Sex and the Founding Fathers: The American Quest for a Relatable Past (Sexuality Studies)

by Thomas A. Foster

  The inquiry into Washington's childlessness is not just limited to popular biography. In a medical journal, John K.Amory publishes his conclusion that Washington could not likely have been impotent given what we know about him as a "healthy, vigorous man." Tellingly, the author also rules out sexual infertility as the result of a sexually transmitted disease (despite their commonness in eighteenth-century America), noting Washington's "character and strong sense of moral propriety."135 We know that erectile dysfunction occurs far more frequently than sterility-although frequency today may not match that of Washington's era. Nonetheless it is striking that writers resist raising the possibility."'

  A minority of biographers are invested in singling out Martha, mother of two of her own children, as the cause of the Washingtons' childlessness. Writes one pair, "According to a tradition passed down in Masonic circles, Martha Washington would have needed some sort of corrective surgery in order to conceive additional children after the birth of Patsy." 137 In another account, the author imagines Martha accepting blame for the couple's never having their own child: "I never gave you a child of your own and you never reproached me, not once." 131

  On the scale of emasculating sexual deficiencies, it seems that sterility ranks slightly lower than impotence. Sexualized manhood has long been predicated on the ability to penetrate. The colonial-era medical literature, for example, argues that sterile men should not divorce, as they could still fulfill the marital duty of sexual intimacy. The impotent man could not.1i9 In the eighteenth century, childless couples could and did consult midwives, physicians, and reproduction manuals, but we have no evidence that George and Martha did any of this-again, perhaps suggesting the problem was not a mystery to them.'4o

  For some writers, the question of whether the problem lay with George or Martha is answered by the conclusion that he did, indeed, reproducejust not with Martha. In recent decades, there has been increasing public attention given to the idea that Washington fathered a child with an enslaved woman. The descendants of a man named West Ford have identified him as a direct descendant of Washington, and, indeed, the evidence seems to suggest that, much like the case of Jefferson, someone in the Washington family was his father. Although oral history has linked him to the Washington family for centuries, Ford is initially identified as Washington's son in print in the 1940s, first in the Pittsburgh Courier and later in a book on race in colonial America. As one recent biographer of Washington concludes, "In the matter of West Ford, the documentary evidence is ambiguous, but there is virtually no doubt that he was kin to the first president.""' A fictionalized history that uses oral tradition imagines how Washington could have been Ford's father.142 If Washington could be proven to have been sterile or impotent, he would clearly not be the father of either Ford or Posey.

  Founding Father

  In modern biographies, then, readers learn that, although childless, Washington was decidedly heterosexual, monogamous, and ideally suited for fatherhood. In biography as well as imagery, sleight of hand could lead many to believe that Washington had his own children. The compensatory portrayals of Washington-those that emphasize his masculine sexual appeal, his interest in women, his romantic marriage, and his paternal nature-all dispel any questions about manhood that childlessness could raise. As the next chapter shows, the ability of biographers to use success in private life to balance out perceived deficiencies of masculine virility would play out in the accounts of Jefferson's life as well-although with an unintended consequence.

  If we step back from the stories of Washington's romantic life, we can see broad changes that indicate an early shift from an emphasis on the national significance of his personal life to a closer reflection on his personal and individual character. This shift mirrors trends in the nation as well as the emergence of a psychology of sex that highlights the centrality of sexual desires and behaviors for personal character. Yet throughout the twentieth century, the trend reverses; although in the early twentieth century, the focus on sex and individualized personhood deepens, by the turn of the new millennium, sexuality has become so associated with national social and political matters that inquiry into Washington's personal life could speak to a host of contexts, including the emphasis on the history of ordinary Americans and multiculturalism and a reactionary politics that concerns itself with a perceived sexual liberation in contemporary America and a distressing move away from a stereotyped more moral past. The tendency to include more material of a sexual nature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is not just a story of decreased censorship and increased liberalism. It is also a story about changing understandings of what is normal and Americans' corresponding desires to remember the nation's first president as desirable and masculine.

  The question of not having his own children has been answered by pointing out that he raised children. For one recent biographer, Washington's Mount Vernon was teeming with children. In this biography, journalist Harlow G.Unger does not discuss that Washington had no children of his own until the very end of the narrative, when he concludes the book with a final paragraph that begins, "Although George Washington had no issue, well over five thousand descendants of his extended family survive in virtually every state," thus endowing him with the necessary progeny for manhood.143 Indeed, with this line of thinking, to those five thousand we might add the hundreds of millions of U.S. residents living today-what better counterweight to childlessness than paternity for every living American for the duration, something no other man living or dead, not even the most prolific, could claim? Military hero and successful politician, Washington without question was and is still a model of successful American manliness as a public figure. And, through the careful handling of artists and biographers, in national memory the private Washington, as well, truly achieves manhood without issue.

  Figure 2.1 (above). Portrait of Jefferson. (Thomas Jefferson. Rembrandt Peale, 1800. White House Historical Association.)

  N APRIL 12, 2001, President George W.Bush invited both the black descendants of the Herrings family and the white descendants of the Jefferson family to the White House to commemorate the 258th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson (Figure 2.1). Speaking in the East Room at the White House, to the multiracial crowd that had assembled, he noted that "America sees itself in Thomas Jefferson."' This type of gathering would have been unthinkable only a short time ago-for generations, the Herrings family was prevented from attending Jefferson family events. Even today, the view of Jefferson as founder of a multiracial family is contested. But on that day in 2001, the president's words in America's White House indicated just how much things have changed.

  Second only to George Washington, Jefferson ranks consistently as one of the most popular and revered of the political leaders of the early Republic.2 Jefferson, of course, authored the Declaration of Independence-a document that not only gave political birth to the nation but also captured its very essence with the preamble's articulation of "unalienable Rights" of equality and "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." He is also celebrated for doubling the size of the young nation through the Louisiana Purchase and for exploring the West with the famed Lewis and Clark expedition. His face adorns the nickel, his head is on Mount Rushmore (along with that of Washington, the only other Founding Father), and his marble monument is one of the top tourist destinations in Washington, D.C.

  As if to compensate for Jefferson's very developed philosophical sensibilities, his earliest biographers emphasize love and devotion in his relationships with women. In the Victorian era, this approach meant focusing primarily on his marriage, portraying him as a chaste widower after his wife died in 1782 at the age of thirty-three. By the twentieth century, given the increased emphasis on the centrality of sexual urges, a more passionate Jefferson was remembered, and increasingly he was portrayed as a man who had a variety of intimate relationships with women before and after his marriage. Of course, some of these interactions were presented as scandals in the hands of detractors. But
biographers, tending to place their subject in a favorable light, have almost always, however, emphasized how such interactions reveal a less cerebral side of Jefferson.

  Today, Jefferson is publicly reremembered as the man who had a thirtyeight-year romantic relationship with his slave Sally Herrings and as the father of her seven children. The new Jefferson has been identified as Hemings's lover not only in a range of widely viewed media, including as the butt of jokes in passing references in popular films, such as Scary Movie (when students at a high school gather beneath a statue of Jefferson surrounded by his African American children), but also, more seriously, through portrayals with sustained focus in best-selling novels, National Book Award-winning histories, and popular television movies.' If we look back at how Americans have remembered Jefferson's intimate life, we can see that the Herrings story, for many, is now the latest in a number of romances that have made this intellectual Founder more accessible to many Americans; Jefferson's enduring stature is the greatest testament to the resilience of the Founders in American national identity and the significant role that sexual personalizing can play in securing favor, even in the face of controversy. Indeed, for some, his relationship with an enslaved woman bolsters a new perception of him as being ahead of his time, and for some, he has even emerged as a "multicultural hero."

  In His Lifetime

  Jefferson was born in 1743 and died, remarkably, on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of his famous Declaration. Like Washington, Jefferson was a Virginia gentleman. He attended the College of William and Mary and became a lawyer. He served as Virginia delegate to the Second Continental Congress and at thirty-three authored the Declaration of Independence. He was the second governor of Virginia and served as the nation's first secretary of state (under Washington), as the second vice president (under John Adams), and as the third president.'

  In his lifetime, two stories were told about Jefferson's relationships with women outside his marriage, both from political enemies who used the media to attack their opponent. In the first instance, Jefferson was romantically linked to Betsey Walker, the wife of a neighbor and friend, John. The story largely came from rumors in the press in 1802, with most additional information from an 1805 letter from John Walker to Jefferson's political enemy Henry (Light-Horse Harry) Lee. In the letter, Walker claims that during the summer of 1768, he had left his wife and child on official business, entrusting the still-unmarried Jefferson to look after them. During the four months of his absence, Jefferson's "conduct to Mrs W was improper so much so as to have laid the foundation of her constant objection to my leaving Mr J my exct telling me that she wondered why I could place such confidence in him." He also describes two other occasions when Jefferson tried to convince her of "the innocence of promiscuous love."5

  In the second instance, a political hack also first broke public silence on the sexual relationship between Jefferson and his slave Herrings. Herrings was born in bondage in Shadwell, Virginia, in 1773 and died in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1835. She came to Monticello as the inherited property of Martha Jefferson, Thomas's wife. Martha's father was alleged to also be Sally Hemings's father. Herrings was his until he died and his slaves passed to Martha, less than two years after she had married Thomas. At Monticello, the Herrings family enjoyed a privileged status relative to the hundreds of other slaves, with virtually all of the Herrings family being consigned to house labor and therefore receiving better treatment.

  The story initially appears in print in the Federalist newspaper the Recorder in 1802. The article entitled "The President, Again" was authored by James Callender and published in Richmond. Callender was a partisan writer who had fallen out of favor with Jefferson. Angry by the perceived betrayal, he broke the silence on Jefferson's relationship with Herrings. "It is well known that the man, whom it delighteth the people to honor," he writes, "keeps, and for many years has kept, as his concubine, one of his slaves. Her name is SALLY. The name of her eldest son is Tom. His features are said to bear a striking although sable resemblance to those of the president himself." "By this wench Sally," he declares, "our president has had several children. There is not an individual in the neighbourhood of Charlottesville who does not believe the story; and not a few who know it."6

  In response, a number of articles appeared in newspapers across the country, some denouncing the report as false and scandalous, but others eventually giving credence to the story. The leading Federalist political and literary magazine of the day, Port Folio, published the following lines, "Supposed to have been written by the Sage of Monticello," to be sung to the tune of "Yankee Doodle":

  The piece is prefaced with the following statement: "Some of our papers have hinted at the amours of a certain great personage, which are said to be of a dark complexion." It quotes Benjamin Franklin as saying, "A man may kiss his cow" and quips, "Surely a Philosopher may kiss his wench." As a jocular but politicized song, the piece immediately interjects derisive humor at Jefferson's and Heming's expense. It approaches a potentially explosive topic directly and with no deference for his presidential status.

  A remarkable 1804 political cartoon similarly takes aim at Jefferson (Figure 2.2), depicting him as a rooster and Sally Herrings as a hen.' The humorous image suggests serious sexual misconduct with a double entendre that is crudely inescapable. Even more serious is the depiction of human heads on animal bodies; the specter of monstrosity haunts the image, underscoring the perceived unnaturalness of their union.

  The story had legs and continued to flourish in the United States and abroad. For example, in 1806, an Irish poet published the following: "The weary statesman for repose hath fled/From halls of council to his negro's shed/Where blest he woos some black Aspasia's grace/And dreams of freedom in his slave's embrace!" In a footnote he is more explicit: "The `black Aspasia' of the present P******** of the United States... has given rise to much pleasantry among the anti-democratic wits in America."9

  Jefferson never responded publicly to the scandal, and the effect of the rumors was minimal in terms of damaging his revered public image. His earliest biographers would have been aware of these stories, but most choose to draw from stories of his romantic encounters that emanate from their subject, using his personal papers and family legends rather than material from his political enemies.

  Burwell, an Early Love

  In the mid-nineteenth century, writer and politician Henry Stephens Randall published his three-volume account of the life of Thomas Jefferson. Randall admired Jefferson but wanted to write in response to the earlier biographical trend that portrayed founders as "Goody-Two-Shoes" with no faults. His account includes personal details and criticizes the earlier account by George Tucker for covering only Jefferson's public life. Randall mentions, albeit not at length, Jefferson's attraction to one "Belinda," whom he identifies as Rebecca Burwell. And the biography notes that she married another, after Jefferson failed to pursue the relationship fully. Jefferson, Randall asserts, was at least desired by young women and vice versa.10

  Figure 2.2. Jefferson depicted as a rooster and Sally Hemings depicted as a hen in an 1804 cartoon with the crude double-entendre title "A Philosophic Cock." (James Atkins. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.)

  In 1871, Jefferson's great-granddaughter Sarah N.Randolph published The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson, which largely uses family letters and what she calls "reminiscences": "My object is only to give a faithful picture of him as he was in private life-to show that he was, as I have been taught to think of him by those who knew and loved him best, a beautiful domestic character." Randolph expands the discussion of Jefferson's private life and continues a trend of commenting more fully on Jefferson's early connection to Burwell: "We have seen, from his letters to his friend Page, that, while a student in Williamsburg, Jefferson fell in love with Miss Rebecca Burwellone of the beauties of her day. He was indulging fond dreams of success in winning the young lady's heart and hand, when his courtship was suddenly cut short by her, to
him, unexpected marriage to another."" Similarly, James Parton's 1878 depiction includes the early connection to Burwell, and a chapter entitled "Jefferson in Love" notes, "He had left his heart behind him at Williamsburg. He had danced too many minuets in the Apollo-the great room of the old Raleigh tavern-with Miss Rebecca Burwell.""

  By the twentieth century, Americans increasingly thought of him as suitably amorous in his youth and highlighted Burwell as an example of this behavior. One early-twentieth-century account starts with a chapter entitled "Jefferson's Family." It begins, "Jefferson was an ardent and sentimental lover, and his egotism appears in his love-affairs in a most amusing way. He adored several young women from time to time; such behavior is not uncommon among men of his youth; and to one of them,-Belinda,-when about twenty, he confessed his love."3