The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

by Gordon-Reed, Annette

  The interesting, but unanswerable, question is whether Jefferson would have responded to Hemings, had he written to him in the first instance instead of conveying his own sentiments through third parties. Hemings knew where Jefferson was just as well as Say. Why not mail the president-elect a letter, or send it by his friend? Indeed, why hadn’t he come to see Jefferson himself, as Say had done? If Hemings wanted to play the game of employer-employee, wasn’t it equally incumbent upon him to write to Jefferson seeking a position, as legions of other people would soon do?

  After all these years, Hemings undoubtedly had complex feelings about Jefferson, and it is likely that Jefferson had complex feelings about him as well. It could hardly have been otherwise. Hemings’s behavior in this episode hints at some of those feelings and his state of mind at the time. His insistence that Jefferson write to him before he accepted an important job he said he wanted suggests that he had not moved fully beyond his former persona—not just as an enslaved man but as a person who had been the object of Jefferson’s special “benevolence.” For all his desire for the trappings of a formal engagement in the world of free labor, Hemings cast the older man more as father figure than as prospective employer, like a child who expects the parent to be formal in a given situation, but retains the option of informality for himself because of the parent-child relationship. Jefferson was “a miser with his time,”11 and when he saw Hemings’s reluctance to commit to the job, he quickly turned elsewhere. It was March, and he wanted his chef to start in April. With the aid of Létombe and Carlos Martínez de Irujo, the Spanish ambassador to the United States, Jefferson settled on Honoré Julien, former chef to George Washington, as the most suitable candidate. He then conducted the negotiations for Julien’s hiring wholly through Létombe—wages, terms, and starting date. He apparently never wrote to Julien himself.12

  While the possible effects of Hemings’s time with Jefferson during his enslavement must always be taken into account, it is also crucial to consider his individual personality and experiences. He had been a chef, or in training to become a chef, for almost half his life. With the necessary caveats about relying too much on stereotypes, one can at least say that this profession has been known to produce some quite outsize egos. Ego, stubbornness, and a taste for dramatics may have been an inevitable part of the job, given the creativity and, particularly in the eighteenth century, hard physical labor required of a chef de cuisine. Hemings had been trained in Paris, which gave him every reason to be proud. How many other Americans, black or white, had done that in the eighteenth century? He was special, and one detects in Hemings’s demand from Jefferson the workings of a male prima donna. Recall that he beat his tutor Perrault when the hapless man dared to ask for, or asked for in the wrong way, the money that Hemings owed him. Now that he was legally free, he would have from Jefferson the dignity he deserved.

  Former enslaved man, well-traveled, highly trained African American chef—all these various identities bundled into one frame made for a very complex and vulnerable man. Jefferson likely knew this about James Hemings, and, under the circumstances, his withholding attitude seems a little petty. For all his eighteenth-century limitations, Jefferson was smart enough to have figured out that Hemings’s request was about more than just a piece of paper. But he would not give in. Perhaps Jefferson’s nonresponsiveness was more than simple stubbornness or the arrogance of the former master. This was, in fact, a very delicate moment in his life. The presidency had been won, but there was no guarantee that the steady drip of indelicate items about his private life would simply go away. Things of that nature do not get better. They only get worse—especially when there is more information to be known, and a great incentive for others to find it out and publicize it. Jefferson would hardly have been paranoid if he had believed that his enemies were out there; they were, even if he did not know at this time which one would turn out to be the most virulent. Because he guarded his reaction to the public revelations about Sally Hemings so closely over the years, we cannot gauge the level of Jefferson’s concern during the period just before the major storm of publicity broke. He cannot have been totally unconcerned, because this was something over which he had no control. Opening up a direct correspondence with Sally Hemings’s brother in this climate may not have been what he wanted to do.

  It is still a fascinating spectacle, however, seeing Hemings and Jefferson talk to one another through surrogates, each sending messages that the other was supposed to decipher through the filter of third-party communication. Jefferson received Evans’s letter on February 28, and his response was a masterpiece of Jeffersonian control and subtlety, all the more so because he probably figured that Hemings would actually see the letter. He was about to leave for Monticello.

  I cannot go without thanking you for the trouble you were so good as to take as to James & Francis. I supposed I saw in the difficulties raised by James an unwillingness to come here, arising wholly from some attachment he had formed in Baltimore; for I cannot suspect an indisposition towards me. I concluded at once therefore not to urge him against inclination, and wrote to Philadelphia, where I have been successful in getting a cook equal to my wishes.

  And then, after a few words about his relief that Francis Say would not be coming to Washington, he added,

  I would wish James to understand that it was in acquiesance to what I supposed his own wish that I did not repeat my application, after having so long rested on the expectation of having him.13

  In other words, this was Hemings’s fault, and Jefferson wanted Evans to tell him that (or have Hemings read it) while delivering other peevish messages to the younger man. First, Jefferson expressed his confidence that Hemings’s reluctance to leave Baltimore could not possibly be related to him, since he obviously had not done anything wrong in not writing to Hemings as he asked. He refused to credit the legitimacy of Hemings’s feelings about this and instead suggested that an “attachment,” likely romantic, held Hemings in place. The “attachment” cannot have been a job, because Hemings had repeatedly stated his willingness to leave his employers to work for Jefferson. Jefferson’s turn here is somewhat reminiscent of his complaint that Dr. Stras had “debauched” Robert Hemings from him by way of his having fallen in love with Stras’s servant, Dolly. In both instances there is the intimation that the men’s sexual passions had overridden what Jefferson took to be their reason. Why else would they not want to work for him?

  And then to a man who had been trained by some of the best cooks in France, and who had every reason to be proud of his accomplishments over the years, Jefferson announced that he had found another chef whose talents were “equal to [his] wishes,” that is, a chef just as talented as Hemings. He did not have to say that. This would be the last of the multiparty communication about getting Hemings to become the chef at the President’s House. Had Hemings accepted, he would have been the first African American to play that role, and we have missed all the stories that could have sprung from that engagement. This was, however, not the end of the story linking the two men.

  If James Hemings and Jefferson ever wrote to one another after this episode, Jefferson kept no record of it. But they must have communicated, because Hemings came back to work at Monticello sometime in August while Jefferson was on his summer vacation. Whatever difficulties they had had were resolved to some degree, and Jefferson hired Hemings at twenty dollars a month, twice his normal salary. Twenty dollars was also what Jefferson had originally thought to pay Honoré Julien, but bargaining brought the salary up to twenty-five dollars a month. Julien had already started, and having two cooks in the same kitchen was out of the question.14 Even though Jefferson had a cook at Monticello, Peter Hemings, he evidently wanted to reach some rapprochement with James—perhaps going back to the old routine, with James working at Monticello when Jefferson came home and finding work on his own when Jefferson went back to Washington. That would still have given him substantial employment, for Jefferson fully intended to spend as much
time at Monticello as he could. He would not repeat his behavior as secretary of state when he came home only one or two months each year.

  Hemings was now in a less favorable position than he would have been had he taken the job at the President’s House. As Jefferson’s Washington-based chef, he, like Honoré Julien, could have remained in Washington and perhaps sought temporary work when Jefferson went home for vacations. Now he was going back to Monticello, getting a salary, to be sure, but in the same surroundings he had escaped five years earlier.

  Hemings did, however, have the consolation of family, one that had changed in composition since he had left the mountain. His half sister Betty Brown, who almost rivaled her mother in terms of the age gap between her first and last child, had given birth to two more children, Robert and Mary. According to Jefferson’s eldest grandson, the father of these two children was likely Jefferson’s nephew Samuel Carr. Hemings’s sister Sally had lost her daughter Harriet, given birth to Beverley, lost another daughter in 1799, and had another, Harriet, in May of 1801.15

  While a good salary and being in a familiar place might, on the surface, seem to have provided Hemings with some measure of comfort, the familiar place remained a slave plantation. He was free, but his family was not. With all the places he had been to, all the things he had been able to do, how did it feel to know that his mother and the rest of his family, save for Robert, had absolutely no chance to go with him, even had they wanted to. What did he think seeing his youngest sister locked in a cycle of having Jefferson’s babies every two or three years? If they had stayed in France, she might have had a real husband. Her children would have been free from birth and not have had to depend upon their father’s living long enough to see them to adulthood or bank on the kindness of Martha and Maria, who might actually have despised their half siblings and their mother. Instead, gossip mongers were now starting to spread stories about his sister. The September 14 issue of William Rind’s Virginia Federalist, printed in Richmond, gave the most explicit information to date about Jefferson’s relationship with her. According to the paper, sources said that “Mr. J,” a man very high in office, had “a number of yellow children and that he is addicted to golden affections,” presumably meaning Hemings’s yellow-skinned sister.16 Robert Hemings was likely the first in the family to know that his sister’s life had been exposed, even though her name did not appear. It was only a matter of time before more specific stories appeared, but James Hemings would not live to see them.

  About five days after the item about Jefferson and Sally Hemings appeared in the Virginia Federalist, James Hemings left Monticello. There was no reason for him to stay, because Jefferson was about to go back to Washington, and there was no need for a chef at Monticello when he was not in residence. Before Jefferson left, he paid Mrs. Snead, the midwife who had delivered his daughter, Harriet, born just four months earlier.17 What no one knew at the time, of course, was that as one life in the Hemings family was just beginning, another was about to end.

  WHEN JAMES HEMINGS left that September of 1801, it was probably the last time any of his family on the mountain saw him alive. Sometime near the end of October, or early November, Jefferson received word at the President’s House, evidently through the network of the black community, that Hemings had killed himself. The news appears to have stunned Jefferson, and he wrote to William Evans for confirmation of what he had heard and to find out what he could about the matter. Evans wrote back to Jefferson with the terrible news. Hemings had, in fact, “committed an act of suicide.” Evans told Jefferson that Hemings had been “delirious for some days previous to his having committed the act, and it is as the General opinion that drinking too freely was the cause.”18

  Jefferson wrote to Thomas Mann Randolph in December, saying that he had previously written to James Dinsmore, a white Monticello workman, about James Hemings’s “tragical end.”19 Jefferson’s letter to Dinsmore is no longer extant, so we may never know what he said to him about any additional information he had found out. When the Hemingses at Monticello learned of James’s death is unknown. The slave communication network, however, known for its speed and reach, may have brought news to Monticello around the same time Jefferson learned of it. It is possible, in fact, that it was an inquiry from the mountain that prompted Jefferson’s letter of inquiry to Evans. His passing reference in his letter to his son-in-law about Hemings’s “tragical end” hints that people on the mountain already knew of the death.

  James Hemings “tragical end” often appears in Jefferson scholarship as a cautionary tale, and a not so subtle justification for Jefferson’s failure to free his slaves. See, if he had freed more of them, they would have all gone crazy and killed themselves. It is also framed as a matter of failure on Hemings’s part. He was given a chance, and because he was not truly prepared for freedom, he failed. If he was not prepared, then none of Jefferson’s slaves was prepared. In the end, not freeing them was a true blessing.

  It is entirely possible that when James Hemings’s African grandmother was being transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the West Indies, or directly to Virginia, she shared a vessel with other Africans who made the choice to jump overboard rather than live in the world that their European captors had planned for them. The vast majority did not make that choice. If we feel compelled to think of the captives’ differing reactions in terms of strength versus weakness—and it is by no means clear we should—it makes more sense to speak of the uncommon strength of the people who stayed alive than to speak of the “weakness” or “failure” of those who could not endure what no human being was supposed to endure.

  Hemings did not experience the Middle Passage. But he did live in a society that treated him and others like him inhumanely, with no clear prospect of changing that in his lifetime. How does one rest comfortably in such a place? How could Hemings, who had seen the world and knew a great deal of what was in it, without guilt, move ahead with a family forcibly held back? Five years after his death, Hemings’s home state would pass a law providing that black people emancipated in Virginia would have to leave the state within one year or be reenslaved unless their owners petitioned the government to allow them to remain. Some masters did that, and in other instances the law was ignored. But that official show of contempt for a people who had built Virginia from its earliest days says volumes about the world Hemings lived in. He carried this extra burden along with all the normal struggles that attend human life.

  Even outside of Virginia, there was no place in the United States where Hemings and his extended family would have been treated as full human beings. There probably was no place in the Western world where that could have happened, though he had lived in a city that offered at least some breathing room. Hemings might have lived longer, had he and his sister taken the chance to work together to build a life in Paris. Though racism was alive and well in France, there was a substantive difference between the treatment of mixed-race people there and their treatment in the United States. That did not change the condition of the entire race, but the extra social space might have made a difference to an individual as sensitive as James Hemings. By the end of his life, starting over in Paris was a moment that had passed. There would have been a great difference between putting down roots there in 1788 or 1789 with a sister who could have helped pay the rent and make a home and stepping alone into the uncertainty of postrevolutionary France.

  That said, it is also true that Hemings had lived with all the problems of being black in America up until that moment. How did he become so despairing in the fall of 1801 that he felt he simply could not draw another breath? What comes immediately to mind is the missed opportunity in Washington. It appears that he did want to be chef de cuisine at the President’s House all along. That he left his job and came back to Monticello shows that he had no deep animosity toward Jefferson. When this episode began, he was working in a Baltimore inn, a place that provided a living, but where he had no prospect of doing the kind of cooking that he had
been trained to do, and had done, in Paris, New York, Philadelphia, and Monticello. Jefferson might have been casual and republican about his attire during this period, but he spared no expense on food and wine. He spent a fortune on both during his time in the President’s House and was said to have set one of the best tables in the country. Had he accepted Jefferson’s offer, Hemings would have been in charge of all this, but his hesitancy had destroyed this opportunity. There was no way to fix things. Jefferson was not going to fire Honoré Julien and his wife, who had both left Philadelphia to come work for him. Hemings had missed the chance of a lifetime.

  The bungled job negotiations were important. But other, more serious underlying problems haunted Hemings. Depression and suicide are complex phenomena, even with the medications we have today. Predispositions to either can be exacerbated, or ameliorated, by circumstances that are often out of one’s control, and it seems as primitive to think of this in terms of weakness or failure as to believe that the mentally ill are possessed by evil spirits. Enslaved people suffered from depression and sometimes committed suicide, as did free blacks. Even prosperous free whites, to the bewilderment of those around them, sometimes killed themselves when they came to believe there would be no awakening from whatever nightmares had seized their minds. Hemings’s life was probably more difficult because he had no wife and family to succor him and to support in return. He seems to have been on his own—alone—in the most profound way. With that said, the fact is that the personal demons, or physiological idiosyncrasies, that drove Hemings to kill himself will remain unknown to us.

  The record on James Hemings goes poignantly silent after the final letters about his death. We do not know whether his family sent for his body and had him buried in the slave cemetery at Monticello or whether he rests in a grave in Baltimore. The person who lived in Jefferson-related documents as “Jame,” “Jim,” “Jamey,” or “Gimme,” from the time he was a small boy, formed no part of the stories Jefferson’s white family left for posterity. He first appears in Jefferson’s memorandum books as “Jamey,” a seven-year-old enslaved boy given a small sum of money by the man who had just married his half sister and owner. Isaac Jefferson remembered him as “Jim,” a teenager riding on horseback to Williamsburg with the family of the newly minted governor Jefferson in the midst of America’s Revolutionary War. Then he was the intrepid “James” traveling on his own to Rouen, France, to find accommodations two days after he and Jefferson had arrived in that country. Adrien Petit, whom he met in France and who was probably the first white person he had worked with as an equal, knew him as “Gimme” as they collaborated on two continents to run Jefferson’s household. We do not know what his sister Sally and the rest of his family called him—though “Jimmy” seems a good bet, the French Petit not likely to have derived “Jimmy” from “James” without having heard him called that. We do know, however, that he and his name were cherished. The name James was given to several nephews and passed down the family perhaps long after all memory of the man had been lost. Besides that, and a few of his recipes preserved at Monticello, his chief legacy is his story. James Hemings’s was a singular life: an eighteenth-century Afro-Virginian who lived abroad in France, who was passionate and intellectually curious enough to hire a tutor to teach him to speak and think in a different language, who was literate, who became a chef de cuisine, who negotiated his freedom, and who continued to journey far and wide after he became a free man. Surely it broke his family’s hearts to lose him.