This picture of the sexually predatory Jefferson contrasts sharply with Madison Hemings’s portrayal of him. He stated that he and his sibling were the only children Jefferson had with an enslaved woman. If Jefferson had been involved with Mary Hemings or Betty Brown, it would have been some years before he began his relationship with Madison’s mother, Sally. Still, it seems unlikely that he would not have known that his uncles, whom he saw every day, were actually his brothers.
In sum, there is simply not enough information at present to support the idea that Joseph Fossett and Wormley Hughes were Jefferson’s sons. Given that so many slave owners had children with enslaved women, and the "better" among this group freed their children, it is natural (and right) to consider all possibilities when a slave owner frees, formally or informally, a much younger person. But not all the slaves Jefferson freed, or the ones he was very fond of, were his children. We should avoid treating interracial sex as something akin to an addiction or chronic disease—if he had sex and children with one enslaved African American woman, he must have had sex and children with others. The standard for coming to this conclusion must remain the same for each individual case—not primarily for Jefferson’s sake, but for the sake of the enslaved people who had lives and identities that must be treated with as much care and respect as the lives of those who enslaved them. For a discussion of Randall’s relationship with Jefferson’s grandchildren, see Lisa Francavilla, "‘Holding in Trust for the Use of Others’: Jefferson’s Grandchildren and the Creation of the Jefferson Image," a paper presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, Worcester, Mass.
15. See, e.g., MB, 507, for March 30 reference to Betty Brown; 508, for April 5 reference to James Hemings.
16. Malone, Jefferson, 1:354–60; Emory Evans, "Executive Leadership I Virginia," in Sovereign States in an Age of Uncertainty, ed. Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville, 1981).
17. MB, entry for April 15, 1781, "Our daughter Lucy Elizabeth died about 10. o’clock A.M. this day."
18. Henry S. Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson, 3 vols. (1858; reprint, New York, 1972), 1:338–39.
19. Stanton, Free Some Day, 170 n. 78.
20. TJ to William Gordon, July 16, 1788, Papers, 8:364.
21. Ibid.
22. Pybus, "Jefferson’s Faulty Math," 243–64.
23. George Wythe to TJ, Dec. 31, 1781, Papers, 6:144. Wythe offered to help TJ recover "other servants belonging to [TJ]," if he would send him "a description" of them.
24. MB, 519, "Our daughter Lucy Elizabeth (second of that name) born at one o’clock A.M."
25. TJ to James Monroe, May 20, 1782, Papers, 6:186.
26. Randall, Life, 1:382.
27. Malone, Jefferson, 1:396.
28. McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello, 188.
29. See photograph in first insert. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 128–29.
30. Lucia Stanton and Dianne Swann Wright, "Bonds of Memory: Identity and the Hemings Family," in Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture, ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville, 1999), 173.
31. Hamilton W. Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello: The Private Life of Thomas Jefferson, from Entirely New Materials, with Numerous Facsimiles (1862), 106–7.
32. Ibid.
33. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 252.
34. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 168.
35. See "The Room in which Martha Jefferson died," wiki.Monticello.org, for a discussion of the problems with Martha Randolph’s recollections of what happened when Jefferson was led from the room when his wife died. In Martha’s account, her aunt Martha Carr led Jefferson with "great difficulty…into his library." The library in the first Monticello was upstairs. The author of the article posits that it seems unlikely that Martha Carr led "a full-grown man on the verge of collapse up an extremely narrow stairwell." Martha recalled that her father had been working in a nearby room as her mother lay bedridden for five months. It seems more likely that Martha Jefferson was in what is now Jefferson’s bedroom downstairs, and the room where he worked while she was ill was one over from the room that became Jefferson’s library in the second Monticello. Martha Randolph’s memory blended the layout of the first Monticello with that of the second.
36. Randall, Life, 1:382.
37. Andrew Burstein, Jefferson’s Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello (New York, 2005), 160–72.
38. Ronald Hoffman, in collaboration with Sally D. Mason, Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Family Saga, 1500–1872 (Chapel Hill, 2000), 371–72, discussing the toll that six pregnancies during ten years of marriage took on Mary Carroll, the wife of the Maryland senator and planter Charles Carroll, the only Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence.
39. TJ, Autobiography, in Writings (New York, 1984), 46.
7: "A Particular Purpose"
1. TJ to Elizabeth Blair Thompson, Jan. 19, 1787, Papers, 11:56–58.
2. Jefferson himself characterized his time in Paris as an escape in an indirect way that muted the pain of his wife’s loss. "An unfortunate change in my domestic situation by the loss of a tender connection who joined me in esteeming you, occasioned me to wish a change of scene and to accept an appointment which brought me to this place and will keep me here some time." TJ to Geismar, March 3, 1785, Papers, 8:10. Jefferson confided to his sister-in-law, "This miserable kind of existence is really too burthensome to be borne, and were it not for the infidelity of deserting the sacred charge left me, I could not wish it’s [sic] continuance a moment. For what could it be wished? All my plans of comfort and happiness reversed by a single event and nothing answering in prospect before me but a gloom unbrightened with one chearful expectation." Only the prospect of caring for his daughters offered any respite from his torment. TJ to Elizabeth Eppes, October 3?, 1782, Papers, 6:198.
3. Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in Writings (New York, 1984), 46. At the time of the second appointment, Jefferson was facing an inquiry about his conduct as governor, recuperating from a nasty fall from his horse, and concerned about his wife’s always precarious health. He had sequestered himself (Edmund Randolph’s critical characterization) at his Bedford estate, vowing never to return to public life. TJ to Edmund Randolph, Sept. 16, 1781, Papers, 6:117; Edmund Randolph to TJ, Oct. 9, 1781, ibid., 128.
4. Jefferson’s memorandum books and his letters offer the surest way to track his movements and those of members of the Hemings family who traveled with him. MB, 522–54, details his travels during the two-year period after his wife’s death as he awaited word that he was to proceed to France. See also Stanton, Free Some Day, 107–8.
5. James A. Bear Jr., The Hemings Family of Monticello (Ivy, Va., 1980), 7.
6. TJ to Daniel Hylton, July 1, 1792, Papers, 24:145; TJ to Martha Randolph, Aug. 8, 1790, ibid., 17:327.
7. MB, 536 n. 82.
8. MB, 542, entries for Feb. 1, 3, 10, and 13.
9. TJ to William Short, May 7, 1784, Papers, 7:229.
10. William Short to TJ, May 14, 1784, Papers, 7:253, 255.
11. Ibid., 256.
12. Ibid., 256–57.
13. Thomas D. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860 (Chapel Hill, 1996), 338–40. Morris notes that Virginia was the first to pass a statute to require slaves to carry passes. "A magistrate could order twenty lashes inflicted on a slave who was off ‘his masters ground without a certificate from his master, mistress, or overseer.’" There were no penalties to the master for violating, but the law sent the message that all white members of society had a duty to help control the blacks within their midst. Virginia’s large black population gave white Virginians (and South Carolinians) a special interest in keeping tabs on black people.
14. Ibid., 339.
15. George Green Shackelford, Jefferson’s Adoptive Son: The Life of William Short, 1759–1848 (Lexington, Ky., 1993), 3; Malone, Jefferson, 1:433.
16. William Short
to TJ, May 14 [15], 1784, Papers, 7:256.
17. TJ to David Humphreys, June 21, 1784, Papers, 7:311.
18. See MB, 553, entry for June 30, 1784; TJ to Nicholas Lewis, July 1, 1784, Papers, 7:356.
19. MB, 554 n. 61, entry for July 5, 1784: "Sailed from Boston at 4. o’clock A.M. in the Ceres Capt. St. Barbe."
20. MB, 555, Jefferson’s diary of the voyage.
21. MB, 556, entries for July 27, 28, 1784 (see also n. 63); TJ to James Monroe, Nov. 11, 1784, Papers, 7:508 ("I therefore went ashore at Portsmouth where I was detained three or four days by a fever which had seized my daughter two days before we landed"); Martha Jefferson to Eliza House Trist, [after Aug. 24, 1785], ibid., 8:436–37.
22. MB, 556, entry for Aug. 1, 1784.
23. TJ to James Monroe, Nov. 11, 1784, Papers, 7:508.
24. MB, 557, entry for Aug. 3, 1784.
25. Martha Jefferson to Eliza Trist, [after Aug. 24, 1785], Papers, 8:437; MB, 557, entry for Aug. 6, 1784.
26. Malone, Jefferson, 2:5, 8; Edward Dumbauld, "Where Did Jefferson Live in Paris," WMQ, 2d ser., 23 (1943): 64–68.
27. MB, 559, entry for Aug. 20, 1784; 630 n. 33, entry for June 26, 1784; 567 n. 13.
28. Malone, Jefferson, 2:6–7; Marie Kimball, Jefferson: The Scene of Europe, 1784 to 1789 (New York, 1950). Humphrey’s fraternal relations with TJ broke down under the weight of Humphrey’s very conservative Federalist political views that made him anathema to the by then President Jefferson, who recalled him from a diplomatic post overseas in 1801.
29. MB. 571 n. 26. See also Malone, Jefferson, 2:8, 131.
30. MB, 554 n. 60. See also Papers, 8:269–73.
31. MB, 567 n. 11.
32. TJ to James Monroe, March 18, 1785, Papers, 8:43.
33. MB, 569, entry for Dec. 1, 1784.
34. James Currie to TJ, Nov. 20, 1784, Papers, 7:539; Elizabeth Wayles Eppes to TJ, Oct. 13, 1784, ibid., 441; Francis Eppes to TJ, Oct. 14, 1784, ibid., 441–42. The SJL indicates that Jefferson learned of his daughter’s death when the Currie letter arrived in Jan., brought to him by Lafayette. The Eppes letters did not reach him until May. See also (p. 539) Julian Boyd’s highlights on Currie’s horrifically insensitive letter, in which he comments on the weather, on a history of ballooning that TJ wrote to him about, and on politics and then, at the end, mentions that TJ’s daughter died of whooping cough; TJ to Francis Eppes, Jan. 13, 1785, ibid., 601–2. The SJL refers to this letter, which has not been found, but the entry describing what was in the letter indicates that he told his brother-in-law of his "wishes to have Polly brought were not [his] return not very distant." See also Malone, Jefferson, 2:12–13.
35. TJ to Francis Eppes, May 11, 1785, Papers, 8:141. TJ writes to his in-laws, "I must have Polly," and inquires whether there is "any woman in Virg. [who] could be hired to come." Elizabeth Eppes wrote to TJ on July 30, 1786, indicating that she was resigned to the fact that Polly should be sent to him. Papers, 15:629. TJ to Elizabeth Eppes, Dec. 14, 1786, ibid., 594. He wrote that same day to Francis Eppes, telling him to "address her [Polly] to Mrs. Adams who will receive her and advise me of her arrival." Ibid.
36. See, e.g., Francis Eppes to TJ, Sept. 14, 1785, Papers, 15:623–24; Elizabeth Eppes to TJ, Sept. 22, 1785, ibid., 624. See below, chap. 9, for a discussion of Polly’s trip with Sally Hemings.
37. MB, 570 n. 22; 558, n. 73.
38. MB, 609, entry for Feb. 2, 1786.
39. TJ to Antonio Giannini, Feb. 5, 1786, Papers, 9:254.
40. Malone, Jefferson, 2:6. While in Paris, Jefferson never tried his hand at writing personal letters in French. His friends wrote to him in the language, and he wrote back in English. See, e.g., Madame de Tessé to TJ, Jan. 21, 1787, Papers, 11:60-61; Madame de Tott to TJ, early Feb. 1787, ibid., 117; TJ to Madame de Tessé, Feb. 28, 1787, ibid., 187; TJ to Madame de Tott, Feb. 28, 1787, ibid., 187–88. It is possible that his official correspondence was drafted by William Short. He did write to his servant Adrien Petit in French, but Petit was not well educated, and Jefferson may have worried less about impressing (or failing to impress) him.
41. Antonio Giannini to TJ, June 9, 1786, Papers, 9:624.
42. Malone, Jefferson, 1:430.
43. The Autobiography of Colonel John Trumbull, Patriot-Artist, 1756–1843, Containing a Supplement to the Works of John Trumbull, ed. Theodore Sizer (New Haven, 1953), 35.
44. Philip Mazzei to TJ, April 17, 1787, Papers, 11:297–98.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. TJ to Philip Mazzei, May, 6, 1787, Papers, 11:354.
48. Bear, Hemings Family, 10.
8: James Hemings: The Provincial Abroad
1. Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, 2 vols. (New York, 1986), 1:101.
2. Letters of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Boston, 1848), 1:193; Martha Jefferson to Eliza House Trist, Aug. 24, 1785, Papers, 7:437.
3. See David Garrioch, The Making of Revolutionary Paris (Berkeley, Calif., 2002), 67, discussing the "corporate" nature of French society. "The corporate system was central to the Parisian labor market. Anywhere up to two-thirds of the adult male population and a smaller proportion of the adult female population were grouped into over 120 officially recognized trade corporations, while another 16 or 17 trades had a guild structure but no legal standing." In other words, working people were used to banding together to assert their rights.
4. Ibid., 246–47, on the spread of elite culture to the masses and on Madame Moreau, a seamstress who ran a literary salon.
5. Margaret C. Jacobs, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 1991).
6. See, e.g., MB, 369, 572, 573, 593, 605, 569, 577, 608, 627.
7. Garrioch, Making of Revolutionary Paris, 244.
8. Ibid.
9. Sue Peabody, "There Are No Slaves in France": The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (New York, 1996), uses the phrase "Freedom Principle" to describe the announced French position on the status of slaves in France. In her new, more comparative work, she refers to the principle as "Free Soil."
10. Ibid., chap. 1.
11. For a discussion of the basic function of the parlements of France, see William Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution (Oxford, 1980), 68–70. See also Georges Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution (Princeton, 1947), 17. See, generally, Peabody, "There Are No Slaves"; Pierre H. Boulle, "Racial Purity or Legal Clarity?: The Status of Black Residents in Eighteenth-Century France," Journal of the Historical Society 6 (2006): 19–46.
12. See Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," 73 (the "deluge"). Peabody notes that for the rest of his life Poncet de la Grave continued to "wage his personal war against licentiousness," which had always been focused on efforts to stamp out interracial relations and prostitution (p. 139). "Crank" is a pejorative term, but it seems apt for one who, because he equated a man and a woman who wanted to marry and raise a family with prostitution, was largely responsible for the 1778 law that banned interracial marriage. Of course, Poncet de la Grave was not alone in his concern about having blacks in France. See Boulle, "Racial Purity," 23, citing a letter from the minister of the marine written in 1763, expressing the need to curb the number of blacks in France because their "communication with the whites" was resulting in "mixed blood, which increases daily."
13. Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," 4 (on the populations of England and France).
14. Ibid., 111–20; Boulle, "Racial Purity," 25–27.
15. Déclaration pour la police des noirs, Aug. 9, 1777, reprinted in Pierre Boulle, Race et esclavage dans la France de l’Ancien Régime (Paris, 2007), 255–58.
16. See C. L. R. James, Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Overture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York, 1963), 47–48; Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804 (Chapel Hill, 2004), 46. "The plantation ec
onomy, and the traffic in humans that sustained it, produced fortunes in France." Boulle, "Racial Purity," 27.
17. Déclaration pour la police des noirs. Article 1 provided, "Faisons défenses expresses à tous nos sujets, de quelque qualité et condition qu’ils soient, même à tous Étrangers, d’amener dans notre Royaume, après la publication et enregistrement de notre présente Déclaration, aucun noir, mulâtre, ou autres gens de couleur, de l’un ou de l’autre sexe, & de les y retenir à leur service; le tout à peine de trois mille livres d’amende, même de plus grande s’ily echoit." Article 2 made clear that the declaration was meant to cover even free blacks: "Défendons pareillement, sous les même peines, à tous Noirs, Mulâtres ou autres gens de couleur de l’un & de l’autre sexe, qui ne seroient point en service, d’entrer à l’avenir dans notre royaume, sous quelque cause & prétexte que ce soit." Article 4 provided for the creation of a "dépôt" to house blacks pending their return to the country.
18. Article 13: "Les dispositions de notre presénte Déclaration seront exécutées nonobstant tous Édits, Déclarations, Réglements, ou autres à ce contraires, auxquels nous avons dérogé et dérogeons expressément." Had there been any express provision in law for immunity for diplomats, the clear language of this article would have abrogated it. They were quite serious about this matter and even discussed how to handle matters if "princes of the blood" were found to have violated the rules. See Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," 125. If they were willing to confront members of the royal family, it is doubtful that they would have hesitated to confront Jefferson about either of the Hemingses.
19. Article 9 provided for the registration of blacks who came into the country. "Ceux de Nos Sujets, ainsi que les Étrangers, qui auront des Noirs à leur service, lors de la publication & enregistrement de notre présente Déclaration seront tenus dans un mois,…de se présenter par-devant les Officiers de l’Amirauté dans le ressort de laquelle ils sont domiciliés, & s’il n’y en a pas, par-devant le Juge Royal dudit lieu, à l’effet d’y déclarer les noms & qualités des Noirs, Mûlatres, ou autres gens de couleur…qui demeurent chez eux le temps de leur débarquement, & la colonie de laquelle ils ont été exportés." Article 1 established the fine for noncompliance with the law "le tout à peine de 3,000 liv. d’amende, même de plus grand peine s’il y échoit." At the time of its publication, the declaration gave every French subject and foreigner who had a black slave or servant one month to register the person. If one month passed without registration, the master "could only keep the said blacks in their service with the consent of the latter." The provision caused much confusion and led to the publication of clarifying arrêts, which were not substantially more helpful. There is no record of cases involving foreigners and their slaves, but it is probable that if an American slaveholder brought a black slave to France, a court inclined to deport blacks who arrived after 1777 would have been satisfied to have them sent back to the United States. The important thing was to get them out of France.
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