The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy

by Robert F Turner

  Denials by Jefferson Himself and Virtually All

  His Contemporaries

  Jefferson refused to dignify Callender’s charges by denying them publicly, but in private correspondence stated generally that there was “not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.”64 And on one occasion in private correspondence he denied the Hemings paternity charge, among other allegations.

  In a cover letter dated July 1, 1805 and written to Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith, Thomas Jefferson denied the “charges” made against him, admitting that he was guilty only of one—“that when young and single [he] offered love to a handsome lady”—which he maintained was “the only one founded in truth among all their allegations against me.” Jefferson’s letter to Smith referenced an enclosed letter written to Attorney General Levi Lincoln which fully responded to the charges but which, unfortunately, has not survived. From Jefferson’s cover letter it is clear that he desired both Smith and Lincoln to read the enclosed letter, as “particular friends” of Jefferson with whom he “wish[ed] to stand …on the ground of truth.”65

  Both the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation majority report66 and Professor Annette Gordon-Reed67 dismiss Jefferson’s letter as “ambiguous” and referring directly only to the charge of Jefferson’s affair with Mrs. John Walker. Although it is true that the cover letter on its face does not identify either the “charges” or those who were asserting them, nevertheless it is reasonably clear from the full context of Jefferson’s letter itself and its historical circumstances that Jefferson was denying all the charges made against him by his political enemies, including the Hemings paternity allegation.

  Jefferson wrote the letter ten days after the Washington, D.C. newspaper The Washington Federalist reprinted a letter from a “Thomas Turner, Esq.,” declared to be a Virginia gentleman, which had been first published in the Boston newspaper The Repertory on May 31, 1805. The newspaper articles raised virtually the same charges Callender had made in the Richmond Recorder in 1802, including the affair with Mrs. Walker, “Mr. Jefferson’s disgraceful concubinage” with Sally Hemings, and Jefferson’s “timidity” as Governor of Virginia when it was invaded by British troops during the Revolutionary War.68 Indeed, Jefferson referred directly to the latter accusation (“transactions during the invasion of Virginia”) in his cover letter to Smith, in the sentence immediately following his admission of the Walker affair.

  The Washington Federalist and Boston Repertory articles also alleged, according to “opinion,” that Sally Hemings was “the natural daughter” of John Wayles, misspelled “Wales”—the first time this allegation appeared in print.

  The fuller context of the reappearance of the Callender allegations in Boston newspapers—including the debates on Jefferson’s character in the Massachusetts legislature in January 1805—has been discussed by Dumas Malone.69 Given the political climate in Massachusetts, it is not surprising that Jefferson wrote this letter to Levi Lincoln, who served as Jefferson’s political adviser on matters concerning New England, and Massachusetts in particular.

  The significance of Jefferson’s denial in this letter to a friend, who was also a member of his administration and a political confidant, should be obvious: it is the only direct evidence left by Jefferson in his own words and handwriting that bears on the question.

  The Monticello Committee report also notes, without any analysis, the only known account of the paternity allegation being raised in Jefferson’s presence: biographer Henry S. Randall’s report that when confronted by his indignant daughter Martha with an offending poem (a couplet by Irish poet Thomas Moore linking Jefferson with a slave), his only response was a “hearty, clear laugh.”70 This was hardly the response of a man with a guilty conscience.

  Taken together, Jefferson’s denials are consistent with the testimony of many family members, friends, and acquaintances who similarly denied the Sally Hemings paternity allegation. With the exception of those few cited in the Monticello Committee report, there is little evidence that the Jefferson paternity allegation survived, even among Jefferson’s political enemies, much past the 1802 elections, but for the brief resurrection of the Callender allegations in Massachusetts in 1805. Jefferson’s 19th-century biographer Henry Randall reported that Dr. Robley Dunglison, Jefferson’s doctor in 1825 and 1826, did not believe the story and that both Dr. Dunglison and Professor Tucker, “who lived years near Mr. Jefferson in the University, and were often at Monticello,” never heard the subject mentioned in Virginia.71 Significantly, after his retirement from the presidency, not even Jefferson’s political enemies took the allegation seriously enough to press it.

  Jefferson’s Character

  Historians and biographers who have spent their lives studying Thomas Jefferson have found the notion of an “affair” with Sally Hemings highly implausible, given various aspects of Jefferson’s character. Indeed, before his recent turnabout resulting from the TJMF Report, TJMF president Dan Jordan once described a Jefferson-Hemings liaison as “morally impossible,” echoing the very words used by Jefferson’s granddaughter, Ellen Randolph Coolidge, in her 1858 letter.72

  Annette Gordon-Reed deals with this issue by presenting superficial “character” arguments—Jefferson as “gentleman,” Jefferson as “cold-blooded,” Jefferson as “family man,” and Jefferson as “racist”—and then dealing with each of these straw man arguments.73 But the character questions are far deeper and more complex than Professor Gordon-Reed’s caricatures suggest.

  What Ellen Coolidge meant by “moral impossibility” is rather clear from the context of the statement in her letter: that it is highly unlikely that Jefferson would begin a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings in France, where she was “lady’s maid” to his daughters, for this would require us to imagine “so fond, so anxious a father, whose letters to his daughters were so replete with tenderness, and with good counsels for their conduct, should …have selected the female attendant of his own pure children to become his paramour.”74 Similarly, the likelihood of such a relationship existing at Monticello during Jefferson’s presidency—given not only Jefferson’s undoubted love for his children and grandchildren but also the logistic difficulties entailed in keeping secret a sexual liaison—suggest a high improbability of such an affair.

  Another sense in which a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings would have been “morally impossible” to Jefferson focuses on his own personal moral code—his self-described “Epicurean” philosophy—and the abundant evidence suggesting the seriousness of his adherence to it.75 This aspect of Jefferson’s character, and its relevance to his personal life and particularly the Hemings paternity thesis, has yet to be fully explored by scholars. One obvious question is whether Jefferson’s professed beliefs that “[t]he summum bonum is not to be pained in body, nor troubled in mind” and that “the indulgence which prevents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater pain is to be avoided”76 might have given Jefferson reason to remain celibate.

  Virtually all the evidence we have about Jefferson himself suggests that he was celibate following the death of his wife, Martha, in 1782. The closest he came to a sexual relationship with any woman after 1782 was his “affair” with Maria Cosway in France, but that relationship might be more accurately described as a non-sexual romantic friendship. The very passion with which Jefferson expressed his feelings for Mrs. Cosway—illustrated by his effusive correspondence with her, particularly his famous “Head and Heart” letter—makes even more striking the complete absence of evidence of any similar romantic feelings toward any woman after Jefferson’s return to the United States. The intensity with which Jefferson involved himself in politics during the period 1789–1809 fits the pattern of other celibate persons throughout history who obsessively pursue their careers as a substitute for a fulfilling sexual relationship.77 And after his retirement from the presidency, Jefferson just as passionately pursued the three admitted obsessions of his life—his “family, farm, and books”—an
d thus to all appearances kept his deathbed promise of fidelity to his wife, Martha.

  Finally, there is the matter of Jefferson’s unquestioned love and devotion for his children and grandchildren—amply evidenced in his correspondence with them and in various other documentary evidence of life at Monticello and Poplar Forest—in contrast to the complete absence of any evidence, direct or circumstantial, showing that Jefferson displayed any signs of affection toward either Sally Hemings or any of her children. Given this great contrast, one would have to assume Jefferson had a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde type of split personality in order to maintain these two very different families. Jefferson was a very private man and in many respects a complicated man (and some would say a man of many contradictions), but not even he would have been able so successfully to lead the double life that some proponents of the Hemings paternity thesis would have us believe he led.

  Conclusion

  Obviously a large number of people, for various reasons, passionately want to believe that Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings’ children. These include some of the descendants of two of Sally Hemings’ children who passionately want their families’ oral traditions—and for many of them and their supporters, their places in American history—somehow validated by widespread acceptance of the Jefferson paternity thesis as historical fact. But it is not the role of historians to make people feel good about themselves or their family stories; “feel-good” history is not good history. It is, rather, the role of historians to explain the past as best they can, by following objective methodology and the evidence. However upsetting this conclusion may be to many people, again for a wide variety of reasons, it is simply the case that no credible evidence has proven that Thomas Jefferson fathered any of Sally Hemings’ children.

  * * *

  Footnotes

  * Copyright © 2001 by David N. Mayer. All rights reserved.

  1. David N. Mayer, The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994).

  2. Robert M.S. McDonald, “Race, Sex, and Reputation: Thomas Jefferson and the Sally Hemings Story,” Southern Cultures 4: 46–63 (Summer 1998), p. 47.

  3. Ibid., pp. 55–59.

  4. Merrill D. Peterson, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960, 1962), p. 182.

  5. Ibid., p. 183.

  6. Ibid., p. 182.

  7. Ibid., pp. 183–84.

  8. Madison Hemings’ account, as printed in the Pike County [Ohio] Republican in 1873, also misspells the last name of Jefferson’s father-in-law, John Wayles, as “Wales”—the same misspelling found in 1805 newspaper articles in Boston and Washington, D.C., which were the first allegations in print that John Wayles was the father of Sally Hemings. On the 1805 articles, see my discussion of Jefferson’s 1805 denial, below. This coincidence suggests that the 1805 articles also may have been the source of the Madison Hemings story as written by Samuel Wetmore.

  9. Thomas Jefferson Randolph letter, circa 1874, University of Virginia Library.

  10. Letter from Henry S. Randall to James Parton, June 1, 1868, printed in Milton E. Flower, James Parton: The Father of Modern Biography (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1951), pp. 236–37.

  11. Ibid., p. 238.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ellen Randolph Coolidge to Joseph Coolidge, October 24, 1858, Coolidge Family Papers, University of Virginia Library.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Rev. Hamilton Wilcox Pierson, “Jefferson at Monticello: The Private Life of Thomas Jefferson,” manuscript of the recollections of Edmund Bacon, printed in James A. Bear, ed., Jefferson at Monticello (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1967), p. 102.

  16. See Peterson, Jefferson Image in the American Mind, p. 184.

  17. Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1974), pp. 294–300.

  18. Willard Sterne Randall, Thomas Jefferson: A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993), p. 476.

  19. Professor Banning’s paper, p. 290.

  20. Joseph J. Ellis, with Eric S. Lander, “Founding Father,” in Nature, November 5, 1998, pp. 13–14.

  21. Timothy Sandefur, “Anti-Jefferson, Left and Right,” Liberty, October 1999, p. 52.

  22. Ibid., p. 34.

  23. Nick Gillespie, in reply to the author’s and other readers’ letters “In Defense of Jefferson,” Reason, April 1999, p. 11.

  24. Marjorie M. Halpin, Totem Poles: An Illustrated Guide (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1981), pp. 9–10.

  25. See discussion in the section on the Monticello Committee report, below.

  26. Paul Berman, Introduction to Debating P.C.: The Controversy over Political Correctness on College Campuses (New York: Dell Publishing, 1992), pp. 1–6. On the threats to campus speech generally, see Alan Charles Kors and Harvey A. Silverglate, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses (New York: The Free Press, 1998).

  27. Berman, Introduction to Debating P.C., pp. 14–15.

  28. See generally Diane Ravitch, “Multiculturalism: E Pluribus Plures,” in Berman, ed., Debating P.C., pp. 271–98.

  29. Ibid., p. 278.

  30. See Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 15, 108–10.

  31. Berman, in Debating P.C., p. 14.

  32. Farber and Sherry, Beyond All Reason, p. 12.

  33. See, for example, William R. Keylor, “Clio on the Campus: The Historical Society at Boston University,” in Bostonia, Summer 1999, pp. 20–23.

  34. Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997).

  35. Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Research Committee, Report on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings [hereafter, “Monticello report”], released January 2000 and available on the Monticello website, .

  36. Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, pp. xiv, 234–35.

  37. Ibid., p. 18.

  38. Andrew Burstein, “Jefferson’s Rationalizations,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 57 (Jan. 2000): 183.

  39. Gordon-Reed, Jefferson and Hemings, p. 20.

  40. Ibid., p. 210.

  41. “The All-Too-Human Jefferson,” Letter to the editor, Wall Street Journal, November 24, 1998.

  42. Letter of Ellen Coolidge to Joseph Coolidge, October 24, 1858, in Ellen Coolidge letterbook, University of Virginia Library.

  43. Gordon-Reed, Jefferson and Hemings, p. 259.

  44. The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation subsequently changed its name to “The Thomas Jefferson Foundation.” Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, or TJMF, as used in this report, of course refers to the organization now known as Thomas Jefferson Foundation, or TJF.

  45. Dan Jordan, interviewed in Shannon Lanier and Jane Feldman, Jefferson’s Children: The Story of One American Family (New York: Random House, 2000), p. 113.

  46. White McKenzie Wallenborn, “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint,” in The Jefferson-Hemings Myth: An American Travesty (ed. Eyler Robert Coates, Sr., Charlottesville, Va.: Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society, 2001, special advance ed.), pp. 57–58.

  47. Ibid., p. 64.

  48. Monticello report, Appendix H, “Sally Hemings and Her Children: Information from Documentary Sources,” pp. 8, 10, 12.

  49. Monticello report, Appendix G, “Oral History in the Hemings Family.”

  50. Ibid.

  51. See Julia Westerinen, interview in Lanier and Feldman, Jefferson’s Children, p. 56.

  52. Monticello report, Appendix K, “Assessment of Thomas C. Woodson’s Connection to Sally Hemings.”

  53. Monticello report, Appendix H, “Sally Hemings and Her Children,” p. 6.

  54. Monticello report, Part III, “Review of Documentary Sources,” p. 4.

  55. Ibid., p. 4.

  56. Monticello report, A
ppendix F, “Review of the Documentary Evidence,” p. 2.

  57. Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, Isaac Jefferson as interviewed by Charles W. Campbell in 1847, printed in James A. Bear, ed., Jefferson at Monticello (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1967).

  58. Ken Wallenborn reports that when Neiman presented his study to the Committee, he stated: “I’ve got him!” Wallenborn, “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint,” in The Jefferson-Hemings Myth: An American Travesty, p. 53.

  59. Ibid., p. 51.

  60. Monticello report, Appendix J, “Summary of research on the possible paternity of other Jeffersons.”

  61. Monticello report, Part V, “Assessment of Possible Paternity of Other Jeffersons.”

  62. Henry S. Randall to James Parton, June 1, 1868, in Flower, James Parton, pp. 237–38.

  63. Professor Banning, “Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: Case Closed?”, p. 274.

  64. Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 15, 1826; see also Jefferson to William Duane, March 22, 1806.