Sally Hemings

by Barbara Chase-Riboud

  Dancing was one of the things I most regretted. I had loved it since my first awkward tries with Martha in Paris. I remembered learning how to surrender to that eternity which was the first note of music. I could be anything I wanted for as long as the music played. And tonight the music played and played.

  There were as many servants milling around as there were guests. To us all, whites and slaves, the ball was a chance to break the isolation and monotony of living on far-flung plantations all the year; to see new faces, new dresses, new horses, to catch up on Tidewater gossip.

  I fingered the bright-yellow bandanna tightly wrapped around my head and savored the soft night breeze in the lavish gardens of Prestonfield Plantation. The dresses were more daring than any I could have imagined. My mother was right. There were new dyes and there was more gauze, more silk, and less satin and velvet. The crinolines were ridiculously large, giving the ladies the appearance of watermelons.

  I gazed at everything with new eyes. Through the tall square-paned windows I looked at the swirling figures inside. I contemplated this world of exquisite food and delicate music, of graceful dances, of laces and satin, plumes and powder and perfume, of polished cherrywood floors, and crystal chandeliers.

  Why, in the midst of happiness, must I be reminded of Paris? Look at them! I had heard about the Quadroon Balls of New Orleans where the white people were being mimicked, so here these provincial whites were trying to mimic Paris. I sneered at the pretensions of Virginia gentry. I had known real splendor! What was I doing in this backwater … this tomb?

  After all these years, John Trumbull was coming to Monticello. I didn’t know whether to hide or greet him as a friend. A dinner had been organized for him, and included in the guest list was my master’s choice for Maria, Mr. Giles, a senator from Virginia. Thomas Jefferson wanted him as a son-in-law, and he spent his time around Monticello that summer courting Maria; but in the meantime Maria had fallen in love with her cousin Jack, the same Jack who had helped me to lure her on the boat to Paris. Isaac and I commiserated with poor Master Giles as he was kindly but firmly rejected. Maria was too terrified to tell her father her choice, and begged me to do it for her.

  The night John Trumbull came, I spied on the dinner. It was not the first time I had spied on my master’s dinner guests. I did it constantly. Later, in the privacy of his bedroom, we would discuss the guests, their personalities, and their intrigues. Thus my political education continued despite my isolation. What I didn’t learn from spying, I would learn from my mother and the other slaves. They were a constant and reliable source of gossip and funny stories that kept my lover entertained.

  The dinner with John Trumbull turned into a veritable disaster. No sooner was the company seated than a lively discussion of the character, conduct, and doctrines of Jesus began. My master sat smiling and nodding as Master Giles, a freethinker, led the argument. I could see discomfiture and then shock on the face of John Trumbull, who defended his faith as best he could. The Massachusetts-accented voice I remembered so well rose in indignation over Master Giles’s raillery. Then he addressed my master:

  “Sir, this is a strange situation in which I find myself; in a country professing Christianity and at a table with Christians, as I suppose, I find my religion and myself attacked with severe and almost irresistible wit, and not a person to come in my defense but my friend Mr. Franks, who is himself a Jew!”

  For just a brief moment his outburst seemed to have some effect on the company. The conversation became subdued. I could hardly hear what was going on. But then Maria’s suitor returned to the attack and burst out with as broad and unqualified avowal of atheism as I had ever heard. John Trumbull was almost in tears. He seemed to look directly at me, but I knew he couldn’t see me.

  “The man who has made the previous statement is perfectly prepared for the commission of every atrocious action by which he can promise himself the advancement of his own interest or the gratification of his impure passions, provided he can commit it secretly and with a reasonable probability of escaping detection by his fellow men.”

  I froze. No. It was not possible that he saw me. Not even with his artist’s eagle eyes. In his fury they seemed more crossed than ever. He rose. Thomas Jefferson remained seated, not saying a word. John Trumbull addressed Master Giles for the last time. He seemed to be addressing me.

  “Sir, I would not trust such a man with the honor of a wife, a sister, or a daughter. . . . Our acquaintance, sir, is at an end.”

  My friend John Trumbull. My hand reached for his miniature. John Trumbull driven from our table. I remembered my last words to him at Cowes. “God bless you,” I had said. God. Why had my exquisitely mannered lover allowed such a scene at his own table? I was appalled. Of all things to offend a gentle friend on his religion at one’s own table! I clutched my locket. Now people would say Thomas Jefferson was an atheist! Trumbull had left the table. It was a dangerous thing to do, I thought. Humiliate a man in public. In the past years I had learned enough about politics to realize that one never knew when one might need a friend. Enemies were expensive. Politicians could only afford so many. …

  That night, I asked him why he had allowed John Trumbull, whom he had adored in Paris, to leave his house and his table angry. My master showed no surprise that I had listened in on the dinner.

  “I didn’t feel like being diplomatic,” he said to me. “I’m finished with politics. I have no more need to be polite.”

  “But why let people think you don’t believe in God?”

  “I don’t care what people think anymore,” he said bitterly. This was more than the disappointment of three years in Philadelphia!

  “What is it?” I asked in alarm.

  He was trembling. “It’s nothing. It reminded me of a mistake I once made. Early in my political career, I gave up what I most deeply believed in for the sake of not provoking people. I vowed never to do it again.”

  He turned toward me. “Why shouldn’t Giles have said what he thought? At least he had the courage to say what he means, which is more than most people in the world do. . . .” He looked at me. “What is it?” His pale sapphire eyes had turned their strange night-blue color. “You. You were three years old then. Your brother Robert was with me in Philadelphia.”

  I turned toward him instinctively.

  “They had given me the Declaration of Independence to draft. At thirty-three! I was very young and very passionate,” he said slowly. “I poured my soul onto sheet after sheet. I wanted to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and so firm as to be undeniable. After all, I was fighting for our lives and those of our family, and the families of all the other rebels—because that’s what we were then, rebels, insurrectionists. We all stood to be hung and quartered and it was up to me to explain ourselves to the world. . . . I set to work on it in a little brick house at the southwest corner of Market Street and Seventh. After a week or so of work, I copied off a rough draft and took it to Dr. Franklin and John Adams. John Adams liked it. Dr. Franklin had more than forty corrections, but he softened it with his story about the hatter. . . .” My master smiled. “That was mild compared to what happened in the Continental Congress. It was the third of July. My declaration was ready for a hearing by the gentlemen in Congress. The secretary, Mr. Thompson, began to read my draft aloud. At first everything went well. Several of the members nodded. I was congratulated on my felicity of language. They got to the end of page one. Some delegates were deeply moved. Franklin leaned over and said, ‘I wish I had written it myself!’ Then the secretary began to read the facts, the nearly thirty accusations against George III. Thompson came to the last charge. I had left it to climax the list of grievances. . . . The delegates had criticized certain phrases. . . . ‘King’ was used in place of ‘Tyrant,’ and so on. Every change hurt.” He smiled. “I was young. I sat in the back of the room with my thermometer on the windowsill outside. I was next to Dr. Franklin, who dozed off every now and then. There
was little time to lose. We had to sign the Declaration. The revolution was already in motion. Your brother Robert waited for me outside. I was much worried about my own standing at the Virginia Convention. I feared to be knifed out of Congress. Martha was expecting our child, and I had not heard from her in three weeks. My mother had gone to her grave only three months before. I sent Robert twice a day for the mail, but there was never anything. Not a word since I had left Virginia. . . . The secretary read the last charge against the king, which was that he had waged a cruel war against human nature … the enslavement of the Negro people.”

  I held my breath.

  “With the exception of South Carolina and Georgia, everyone was in principle opposed to slavery. Benjamin Franklin was the president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery.” His voice broke then and took on that charred husky tone of real defense.

  “ ‘I think it too passionate,’ somebody said.

  “ ‘Turgid.’

  “ ‘Irrational.’

  “ ‘A tirade.’

  “ ‘Completely irrelevant.’

  “ ‘Too strong for such a dignified document,’ said another. ‘It’s a philippic,’ said somebody else. The Reverend Witherspoon questioned its accuracy. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘the traffic existed long before George the Third was born.’ Then Edward Rutledge of South Carolina said that the question of slavery should be determined by the states themselves. The Virginia delegate said, ‘It concerns not only the importing states, it concerns the whole union.’ ‘What enriches a part enriches the whole,’ said Rutledge.

  “At that all bedlam broke loose.

  “ ‘It is dishonorable,’ put in the Maryland delegate.

  “ ‘Honor has nothing to do with it,’ said the South Carolina delegate.

  “ ‘In time,’ said Lynch, the delegate from Georgia, ‘it will disappear of its own accord.’

  “ ‘Neither morality nor wisdom have anything to do with this,’ Rutledge declared. ‘Interest and interest alone is the governing principle of nations. If the gentlemen from New England will consult their own interest, they will not oppose the importation of slaves. New England is the chief carrier! Who builds the ships? Who sails them?’

  “John Adams was mortified, because he knew this was true. So did Samuel Adams. The arguments ran back and forth. Robert was waiting outside with the package of new gloves I had bought for Martha. I had bought her seven pairs. The two Adamses descended on me.

  “ ‘The whole passage will have to be cut or South Carolina will never agree to the declaration,’ they said.

  “Benjamin Franklin opened his eyes long enough to agree with them, and to say the passage would destroy our still precarious unity.

  “I was so young. I listened to the debate swirl around this resolution in silence. I never once defended it. I didn’t think it was proper for me to defend my own declaration. I was upset. I had submitted my draft … if the Congress chose to mutilate it …

  “I had taken no part in the debate and had tried to keep calm. I prayed the passage would not be cut. The temperature at three o’clock was seventy-six degrees.” He brushed his hand across his face. “To preoccupy myself, I took my new thermometer out of its box for another reading, but my hands were shaking so, I dropped it. It fell and broke on the floor. I covered the fragments with my handkerchief. Dr. Franklin had been observing me under his half-closed eyelids. I suppose he took pity on me. ‘Come to my house tonight,’ he said. ‘Sally’s making a wonderful dinner.’

  “Those were his last words I remember. Sally was his daughter.

  “You were three years old …

  “The next day I took my seat again in the last row. I kept my eye on the Southern delegation: Rutledge, Middleton, Lynch, Gwinnett, Hall. . . . Washington was named commander-in-chief of the American armies that morning. Dr. Franklin kept pressing upon me the need for an agreement on the declaration. I wished mightily for George Wythe … any ally—but he had been detained in Williamsburg. He would arrive when it was all over,” he said bitterly.

  “The Congress skipped over the passage on slavery and read the closing portions. I sat and marked the mutilations on my own copy. After the final paragraph had been read and revised, they took up the passage on slavery again. I listened in silence to the appeal to God, to reason, to humanity, to future generations.

  “ ‘National sins will be punished by national calamities,’ somebody said.

  “All through the afternoon they droned on. Everybody was restless. The flies from the stables across the street tormented us. The declaration could not be postponed. The news from New York was bad. Washington was in trouble. Staten Island was taken. The declaration was vital. Nothing should jeopardize the main design or delay it further. If the passage in question blocked the road to unity, it would have to be cut.

  “The honorable gentlemen from the North were confused. ‘Compromise,’ ‘Yield,’ ‘Hope for the best,’ ‘Concensus,’ ‘Delay,’ ‘Fight the war first,’ ‘Time,’ ‘Shipping interest.’

  “Where was majority rule? I thought. But I was silent. Franklin was silent. Sherman was silent. Adams was silent. And Rutledge held the trump card: secession from the not even formed union. . . . John Adams looked at his watch. I looked around me. Everything in the room, the smell of sweat and tobacco, the heat, the flies, the Northerners, the Southerners, Adams, Hancock, Franklin, said, ‘Let’s worry about slavery another day … let’s get out of here.” He smiled.

  “I remember everything hurt. My eyes. My neck, my head, my stomach hurt.” He paused. “The clause reprobating the enslaving of the inhabitants of Africa was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia,” he said quietly, but his voice shook. He passed his hand in front of his face again, as if to wipe out the last weary arguments.

  “What an incomprehensible machine is man! Here we were, rebels, all of us, depriving one-sixth of our population of the same liberty we were fighting and risking our heads for!”

  “But you think black and white can never live in peace and equality here.”

  “I would have sent them home.”

  I sat stunned. I tried to embrace the immensity of what he had just told me. I grasped at the easiest thing to understand: that three years after I was born, he had tried to rescue me. He had truly tried.

  “I have often thought,” he whispered, “if my declaration had been adopted as I had written it … you would not be here, for there would be no slavery in America, no slaves.”

  In the terrible silence that followed, how I loved him.

  Then I did look at him. He had turned on his side. His voice was muffled.

  “From that day I vowed never never to put myself in that jeopardy again. I vowed never to raise my voice in defense of myself or my principles—especially about that. I washed my hands of it! I vowed to let the Almighty, if there is one, do his own work!”

  There was only silence in the room. His brow, his cheeks, his lips were relaxed. He had fallen asleep.

  I snuffed out the candle.

  We would never speak of Philadelphia again.

  CHAPTER 26

  CHRISTMAS 1795

  On what consists the greatness of a despot? In his own intrinsic merits? No, in the degradation of the multitude who surround him. What feeds the vanity of a patrician? The consciousness of any virtue that he inherits with his blood? The list of his senseless progenitors would probably soon cease to command his respect if it did not enable him to command that of his fellow creatures.

  FRANCES WRIGHT, Views of Society and Manners in America, 1821

  Perhaps the condition of women affords, in all countries, the best criterion by which to judge the character of man. Where we find the weaker sex burdened with hard labour, we may ascribe to the stronger something of the savage, and where we see the former deprived of free agency, we shall find in the latter much of the sensualist.

  FRANCES WRIGHT, Views of Society and Manners in America, 1821

  HOLD
ING THE GREAT iron ring which housed all the Monticello keys, Elizabeth Hemings hurried down the whitewashed breezeway between the kitchen and the main house. The keys, her badge of authority, jangled in rhythm with her brisk step. The cooking odors of her domain followed her halfway down the main hall. There was only one thought in her mind: her son James was to be set free the next day, Christmas 1795, more than five years since his return from France. He had served his master while he had been President Washington’s secretary of state, she thought. And that Thomas Jefferson was at last living up to that piece of paper James had made him sign … now that his young brother Peter knew all about the art of French cooking.

  Elizabeth Hemings nodded in satisfaction. Two freed, she thought, and five to go. . . . Five only because she knew her daughter had surrendered to her love for Thomas Jefferson with such abandon. But he was as faithful to her daughter as a bridegroom, thought Elizabeth Hemings. Martha Wayles Jefferson had been dead thirteen years now and the master gave no indication of replacing her with another white wife. Thank the Lord. Not that they weren’t after him, poor man.

  As she hurried along the passage and came into the dining room of the mansion, the sounds of hammering and sawing assaulted her. After everything he had promised, Thomas Jefferson was tearing up the house again, one day before Christmas! And Sally Hemings was no help at all, egging him on in all those ideas.

  Elizabeth Hemings’ face softened at the thought of the new baby; a girl child, Harriet, more beautiful than Sally, more beautiful than anything she could have imagined. . . . There was another new baby over at Edgehill, too. Martha Jefferson Randolph had delivered promptly every year since she had fled Monticello into the arms of her cousin Thomas Mann.