Today, few Americans realize how relatively thin the documentary evidentiary base is for any stories about Jefferson's affective life with Hemings.128 No letters survive between the two, she is rarely mentioned in his papers, and the most detailed source comes from her son, who published a very brief account in an Ohio newspaper in 1873-long after the dust had settled. That account tersely mentions that in Paris she became Jefferson's "concubine," yet the brevity of detail has not prevented popular depiction in film and print of how their relationship unfolded. Yet as one scholar reminds us, even on the time spent in Paris, "the evidence is meager. Apart from nine notations in Jefferson's Memorandum Book recording purchases of clothing, her servant's pay, and a fee for smallpox vaccination, Sally Herrings is completely absent from the Paris record." 121 Indeed, we do not even know for certain where she lived while in Paris or what she did. This absence of mention of Herrings is used as evidence that she meant a great deal to him. Historian Joyce Appleby astutely notes, "The record is silent about the form the Hemings Jefferson relationship might have taken, leaving commentators a clean canvas upon which to paint a loving intimacy or a cruel exercise of white male power. 11131
In recent popular depictions, the absence of hard evidence of the nature of the relationship has been compensated for by claiming that documents have been destroyed as part of a cover-up. The 2004 film Sally Hemings, for example, imagines Jefferson's distraught daughter, Maria (Polly), burning letters exchanged between Herrings and Jefferson, saying, "You will be silenced." And the film includes scenes with love letters being written to Herrings. Moreover, throughout the film, Herrings gives voice-over narration as if taken from letters and diaries. The novel, which the film is based on, includes several passages that claim documentary evidence exists or existed to support them. The preface to Sally Hemings includes this suggestive passage from none other than John Adams: "Records are destroyed. Histories are annihilated, or interpolated, or prohibited." The author's note at the start of the book goes one step further: "There are documents included in this novel which are not only authentic, they are central to the story of Sally Herrings and Thomas Jefferson." Whatever those documents may be, they could not have been, as is revealed in the novel, a diary kept by Herrings while in Paris, nor could they have been the letters that in one scene Jefferson commands Herrings to burn. We have no evidence that any letters or diaries ever existed and were destroyed.131
Some depictions emphasize the imagined agency of Hemings. The film Sally Hemings imagines that she seduces Jefferson by taking the initiative to break sexual tension between the two by undressing herself in front of him when he comes to her room one evening with unclear intentions. The next morning, when he attempts to apologize for what has happened, she again takes the initiative, kissing Jefferson passionately on the mouth. As a biographer explains, seeing Jefferson and Herrings as two people "[who] fell in love" "helps make Jefferson once again human-to be the warm, sensitive, intelligent person he was capable of being-and it acknowledges Sally Hemings' humanity far more fully than any other theory ever advanced." 131
Another aspect that has made the story more plausible for Americans has been the emphasis on Hemings's beauty. Following traditional standards of beauty and companionate compatibility, scholars have sought to portray the two as suitable for one another. Hitchens correctly notes that "all reports" "speak of her as strikingly attractive."133 Thus, the film Sally Hemings presents numerous scenes that emphasize how Jefferson sees her as an equal of sorts. But referring to Herrings as Jefferson's virtual "wife" or describing the relationship between John Wayles and Elizabeth Herrings as "longlasting and filled with affection" is misleading for contemporary readers. Even the best eighteenth-century union viewed men and women as unequal, let alone the union of master and slave."' Yet in the film, Herrings is portrayed as living in the house with him in Paris, the power and control of the Herrings family at Monticello is depicted, Jefferson sees her as "a good mind worth instructing," and in dialogues he tells her, "You look exactly like my wife" and "The resemblance is uncanny." Such accounts emphasize innocence, and the two fall helplessly in love. With spotty records of what Herrings actually looked like and no evidence that Jefferson spoke any of these words, filmmakers and writers have taken liberties to emphasize compatibility along lines that speak to contemporary Americans. In general, the love bond between Jefferson and Herrings has supplanted the very earliest nineteenth-century newspaper accounts that virtually charge Jefferson with the child rape of his adolescent slave.
Historian Clarence E.Walker's recent book Mongrel Nation captures the important connections between the establishment of Jefferson as sexual and the acceptance of the Herrings relationship. Here we see the unintended effect of decades of crafting a romantic persona for Jefferson: "Central to the denial of the Jefferson-Hemings affair has been an effort to deflect attention from the likelihood that Jefferson was highly sexed." But, as Walker points out, biographers have established that "he tried to seduce another man's wife," "had a brief affair with a married woman in Paris," and may have "`rogered' his wife to death," given that some suggest she died from giving birth to six children in ten years. As he sums it up, "To describe Jefferson as a man of restrained sexuality seems to suggest that once he was widowed at the age of forty-one, he lost his sex drive and became passionless.""'
Jeffersonian Legacy Intact
Historian Gordon-Reed predicts that Jefferson's legacy might weather the storm "given the enormous head start that Jefferson has had in the public's affection" and that, if Jefferson's conduct in the relationship were to be portrayed in a relatively positive manner, Jefferson and Herrings could, however "false" the image might be, emerge as "multicultural heroes."36
For Jefferson image makers, portraying the intensity and perfection of personal connections to women allows them to emphasize one aspect of Jefferson's personal life that twentieth-century chroniclers would eventually see as decidedly lacking: Of all the Founders, Jefferson was perhaps the least romantically oriented. Chroniclers who wish to develop his private life can do so by writing about his feelings and interactions with a variety of women, including an early courtship with Burwell, and his relationship with his wife, Martha-but also relationships with married women, Walker and Cosway, and eventually even his slave, Herrings.
Although Jefferson's transition from chaste widower to Hemings's lover took generations and is not free from resistance, his legacy has largely emerged intact. The DNA evidence persuaded many turn-of-the-twentyfirst-century Americans that Jefferson had fathered Hemings's children, but it did not change their overall view of Jefferson. Noted biographer Ellis, for example, simply issued a revised edition of his best-selling biography, inserting a mere handful of changes outlined in his preface: "I have made four significant changes: first, added the story of the Foster study to my account of Jefferson's contemporary relevance (Prologue, 24-26); second, revised my account of the scandal when it first emerged on the national scene in 1802 (chapter 4, 258-61); third, added a paragraph on the Jefferson-Hemings relationship at the very end of Jefferson's life (chapter 5, 347); fourth, inserted a discussion of the Foster study into my account of the history of the controversy (Appendix, 366-67)." Summing up the lack of change to his account, "I have changed my mind on the Sally Question, but not on Jefferson. He emerges in this revised edition as more of an American sphinx than ever before, more complicated and inscrutable, more comfortable in his contradictions."137
The comments of some authors indicate that not all, of course, embrace the new Jefferson without criticism. According to one, "On the issue of Sally Herrings, Jefferson turns out to have been a serious hypocrite." 13' Another account of slavery and Jefferson sums up problems with the late-twentiethcentury Jeffersonian image: "I do not mean for it to join an unfortunate recent trend toward Jefferson-bashing. I disagree with those who would diminish his great achievement, the Declaration of Independence. Or those who call him more a friend to despotism than to freedom. Or tho
se who would reduce his whole life to one affair with a slave."139 Yet the loudest cries about Jefferson's being reduced to a hypocrite come from only those who deny the relationship and his paternity (two different subjects). Those who oppose the interpretations of the relationship set up the sharpest figuring of "guilt" and "innocence," of his name being "dragged through the mud" or "vindicated." Those who write about the relationship tend to describe it in the context of the late-eighteenth-century world of enslavement in America.
The notion that Jefferson and Herrings engaged in a loving relationship has given birth to a new Jefferson-Jefferson the trailblazer and victim of his own period, certainly not a hypocrite or sexual predator. Writer William Bottorff's biography, for example, emphasizes the love and "tender association" between Jefferson and Herrings and its endurance in a place and time hostile to it. He repeats this theme, explaining that Jefferson's daughter served as first lady during his presidency while parenthetically noting "(Sally Herrings, of course, could not serve publicly in any such capacities.)." And in another example, he writes, "The most judicious interpretation of known facts and testimony establishes the probability that Sally Herrings and Thomas Jefferson were deeply in love and that they had to love clandestinely because of just the kind of prejudice that Jefferson himself often expressed.... Theirs was a common law marriage, and they were loyal to one another.""' Bottorff's depiction typifies the writings of many of those biographers today who accept Jefferson's paternity of Hemings's children. Many focus on the assertion that the relationship was decades long (built on the assumption of monogamy between Jefferson and Hemings) to argue that the participants must have felt "at least some mutual affection.""' No writers are arguing for the possible scenario wherein the relationship could have included decades of emotional difficulty or even of exploitation or coercion. As Ellis explains it, Jefferson "had lived a biracial private life. In that sense he was our long-lost multicultural hero." 142
Today's Jefferson as "multicultural hero" takes one exceptional model and replaces it with another. Unlike the concerns of some mid - and latetwentieth-century biographers, their worst fears have not been realized-the nation has not turned on Jefferson, abandoned revering his greatness, dismantled Monticello, or erased his visage from the nickel. Indeed, the statements end up sounding like fearmongering for those who want to consider the possibility of a Hemings-Jefferson relationship. Recall that many have denied the Herrings relationship out of fear of repercussions: "To give credence to the Sally Herrings story is, in effect, to question the authenticity of Jefferson's faith in freedom, the rights of man, and the innate controlling faculty of reason and the sense of right and wrong," writes one.143
This view of Jefferson as "multicultural hero"-which accepts his biological paternity of Hemings's children (with no evidence of the nature of the relationship) and leaps right over the question of abuse or exploitation-has found remarkable widespread acceptance both among popular and academic audiences. One recent academic work on Jefferson sums up how Jefferson's legacy has endured: "Only recently, however, in the wake of DNA evidence establishing the strong likelihood of his long-term sexual relationship with his slave Sally Herrings, have they begun to put private and public Jeffersons back together again, bringing the planter-statesman back down to earth and resituating him in his mountaintop home, in the midst of his white and black families.11144
Jefferson, in public imagination, goes from chaste widower to someone far more complicated sexually, a man who spoke against miscegenation yet who loved and fathered children with his slave. Public memory of Jefferson has created for him sexual selves that have been easy to embrace and in which Americans could see themselves. For early-nineteenth-century Americans, the chaste widower who focused on his farming was appealing. For later generations, his love interests in Burwell, Walker, and Cosway would be fanned into small flames to compensate for his apparent lack of virile heterosexuality. As interest in the personal life of Jefferson has taken on new resonance, his sexual self has become the very site of debates about the promise of America-was it a dream founded on lies and hypocrisy, or was it something more real, more achievable, if only we could recognize its true roots and its complicated nature? The scandal or corruption was not just connected to Jefferson the man, some have argued. It bled into the political realm and affected the foundational ideas of the nation. Jefferson, of course, never publicly addressed the rumors of his sexual connection to Herrings.
Thinking of Jefferson as the father of his slave's children and as a Founder with both his black and white families on Monticello has been recently more easily accepted for many Americans. As the Walker and Cosway scandals appealed to mid-twentieth-century audiences, the Herrings story has for some enhanced rather than hurt Jefferson's position as a Founding Father. Indeed, it seems that Americans today can much more easily embrace a Founder with a secret sex life-and an active sex life-than one who espoused and lived racist beliefs and who remained sexless and chaste for most of his life. The Herrings story, reworked for decades, has emerged as one more romance. But in this version, Jefferson becomes not only more human and virile but also a champion of racial equality-a model American, yet again.
Figure 3.1 (above). Portrait of Adams. (A Painting of President john Adams [1735-1826], 2nd President of the United States. Asher B.Durand. Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.)
HE 2008 HBO MINISERIES John Adams won more Emmy, Screen Actors Guild, and Golden Globe Awards than any other miniseries in history.' The film-which is based on David McCullough's blockbuster Pulitzer Prize-winning biography and stars Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney-depicts the marriage of John (Figure 3.1) and Abigail Adams as one of the great romances of the era, referring to their attraction as being "like steel to a magnet."2 Abigail is the utterly devoted wife during their long separations. One scene in particular catches the attention of many viewers: TV Guide calls it one of the top seven "ickiest sex scenes" ever and quips, "Their reunion after an eight-year separation quickly turned into a sloppy, Colonial-style gruntfest."3 Bloggers also have had a field day with it. Clearly, as much as memorializers have tried to sexify Adams, most Americans hold fast to the image of him as a prickly prude.
Short, balding, and known as "his rotundity," the Adams captured in popular imagery does not personify modern physical ideals of manliness. Perhaps this is why he has not garnered the attention of those who promote the physical image of many of the Founders. No commonly used coins or bills place his visage in American hands on a daily basis. No major monuments or memorials, impressive statues, or popular portraits come to mind when most Americans think of the man.
But the view of Adams as especially moralistic, once properly tempered by reassuring stories of romantic heterosexual orientation and healthy libido, serves well to connect Americans to the mythic moral purity of the Founding Fathers. Indeed, the moral presentation of the HBO movie is not lost on many reviewers. One praises the movie as a refreshing break from contemporary sex scandals. In an article entitled "No Sex Scandals Taint Power Couple of HBO's `John Adams,"' the writer describes the miniseries as largely "the chronicle of a solid political marriage" and exclaims, "What a relief! Thank you, John and Abigail Adams and HBO, for providing TV viewers with a portrait of a real union that's not defined by cheating and remorse." Published on the heels of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's resignation following a sex scandal involving prostitutes, the author makes explicit the comparison of the greatest generation to today's politicians by lamenting, "Adultery, it seems, is a requisite for political marriage these days."4
Adams memorialized stands in contrast to the other Founders in this book. Unlike Washington, Adams fathered a large family, including sonsone of whom would go on to become president of the United States himself. Unlike Benjamin Franklin and Gouverneur Morris, Adams did not fit well with European society-especially for moral reasons. He did not suffer from any whisper scandal, as did Thomas Jefferson. And, unlike Alexander Hamilton, he avoided any public sex scanda
ls-and remained a steadfast model of monogamy despite years apart from his wife. Today, more than any other Founder, Adams's popular characterization is forever linked to his marriage. This popular image of Adams as part of a pairing is perhaps the reason no singular statue dominates the tourist landscape in Washington, D.C.-and perhaps the reason that the memorial now being proposed is likely to incorporate his wife, his famous son and his son's wife, and other notable Adams family members.'
When we look at how previous generations of Americans thought about Adams's intimate life, we see that we have long been content to accept Adams's own assertions that he was above moral reproach. But this characteristic monogamy and self-control is itself a sexualized manliness and fits well with traditional ideals. By the early twentieth century, stories about an early heartbreak emerged to emphasize his normative urges. And by the advent of women's history in the 1960s, a more explicit discussion of Adams's intimate life occurred. Historians interested in the life and experiences of Abigail Adams began to write profusely on the correspondence carried on between the husband and wife during their long periods of separation. From this was born the image of John and Abigail as the "power couple" of the American Revolution and John as the husband and father ideal.'
Lifetime
Adams was born in 1735 to a Braintree, Massachusetts, farmer. He graduated from Harvard in 1755. After having briefly considered the ministry, he taught for a few years and soon decided to pursue law, becoming a lawyer in 1758 at the young age of twenty-three. Just shy of thirty years old, he married Abigail Smith. Together they had five children, three boys and two girls. Adams was a leader of the patriot movement in Massachusetts. He served as the Massachusetts delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses. During the Revolution and for several years after, he served as a diplomat in Europe, eventually becoming the new nation's first vice president and second president. In one of U.S. history's greatest coincidences, Adams died on July 4, 1826-the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence-only hours after Jefferson also had passed.7
Sex and the Founding Fathers: The American Quest for a Relatable Past (Sexuality Studies) Page 10