20. Pierre Boulle, Race et esclavage, 127. "Ainsi, aucune déclaration n’est faite par Thomas Jefferson, le ministre plenipotentiaire des Etats-Unis de 1784 à 1789, au sujet de ses deux serviteurs de couleur, James et Sara Hemings, bien que le ministre Sartine, quelques années plus tôt ait clairement spécifié que la loi s’appliquait aussi aux ambassadeurs." (Jefferson the minister plenipotentiary of the United States, 1784–1789, did not declare his servants of color, James and Sarah Hemings, even though Minister Sartine, some years before, had clearly specified that the law applied to ambassadors.) Sue Peabody, who has also done extensive work with the registers of blacks, confirmed to me that Jefferson did not register either Hemings sibling.
21. See Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," chap. 8, "Erosion of the Police des Noirs," 121–36.
22. See Doyle, Origins; William Doyle, "The Parlements of France and the Breakdown of the Old Regime, 1771–1788," French Historical Studies 6 (1970): 415–58, on the parlements’ role in opposition to royal authority. For a highly critical view of the parlement, see Thomas Carlyle’s classic, extremely retrograde and dated but entertaining, The French Revolution: A History (New York, 2002), 72–76, 88–89.
23. The drafters of the Police des Noirs correctly assumed that the Parlement of Paris would not register the act if it was seen to be regulating slaves. So the declaration proscribed conduct "based upon skin color alone, not slave status." Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," 106. See also Boulle, "Racial Purity," 28, on the Parlement of Paris’ likely objection to a law that mentioned slavery. Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," 5 and 134–36, on the Parisian Admiralty Court’s commitment to the Freedom Principle.
24. Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," 135.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. It is probably impossible to come up with a precise figure for the number of blacks in Paris during the Hemings siblings’ time there. In Race et esclavage, 126, Pierre Boulle used the registrations of Parisian blacks between 1777 and 1790 and counted "765 non-Blancs personnes de couleur à Paris et en banlieue entre les années 1777 et 1790." That figure is probably better seen as a minimum, since there is evidence of widespread noncompliance with the law on registration. Boulle notes the "relative absence de déclarations issues de la haute noblesse." See also his table (p. 128) listing the statuses of male and female gens de couleur in Paris.
28. Boulle also analyzed the neighborhoods where blacks lived and found that, for the most part, blacks lived in the richest neighborhoods. Ibid., 137–38 (map of Parisian neighborhoods with the concentration of blacks).
29. Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," 84–85. Boulle, Race et esclavage, 138.
30. See Cissie Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies: Servants and Their Masters in Old Regime France (Baltimore, 1983), 158–59, on the high value of mixed-race servants and those of African origin and on the reasons for the preference. See also Sarah C. Maza, Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century France: The Uses of Loyalty (Princeton, 1984), 206–8.
31. Perrault to TJ, Jan. 9, 1789, Papers, 14:426.
32. John Jay to William Temple Franklin (unpublished), Nov. 11, 1783; Sarah Van Brugh Livingston to William Temple Franklin (unpublished) (undated). I thank Professor Edmund Morgan for bringing this correspondence to my attention and graciously sending me copies of it. I also thank Elizabeth M. Nuxoll, editor of The Papers of John Jay, and Kate M. Ohno, one of the editors of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, for providing me with relevant correspondence and for sharing their insights about this matter.
33. Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," 97–103, on Henrion de Pansey; 103–5, on the motives of other lawyers involved in freedom suits.
34. Ibid., 103. In discussing Roc v. Poupet, a freedom suit brought in 1770 in which the lawyer for the slave submitted his expenses to the court, Peabody notes that "evidence concerning slaves’ sources of money to pay lawyers is rare." Ibid., 177 n. 86. More work must be done on this question, but one can speculate that the submission of a bill to the court in 1770 suggests that the legal culture had evolved in a way that suited both lawyers’ needs and the preferences of the Admiralty Court. By 1770 the court’s position on the freedom suits should have been clear to everyone who held slaves in Paris; a master who resisted the slaves’ desire for freedom was going to lose. Fee shifting is seen as a way of affecting the behavior of the litigants—if the law is clear, the party in the wrong has an incentive to settle and not waste court resources fighting the inevitable. If there is no case to be made, the party who wants to sue will think twice before wasting the court’s time. The court’s action in Roc v. Poupet was in perfect keeping with the overall goals of fee shifting. This outcome might be attractive to lawyers who could make relatively easy money doing rote petitions with an entirely predictable result. The case suggests that Jefferson might have had to pay Hemings’s lawyer had the young man filed a freedom suit.
35. See Jacqueline Sabattier, Figaro et son maître: Maîtres et domestiques à Paris au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1984), 24–27. See, generally, Jean-Pierre Gutton, Domestiques et serviteurs dans la France de l’ancien régime (Paris, 1981); Olwen Hufton, "Women and the Family Economy in Eighteenth-Century France," French Historical Studies 9, no. 1 (Spring 1975): 6; Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies, 54–58; Maza, Servants and Masters, 164–67. See also, e.g., MB, 681 for James Hemings’s salary, and 691, for Sally Hemings’s salary.
36. See Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies, 13–20, on the history of wages and customs about wages.
37. Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," 105.
38. Ibid., 119, quoting Antoine de Sartine, one of the architects of the Police des Noirs, who linked the posters about and published accounts of successful freedom suits as a reason for the new law.
39. Marcel Dorigny and Bernard Gainot, La Société des amis des noirs, 1788–1799: Contribution à l’histoire de l’abolition de l’esclavage (Paris, 1998); TJ to Brissot de Warville, Feb. 11, 1788, Papers, 12:577–78.
40. Daniel Resnick, "The Société des Amis des Noirs and the Abolition of Slavery," French Historical Studies 7 (1972): 558–69.
41. Martha Jefferson to TJ, May 3, 1787, Papers, 11:334.
42. Paul Bentalou, Aug. 9, 1786, Papers, 10:205.
43. Ibid.
44. TJ to Paul Bentalou, Aug. 25, 1786, Papers, 10:296.
45. See Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," 19, 39, 49, 90, 119, 154 n. 71, discussing the various parlements’ reactions to royal declarations; Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens, 147, on Bordeaux and the slave trade.
46. See, generally, Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," and Boulle, Race et esclavage.
47. Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," 129–30.
48. William Short to TJ, May 14, 1784, Papers, 7:254.
49. Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill, 1968).
50. Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," 3.
51. Boulle, "Racial Purity," 35.
52. Ibid., 38.
53. Shelby T. McCloy, "Negroes and Mulattoes in Eighteenth-Century France," Journal of Negro History 30 (July 1945): 279–80.
54. Boulle, "Racial Purity," 39.
55. McCloy, "Negroes and Mulattoes," 280 n. 17. I follow Louverture’s spelling of his name.
56. Alain Guédé, Monsieur de Saint-George: Virtuoso, Swordsman, Revolutionay: A Legendary Life Rediscovered, trans. Gilda M. Roberts (New York, 2003), 18, 3; Dominique-René de Lerma, "The Chevalier de Saint-Georges," Black Perspective in Music 4 (1976): 3–21.
57. Ibid.
58. Alexandre Dumas, My Memoirs, trans. E. M. Waller, 3 vols. (New York, 1908), vol. 1, xx; Gilles Henry, Les Dumas: Le secret de Monte-Cristo (Paris, 1999), 55.
9: "Isabel or Sally Will Come"
1. TJ to Francis Eppes, Aug. 30, 1785, Papers, 15:622 (supplementary letters).
2. See, e.g., TJ to Martha Jefferson Carr, Aug. 20, 1785, Papers, 15:620–21, expressing his growing impatience with delays in sending his daughter—"It is upwards of 10. months sin
ce I have had a letter from Eppington; this is long for a parent who has still something left there"; Francis Eppes to TJ, Sept. 14, 1785, ibid., 623; Martha Jefferson Carr to TJ, May 5, 1786, ibid., 618–19.
3. Francis Eppes to TJ, Oct. 23, 1786, Papers, 10:483; Martha Jefferson Carr to TJ, Jan. 2, 1787, ibid., 15:633; Elizabeth Wayles Eppes to TJ, March 31, 1787, and Mary Jefferson to TJ, ca. March 31, 1787, ibid., 11:260—"I should be very happy to see you, but I can not go to France and hope that you and sister Patsy are well"; Stanton, Free Some Day, 59, 108.
4. Francis Eppes to TJ, April 14, 1787, Papers, 15:636.
5. Stanton, Free Some Day, 195 (family tree of the Hern family).
6. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 240; Farm Book, 13.
7. Elizabeth Wayles Eppes to TJ, May 7, 1787, Papers, 15:356; Abigail Adams to TJ, June 26, 1787, ibid., 11:501 (Jefferson’s SJL records this letter as received on June 30, 1787); Abigail Adams to TJ, June 26, 1787, ibid.; Abigail Adams to TJ, June 27, 1787, ibid., 502 (Jefferson’s SJL records these letters from Adams as received on June 30 and July 6, respectively).
8. Farm Book, 13, 18.
9. Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello, 107–8.
10. Elizabeth Eppes to TJ, May 7, 1787, Papers, 15:637; Stanton, Free Some Day, 108.
11. TJ to Elizabeth Eppes, July 28, 1787, Papers, 11:634–35.
12. Abigail Adams to TJ, June 26, 1787, Papers, 11:502.
13. Abigail Adams to TJ, June 27, 1787, Papers, 11:503.
14. Abigail Adams to TJ, July 6, 1787, Papers, 11:551.
15. See discussion of SH’s probable birthdate, in chap. 14, below.
16. Abigail Adams to Mrs. Shaw, March 4, 1786, Letters of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams, ed. C. F. Adams, 2 vols. (Boston, 1840), 2:125.
17. John Quincy Adams, "Misconceptions of Shakespeare, upon the Stage," reprinted in James Henry Hackett, Notes and Comments upon Certain Plays and Actors of Shakespeare (New York, 1863), 224–26.
18. Fanny Kemble’s Journals, ed. Catherine Clinton (Cambridge, Mass., 2000) 127.
19. Ibid.
20. Joseph Tate, Digest of the Laws of Virginia (Richmond, Va., 1823), sec. 11 S. 3, p. 127. The age was raised to twelve, Patton and Robinson, Code of Virginia, tit. 54, chap. 191, sec. 15, 715, quoted in Diane Miller Sommerville, Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South (Chapel Hill, 2003), 44, 276–77 n. 8.
21. Francis Eppes to TJ, April 14, 1787, Papers, 15:636.
22. Paul Bentalou to TJ, Aug. 9, 1786, Papers, 10:205.
23. Andrew Ramsey to TJ, July 6, 1787, Papers, 11:556.
24. Abigail Adams to TJ, July 6, 1787, Papers, 11:551.
25. Ibid.
26. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 217.
27. Boulle, Race et esclavage, 255.
28. MB, 594 n. 87, discussing TJ’s expenses.
29. Sue Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," 90–91.
30. Passports issued by Jefferson, 1785–89, Papers, 15:485; TJ to Abigail Adams, July 1, 1787, ibid., 11:514–15.
31. Abigail Adams to TJ, July 6, 1787, Papers, 11:550–51; TJ to Abigail Adams, July 10, 1787, ibid., 572.
32. TJ to Abigail Adams, July 1, 1787, Papers, 11:514. See also MB, 677 n. 93, detailing expenses for tickets for Petit, SH, and Polly Jefferson.
33. Malone, Jefferson, 2:135.
34. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 218.
35. Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785–1800 (Chicago, 1996), 23–25.
36. TJ, Notes on the State of Virginia, in Writings (New York, 1984), 288.
37. Malone, Jefferson, 2:135.
38. Abigail Adams to TJ, July 6, 1787, Papers, 11:551; Abigail Adams to TJ, July 10, 1787, and John Adams to TJ, July 10, 1787, ibid., 574. Adams sent this letter to TJ with an enclosure detailing the items bought for Polly Jefferson and SH. The items "For the Maid Servant [SH]" were as follows:
12 yards. calico for 2 short Gowns & Coats
4 yd. half Irish linen for Aprons
3. pr Stockings
2 yd linning
1 Shawl handkerchief
39. Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, ed. Nell Irvin Painter (New York, 2000), 182, 184.
40. Abigail Adams to TJ, July 6, 1787, Papers, 11:551
41. Abigail Adams to TJ, July 2, 1787, Papers, 11:551, referring to Polly’s complaint that, after not having come for her himself, TJ had sent "a man she [could not] understand" to get her.
10: Dr. Sutton
1. TJ to Abigail Adams, July 16, 1787, Papers, 11:592.
2. MB, 681.
3. See, e.g., ibid., 649, entry for Jan. 2, 1787; 655, entry for Feb. 28, 1787; 675, entry for July 12, 1787. There are numerous other references throughout the MB to money given the Hemingses.
4. TJ to Abigail Adams, July 16, 1787, Papers, 11:592; TJ to Mary Jefferson Bolling, July 23, 1787, ibid., 612; TJ to Elizabeth Wayles Eppes, July 28, 1787, ibid., 634.
5. TJ to Elizabeth Wayles Eppes, July 28, 1787, Papers, 11:634. TJ and Polly did not have much time alone together. She arrived at her father’s house on July 15. Her sister came and stayed with her for a week, and then they both went back to school. Jefferson told his sister-in-law that Polly was "established in the convent, perfectly happy." Although both Jefferson girls enjoyed their time in France, it seems doubtful, given all that she had been through and Adams’s description of her state of mind while in London, that Polly was not still in a period of adjustment after just two weeks in France.
6. Stanton, Free Some Day, 109; "Brief Biography of Sally Hemings," Monticello.org. The MB lists SH among the household servants at the Hôtel de Langeac. See, e.g., MB, 690, entry for Jan. 1, 1788; 718, entry for Nov. 3, 1788; 725, entry for Feb. 2, 1789. Perhaps because he believed he was at the end of his time in Paris, TJ stopped listing the names of each servant and the amount he or she was paid. He simply recorded the lump sum that he gave Petit to pay their salaries. The lump sum remained the same for the rest of his time in Paris, indicating that JH and SH continued to receive the same wages. See, generally, MB from March through Sept. 1789.
7. TJ to Joel Yancey, Jan. 17, 1819, Farm Book, 43.
8. Sue Peabody, "There Are No Slaves," 15–16. The case, which the judges decided on the basis of customary law that favored freedom, sparked officials to call for the first regulations of slavery in mainland France.
9. Francis Eppes to TJ, Aug. 31, 1786, Papers, 15:631; Martha Jefferson Carr, Jan. 2, 1787, ibid., 633.
10. MB, 408, entry for Sept. 27, 1775; 409, entry for Nov. 6, 1775 (TJ pays for lodging and nursing Robert Hemings during inoculation); 471, entry for Sept. 28, 1778.
11. Michel Antoine, Louis XV (Paris, 1989), 991; Voltaire, "De la mort de Louis XV et de la fatalité (1774)," Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 29, Mélanges VIII (1773–1776), new ed. (Paris, 1879), 301, 299. "Que conclure de ce tableau, si vrai et si funeste? [What to conclude from this scene, so true and so disastrous?] Rois et princes nécessaires aux peuples, subissez l’inoculation si vous aimez la vie; encouragez-la chez vos sujets si vous voulez qu’ils vivent." After the death of Louis, "le seul roi de France qui soit mort de cette funeste maladie nommée variole, ou petite vérole," After all this, it was time for France to realize that all over the world, other societies had embraced inoculation as a way of protecting their people.
12. Eugenia W. Herbert, "Smallpox Inoculation in Africa," Journal of African History 6 (1975): 539–59.
13. Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82 (New York, 2001).
14. Malone, Jefferson, 1:99–100; MB, 388 n. 56, 524 n. 42.
15. Genevieve Miller, The Adoption of Inoculation for Smallpox in England and France (Philadelphia, 1957), 23. TJ to Benjamin Rush, Jan. 16, 1811, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford, 12 vols. (New York, 1904–05), 9:296. In 1806, ten years after Edward Jenner developed vaccination as an alternative to inoculation, by using the cowpox virus "vaccinia" instead of the live small
pox virus, TJ wrote excitedly to him, hailing his discovery and counting it, too, as a major advancement in human progress. TJ to G. C. Edward Jenner, May 14, 1806, LOC, 27806. He became a vaccinator himself, personally vaccinating slaves at Monticello.
In August of 1801, Jefferson had vaccinated (calling it inoculation) six enslaved people, including Joseph Fossett and Burwell Colbert. Fossett, then twenty-one, and Colbert, eighteen, became the source of protection for others at Monticello. After their eruptions appeared, Dr. William Wardlaw took the virus from them and vaccinated, among others, Jefferson’s grandchildren, Ellen and Cornelia, and other members of the enslaved community, including Critta Hemings and Wormley Hughes.
Jefferson kept up the program of vaccinations as cowpox virus became available when the disease broke out in the area. Age did not matter. Cornelia Randoph was approaching three when she was vaccinated. Beverley Hemings was four and his sister Harriet just a year old when Jefferson vaccinated them in 1802. There were two more rounds of vaccinations on the mountain. Jefferson vaccinated Beverley’s and Harriet’s younger siblings, Madison and Eston, in 1816. The final round was conducted five months before Jefferson died in 1826. There is great poignancy in this. According to the oral history of Eston Hemings’s family, he died of smallpox. What his father probably did not know when he vaccinated Eston is that, unlike inoculation, vaccination does not guarantee lifelong immunity to smallpox. In a small percentage of people it may not provide immunity at all, and the protection tends to wear off in everyone over time, so that booster shots are needed to maintain it. See "List of Inoculations," Papers, 35:34–35 (forthcoming). TJ’s list of "Vaccinations," unpublished. I thank Barbara Oberg, the editor of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, for making these lists available to me.
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family Page 87