Miscellaneous Arguments Said to Support Thomas Jefferson’s Paternity of Sally Hemings’ Children
* * *
There are a number of other arguments that have been voiced in support of the conclusion that Thomas Jefferson fathered one or more children by his slave Sally Hemings; and, while none of these are important enough to warrant an extended discussion, it may be useful to address them br
iefly here.
“Psychohistory” and Jefferson’s Use of the Term Mulatto
Jefferson scholars had consistently rejected the Callender charges, and the subsequent 1873 allegations of Madison Hemings and Israel Jefferson, as without merit until 1974, when Professor Fawn Brodie published Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. In an apparent attempt to psychoanalyze Jefferson from a careful reading of his letters, she tells her readers:
The first evidence that Sally Hemings had become for Jefferson a special preoccupation may be seen in one of the most subtly illuminating of all his writings, the daily journal he kept on a seven-week trip through eastern France, Germany, and Holland in March and April of 1788. …Not normally a diary keeper, he did write an almost daily account of his travels. Anyone who reads with care these twenty-five pages must find it singular that in describing the countryside between these cities he uses the word “mulatto” eight times.1
Professor Brodie then goes on to quote each of these usages, and we find that each of them involves the use of “mulatto” to describe the color of “plains” or “hills” or “clay” or “the valley.”2 It is unclear what credential Professor Brodie held in the field of psychiatry, but her background in geology was clearly incomplete. She apparently simply did not understand that “mulatto” was a term-of-art used in the description of soils.
Reviewing the Brodie volume in 1974 for the New York Review of Books, historian Garry Wills wrote:
She [Brodie] offers as “evidence” of his “special preoccupation” with Sally the “singular” fact that he used the word “mulatto” eight times in twenty-five pages of his travel account that spring. But all these references are to the color of the soil, and the OED [Oxford English Dictionary] gives that use of the word as peculiarly American and eighteenth-century. …Unfortunately for Ms. Brodie’s thesis, he had used “mulatto” in exactly the same way during his tour of southern France, the spring before Sally arrived in Paris. The category already existed in his mind. Ms. Brodie tries to solve this difficulty by stressing, once again, the repetition. In the tour of France, she tells us, Jefferson used the word “mulatto” only once in forty-eight of Boyd’s pages as opposed to eight times in the twenty-five pages of his Holland tour.
Well, as usual, Ms. Brodie has her facts wrong, even before she loads them with unsustainable surmise. …For instance: on the seven-week tour of Holland he used the word “red” only seven times; but on the nine-week tour of southern France he used it (or “reddish”) thirty-eight times. Such a disparity must reflect “special preoccupation” of some sort, according to the Brodie method. Since his daughter had Jefferson’s reddish hair and complexion, and he was arranging for her to come join him, the soil descriptions are really covert expressions of an incest drive. How on earth did Brodie miss that “curious” fact?3
Opinions of Jefferson’s Friends and Neighbors
The January 2000 report of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Research Committee asserts that “Several people close to Jefferson or the Monticello community believed he was the father of Sally Hemings’s children.”4 The statement is broad enough to be almost certainly true, as far as it goes, but it is less clear that it has sufficient probative value to warrant consideration in a search for the truth. But the Monticello Report goes on to expand on this “research finding” by alleging: “Numerous sources document the prevailing belief in the neighborhood of Monticello that Jefferson had children by Sally Hemings.”5 As will be seen, there is not the slightest bit of credible evidence to suggest that the “prevailing belief” in the Monticello neighborhood was that Thomas Jefferson was the father of any of Sally Hemings’ children.
Furthermore, there is no suggestion that any of the people mentioned in the Monticello Report claimed or had first-hand knowledge about the identity of the father(s) of Sally Hemings’ children. None of them is said to have claimed that they observed Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings in any setting that might suggest an intimate relationship, or that either of the principals or anyone else with apparent first-hand knowledge of the truth ever alleged in their presence that Thomas Jefferson was the father. Those who said they “believed” the story were presumably either acknowledging the fact that some slave owners did father children by slaves, commenting more generally about their perception of Thomas Jefferson’s character, or perhaps even venting their jealousy or dislike for the highly popular and successful preeminent citizen of the community.
More important, the fact is that most people who actually knew Thomas Jefferson, were in a position to evaluate his character from extended personal exposure, and left a record of their views on the matter, rejected the Callender charges. Trying to ascertain whether a person accused of some wrongful or otherwise controversial behavior is guilty by asking people in the neighborhood who were not present and claim no first-hand knowledge of the facts is hardly the most useful technique in a serious search for the truth; but since it is being relied upon by Jefferson’s critics it may be useful to emphasize that if this “jury” is limited to those who knew Thomas Jefferson well, their overwhelming verdict was a clear “not guilty.” For example:
All of Thomas Jefferson’s relatives who left a record of opinion on the issue emphatically rejected the allegations.
James Madison, Jefferson’s closest friend for many decades, a man of impeccable integrity, and the man Professor Ellis admits “probably knew Jefferson as well as or better than anyone else alive,”6 dismissed the allegations. Callender had approached Madison during his attempt to extort appointment as the postmaster of Richmond from the President, and he wrote that Madison responded to the Hemings charge by saying “that he had known Mr. Jefferson for the greater part of his life; and that he knew so much about the excellence of his heart, as to make this allegation incredible.”7 This language is unfortunately omitted from the portion of this article reprinted in the Monticello Report.8
Edmund Bacon, who was at Monticello day after day for more than fifteen years as Jefferson’s overseer and knew all of the participants in the alleged scandal well, dismissed the allegations as untrue.9
David Humphreys, Jefferson’s long-term friend and secretary during his service as U.S. minister to France, did not believe the story.10
Jefferson’s physician, Dr. Robley Dunglison, “did not believe the story.”11
Thomas Paine stayed with Jefferson at Monticello during the controversy and later denounced Callender’s charges as falsehoods.12
Jefferson’s friend (but for many years, including the time of the Callender charges, a bitter political rival) John Adams, himself a repeated victim of James T. Callender’s libels, rejected the story.13
John Quincy Adams, son of John and Abigail and later to serve as America’s sixth President, suggested that the Federalists had been compelled to resort to such scandal mongering because the voters had “completely and irrevocably, abandoned and rejected” their political program.14
Jefferson’s long-time political opponent Alexander Hamilton, another Federalist victim of Callender’s pen, did not believe the story.15
Even General Light-Horse Harry Lee, a Federalist and political adversary of President Jefferson’s in Virginia, said there was “no foundation whatsoever for that story.”16
Revisionist accounts have made various references to the story being widely accepted in Charlottesville and among Jefferson’s friends, but they are short of specifics. Indeed, their “evidence” seems to come down to allegations by Jefferson’s critics and recorded statements by three individuals.
John Hartwell Cocke
Indeed, among those individuals alleged to have been “close” to Thomas Jefferson, only a single one is cited in the Monticello Report as believing the Callender allegations: General John Hartwell Cocke, who served with Jefferson on the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia. The Monticello Report notes that: “Decades after Jefferson’s death, Cocke referred in his diary to the prevalence in Virginia of masters with slave families—‘no
r is it to be wondered at, when Mr. Jefferson[’]s notorious example is considered.’”17
Professor Annette Gordon-Reed similarly relies upon statements from Cocke’s diary as evidence that Jefferson fathered children by Sally Hemings, noting that Cocke was “one of the founders and first board members of the University of Virginia,” and “not an enemy of Jefferson.”18 This is an accurate statement, as far as it goes, but it does not provide enough information about the proffered “witness” for us to assess seriously the probative value of his testimony.
For example, Sally Hemings’ last known child was conceived around August 1807. Thomas Jefferson’s first mention of John Hartwell Cocke in his Memorandum Books occurred in 1811,19 and Cocke’s name does not even appear in the index to the twenty-volume Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association collection of The Writings of Thomas Jefferson.20 Cocke went off to war in 1812, and resurfaces in the Memorandum Books on April 20, 1814, when he sold a horse to the former President.21 Their collaboration on the University of Virginia did not commence for another three years,22 nearly a decade after Sally Hemings’ last child was conceived.
It is perhaps remotely conceivable23 that Jefferson spoke openly during the early meetings of the Board of Visitors about a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, or that he and Sally were openly affectionate or showed signs of some special relationship in the general’s presence during gatherings at Monticello. But there is no evidence of this, and had any of it actually occurred, one would expect more specific evidence to exist. A far more likely explanation is that General Cocke heard the rumors and allegations and either assumed they were true or felt it desirable to record them for some other reason we can only speculate about.