The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

by Gordon-Reed, Annette

  In Negro Lewis v. Holloway, a slave brought suit against a member of the House of Representative, Langdon Cheves, who remained in Philadelphia during a “recess of congress” that lasted for more than six months. Because Congress was not in session, the enslaved Lewis argued, the congressman was merely a resident and not entitled to the exemption. Lewis lost the case. The Court’s opinion, written by Bushrod Washington, George’s nephew, relied heavily upon the legislative intent of the act in light of the compromises over slavery that had made union possible. Washington found it inconceivable, “that the legislature of Pennsylvania could have intended to make a law, the probable consequence of which would have been the banishment of congress from the state.”20 Southerners would never have agreed to Philadelphia as a capital if they had ever been in danger of losing their slaves when they came there to serve the government.

  Just as Hemings was aware of the law in France, he almost certainly knew about the very famous Pennsylvania law. Even enslaved people on plantations had heard of it and knew the reputation it gave the city. This was a place where liberty was possible, and hundreds of enslaved men and women escaped captivity to make it to the nation’s temporary capital. Hemings would address that issue of freedom for himself at the very end of his stay in Philadelphia. In the meantime, he was once again in a place unlike any other he had ever lived. The striving community of color, around 2,150 blacks, vibrated with ambition, passion, and hope for the future.21 These people were a part of Hemings’s everyday life, and he got to know some of them as he went around the city, as well as those connected to his own household. Jefferson employed at least one other black servant in Philadelphia, and there may have been others among the shifting staff over the course of Hemings’s time in the city.22 Other blacks connected to the household were not a part of the staff. In January of 1791 Jefferson wrote, “Billy’s wife (Mrs. Gardiner) begins to wash for me @ 20 a year.” This was Henrietta Gardiner, the wife of William Gardiner, who had been the enslaved valet to James Madison. Gardiner, a free black woman, worked at Mary House’s boarding establishment in Philadelphia. She remained Jefferson’s washerwoman throughout his time as secretary of state. He hired her again when he returned to the city as vice-president, and she worked for him until he left in 1800.23 That ended their association, for when he was elected president that year, the capital had moved to Washington.

  Hemings and Gardiner were certainly in contact. Jefferson gave him money to pay her, and as the major domo in charge of running the household in those early days in Philadelphia, he was responsible for making sure that everything—pickups and deliveries—went smoothly.24 Aside from being black people surrounded by whites, Hemings and Gardiner had points of association that made for a natural connection. Her husband, William Gardiner, had served Jefferson’s friend Madison in the same way Hemings had served Jefferson. Servants in the households of people who associated as frequently as these two men often grew to know one another well.

  Most important of all for Hemings, both Gardiners knew about slavery and freedom. William had accompanied Madison to Philadelphia in the early 1780s and lived with him there until 1783, when he refused to return home with Madison. After having lived among so many free black servants, Madison explained, his valet had become “too thoroughly tainted to be a fit companion for fellow slaves in Virginia.” Madison did not force Gardiner’s return, nor did he simply emancipate him, which he could have done. Instead, he opted for his version of “benevolence”: he sold Gardiner in Philadelphia rather than down south.25 When all was said and done, the opportunity to make money off of black bodies was American slavery’s raison d’être. Selling Gardiner in Philadelphia was better than selling him farther south—he apparently became free later on—but emancipating him immediately was also a viable option. As long-term residents of Philadelphia, both Gardiners could tell Hemings things he needed or wanted to know about the black community—the places where black people met, what sort went there, where he could find respite and camaraderie.

  In the midst of serious hardship, black Philadelphians were determined to forge a new identity for themselves through race uplift. They most often encountered opposition when they pushed too far, but when one door closed to them, they reflexively opened others. That is how the great Richard Allen came to found the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a mere four years old when Hemings came to the city. Disillusioned by the treatment of blacks in predominately white churches, Allen decided the only reasonable response was for black people to build their own churches and congregations. There they could be leaders and innovators on their own terms. They also formed independent institutions like the Free Africa Society (FAS) to promote black interests. James Forten had been born free and used that advantage and his talents to become a successful entrepreneur and proponent of abolition. Both men’s reputations extended far beyond their city; literate blacks read about them, and those who could not read passed the word. That is why fugitive slaves knew to run to Allen for help when they made it to Philadelphia. He provided support and, often, helped the men and women find white lawyers to take freedom cases if they wanted to file them. Neither of these men could have succeeded in Hemings’s Virginia, and the presence of both energized black Philadelphia during the 1790s.26

  Blacks had their supporters among whites, too. No gradual-emancipation statute could have been enacted without them. The Quakers, in particular, were well known for bringing a spirit of abolitionism to the larger white community through the efforts of men like Anthony Benezet, a founding, and perhaps the most revered, member of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS), who worked hard for the statute. The PAS followed a “careful approach” to the effort, filing petitions and helping to bring cases on behalf of fugitive slaves and free blacks who had been kidnapped and taken into slavery. In the historian Richard Newman’s words, “In an era when most political leaders avoided divisive issues, PAS strategy emphasized that government and its representative legal and political institutions should gradually attack the institution of slavery.”27 Its members, among the elite of Pennsylvania society, were heavily influenced by a republican ideology that sought community consensus and an Enlightenment philosophy that valued reason over emotion.

  Benezet was among the most enlightened in the white community on the subject of race, and he spoke out against the idea of black inferiority. He even helped found a school for black children. Most of the other members of the PAS were not so forward thinking as he. They would not allow black people to join the organization until the 1830s, finding shared membership with people of color demeaning. While PAS members were unquestionably hostile to slavery, its very moderate members had no interest in blowing apart the racial hierarchy as they knew it.28

  Dr. Benjamin Rush, Jefferson’s dear friend and correspondent, is a good example of this phenomenon. Rush was an ardent member of the PAS, and he helped individual blacks on many important occasions, probably to the dismay of many in his community. A great champion of Richard Allen, Rush got Jefferson to give money to help build his AME Church. Yet, for all his determined efforts on behalf of blacks, Rush was capable of writing that blacks “excel[led]” whites “only in those things in which dogs & horses excel[led]” them. James Hemings was quite familiar with Rush, for he was a frequent guest at Jefferson’s, and consumed Hemings’s fare.29

  This degree of confusion and hypocrisy within the white community put Philadelphia blacks on the road to freedom even as it ensured that racially inspired barriers would be placed all along their way. After the brief and hopeful period in the 1780s and 1790s while Hemings was in the city, the situation in Philadelphia began to deteriorate until in the 1830s free blacks explicitly lost the right to vote. They were officially second-class citizens.

  To the North Country

  Hemings had hardly settled into his new life in Philadelphia before he was on the road again. Acting on behalf of the American Philosophical Society, and to satisfy his own scientific curiosity, Jefferson in May of 179
1 embarked on a tour of upstate New York and New England to study the Hessian fly, which posed a threat to the wheat crops of America. James Madison, to whom he was becoming ever closer, decided to accompany him on the journey. Again under the stress of politics and work, Jefferson was suffering another migraine attack and hoped to find respite during the journey.30 His political rivals believed that he and Madison were really up to something else beside science: politics. The two men were making the trip, they said, to rally “northern support for their opposition to the Hamiltonian policies” that were gaining strength in George Washington’s government.31 Even the men’s most sympathetic biographers have acknowledged that it would have been almost impossible for these two very ardent politicians to have avoided politics in one way or another—observing potential supporters, talking with local officials—as they moved across the towns and states on their itinerary.

  For a month in the late spring of 1791, James Hemings ceased to be a chef and took up his old role as personal servant and coachman to Jefferson on his northern tour.32 Did he want to go, or did Jefferson choose to take him because doing so killed two birds with one stone? Hemings could drive his phaeton and be his valet instead of using his coachman and bringing Hemings, or another of his house servants from Philadelphia, along to play the role of manservant. There was also a matter of trust. Jefferson had a history with Hemings and was used to relying on him in ways that he had not relied upon with his current coachman.

  However it was decided that he should go on the trip, both Jefferson’s and Madison’s accounts of their tour suggest that there were majestic scenes to discover, and Hemings observed them as he drove the two men about upstate New York and New England. This was a positive opportunity for him, for he loved to travel. He also probably got an earful about the politics of the early American Republic as two of its chief architects chatted while they made their way through the North, tracking the Hessian fly and gauging the state of political affairs in the region.

  The trip began in earnest in New York City, where Hemings and Jefferson traveled to meet James Madison, who had gone there in April. Hemings took Jefferson’s and Madison’s horses and Jefferson’s phaeton from New York to Poughkeepsie, while the two politicians took their version of the scenic route, sailing up the Hudson to rendezvous with him there.33 There is no mention in Madison’s relatively spare notes on the trip that any one of his slaves or servants traveled with him, so it is likely that James Hemings attended both men on the journey.

  Hemings knew Madison from Virginia and from his visits to Jefferson’s home in Philadelphia. His association with Madison could have been even closer, for Jefferson, always eager to have his friends at hand, tried without success to persuade Madison to move out of his boardinghouse and into his spacious residence. Had he agreed to move, Hemings would have been chef to both of them on a daily basis. He did get to know Madison better on this extended tour. As a result of this trip, of all the Hemingses, James was the one who likely had the most personal contact with the man who was Jefferson’s closest political ally. He would not, however, live long enough to meet his nephew and Madison’s namesake, James Madison Hemings.34

  Hemings was now twenty-six years old, a young enslaved man traveling through rural New York on roads that he did not know in a place as American as his Virginia, but still foreign to him. The image of the young man traveling solo on unfamiliar roads in strange territory seems a metaphor for Hemings’s life. It is perhaps incorrect, but one gets the impression of a somewhat solitary life for this man. There is no question that he had his own private world beyond the one he lived in with Jefferson—one largely known only to him that we simply cannot retrieve. He moved too freely away from Jefferson and his family for them to have known everything he did, where and how he spent his money, what people he knew, and what they meant to him.

  The range of his travels and his efficiency in getting things done for Jefferson that required interaction with other individuals, oftentimes whites, suggest a man who knew how to make contact with people and fix them in his world as he needed, as he did his tutor in Paris. But the daily references to Hemings in the account books set the boundaries of his life firmly around the man who owned him; they give the sense of a claustrophobic existence devoted to seeing to the comfort of one individual, a man who had no wife and who happened to be emotionally needy and controlling.

  One notices the lack of any mention of a woman in Hemings’s life during this period. There may have been one, or some, and there was simply no reason for Jefferson to write anything about them, because Hemings never married and produced any children while at Monticello to be put down in the Farm Book. Jefferson’s records do not account for Hemings’s personal life outside of slavery. The life he had lived as an enslaved man up until this point had made it difficult for him to find time for a wife. This is, of course, the great difficulty in having to view Hemings’s life through the records of the man who enslaved him. Despite his many years at Monticello, we do not know whether James’s eldest brother, Martin, had a wife and children, though he certainly may have. Very often enslaved men and women at Monticello had abroad marriages, and Jefferson had no reason to keep track of their spouses and children. That Robert Hemings had children alive, probably as early as the 1780s, appears nowhere in Jefferson’s records. He, unlike his brother James, was left in the United States to be on his own, and found a woman to marry while in his twenties. James Hemings’s early twenties were taken up either traveling with Jefferson or living in a country where the opportunities to find a wife were drastically curtailed. As noted earlier, the overwhelming majority of people of color in Paris were young males like himself. That would have been a boon to his sister had she decided to stay there. It would not have been the same for him.

  Now here James Hemings was again, in the spring of 1791, traveling by himself to meet up with two men who were companions to one another, but not to him. One wonders if he ever thought of simply continuing north, as he drove alone, or at any point when he was away from the two men he was driving around the countryside. After Jefferson and Madison rejoined him, the trio went as far north as Lake Champlain, and it would have been a relatively easy matter to have disappeared into Canada and take his chances there. When they crossed into New England, going through states where slavery had been abolished, Hemings could have balked at going back home with Jefferson.35 He did not. His situation, working and receiving a steady salary, suited him for the time being.

  In the midst of the spectacular scenery of upstate New York, on June 1, the travelers came upon what would have been to Hemings one of the most intriguing parts of the journey, one that had particular resonance for his life. They were at Fort George, near Lake George, a beautiful area with “mountains of considerable height the entire length of the lake.” The one house found on the “East Side” of the lake was “owned & inhabited by a free Negro,” in Madison’s words.

  He possesses a good farm of about 250 Acres which he cultivates with 6 white hirelings for which he is said to have paid about 21/2 dollrs. per Acre and by his industry & good management turns to good account. He is intelligent; reads writes & understands accounts, and is dextrous in his affairs. During the late war he was employed in the Commissary department. He has no wife, and is said to be disinclined to marriage: nor any woman on his farm.36

  This entry is in stark contrast to the rest of Madison’s otherwise relatively spare and almost exclusively “scientific” travel journal. The future president was clearly fascinated by this man, whose existence was a total rebuke to his way of life on almost every level. There were certainly free blacks who had farms in Virginia in 1791, before and after that time, but probably few, if any, had such an extensive holding or employed so many white people. Actually, the man was a rebuke to the way of life for New Yorkers as well, for despite the movement toward abolition, slavery still had a firm hold in parts of the state.37

  What Jefferson thought of the man is unknown, because he made no referenc
e to him, but it is hard to believe that he and Madison did not talk about the man, given the closeness of their association on the journey and Madison’s obvious interest in him. Jefferson devoted his journal entries, for most of the trip, almost entirely to descriptions of the flora and fauna observed along the way, noting how many land and water miles they traveled, along with rating the quality of the inns where they lodged on their journey. Aside from his writings about the Hessian fly, he concentrated on transcribing the vocabulary of the Unquachog Indians, whose language had disappeared so thoroughly that only “three persons…old women” could speak it. His only notation about the people at Fort George was that there were “very few inhabitants around the lake.”38

  More than all the other blacks whom people brought to Jefferson’s attention to “prove” blacks’ worthiness, this man, working his 250-acre farm, presented the single greatest challenge to Jefferson’s, if not America’s, imagination. Could the country incorporate not just a handful of genius almanac writers, poets, or painters, or musicians but legions of ordinary black men and women who wanted to enjoy the blessings of the American continent and political experiment—the rich land, access to credit to run a farm or build a business, and the ability to participate as a full citizen in a democratic system?

  This black man was living the life that Jefferson dreamed of for free white men—a self-sufficient yeoman farmer with a basic education who was able to become a functioning and productive member of society. He gave other people jobs, white people, who if they worked hard and managed their money well, might be able to have their own farms, hire people, and continue the cycle. This “Negro” farmer would in modern parlance be called a “role model” or, not long ago, a “credit to his race.” Despite the condescension often contained in those designations, they really have had a meaning in the African American community as blacks have gone about the business of trying to maintain a healthy self-image and build a culture in a hostile environment. Madison was impressed, and Hemings would have been too.