Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves (38 page)

48.
Randall,
Life of Thomas Jefferson
, vol. 1, pp. 337–39.

49.
Monroe quoted in Stanton,
Free Some Day
, p. 104; TJ to Martha Jefferson Randolph, Aug. 8, 1790, in
Papers
, vol. 17; TJ to Hylton, July 1, 1792, in
Papers
, vol. 24.

50.
There is no mention of Martin in the Memorandum Book after TJ's return from France.

51.
TJ to Hylton, Nov. 22, 1792, in
Papers
, vol. 24. TJ was at Monticello from July 22 to September 27, and Martin is not mentioned in his household accounts. Bear and Stanton,
Jefferson's Memorandum Books
, vol. 2, pp. 877–78.

52.
TJ to Martha Jefferson Randolph, Jan. 22, 1795, in
Papers
, vol. 28.

53.
When Robert was sold to Dr. Stras, it was noted in the Memorandum Book, but Martin's sale was not; nor is there a record of his death. Some sources state that Martin Hemings died in 1807, but that is an error based on a misreading of TJ's records; there was another Martin who died in 1807.

54.
Bear,
Jefferson at Monticello
, p. 4.

13. America's Cassandra

1.
Turner,
Jefferson-Hemings Controversy
, pp. 355–56.

2.
Fleming,
Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers
, pp. 409–16.

3.
The Woodson family oral history states that Tom Woodson was Sally Hemings's first child; but Madison Hemings never mentioned Tom Woodson, and the DNA test did not find any link between the Woodson and the Jefferson families. Joseph Fossett's descendants have claimed that he was TJ's son, but Madison Hemings, speaking of himself and his Hemings siblings, insisted, “We were the only children of his by a slave woman.”

4.
Durey,
With the Hammer of Truth
, p. 160.

5.
Joshua D. Rothman,
Notorious in the Neighborhood
, p. 30; Burton,
Jefferson Vindicated
, p. 30.

6.
Burton,
Jefferson Vindicated
, pp. 12–13.

7.
Setlock, “Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings”; Arthur E. Sutherland, book review of
A Brief Narrative of the Case and Trial of John Peter Zenger
by James Alexander and Stanley Nider Katz,
Harvard Law Review
77, no. 4 (Feb. 1964), pp. 789–90;
historictrials.freeservers.com/Crosswell/wasp.htm
.

8.
Durey,
With the Hammer of Truth
, pp. 55, 124.

9.
Transcription from Monticello website. Callender adopted a high moral tone in his assault on TJ for sexual misconduct, but he was no friend of African-Americans. The same issue of the
Recorder
carried an advertisement on the front page offering a $10 reward for a runaway slave named Fanny, and another ad offered for sale “
A light, active
negro boy.” Potential buyers were advised to “enquire of the Printers.”

10.
Richmond Examiner
, Sept. 25, 1802, in McMurry and McMurry,
Jefferson, Callender, and the Sally Story
, p. 53; Joshua D. Rothman,
Notorious in the Neighborhood
, p. 35.

11.
Richmond Examiner
, Sept. 25, 1802, in McMurry and McMurry,
Jefferson, Callender, and the Sally Story
, pp. 53–54; Durey,
With the Hammer of Truth
, p. 161.

12.
Ellis,
American Sphinx
(1996 ed.), “Appendix: Note on the Sally Hemings Scandal.” Ellis revised the appendix for subsequent editions. The 1996 version is on the Monticello website:
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/cron/1996sphinx.html
.

13.
Jon Kukla examines this subject in depth and reproduces several original documents. Kukla,
Mr. Jefferson's Women
, pp. 189–98.

14.
Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, p. 350.

15.
Ibid., p. 360.

16.
Durey,
With the Hammer of Truth
, pp. 160, 168, 170.

17.
Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, p. 374;
Richmond Examiner
, July 20 and 27, 1803; McMurry and McMurry,
Jefferson, Callender, and the Sally Story
, p. 100.

18.
Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, pp. 356, 374.

19.
Richmond Examiner
, July 20, 1803; Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, p. 370; Durey,
With the Hammer of Truth
, pp. 131, 166–71, 176.

20.
Report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
, p. F5; Burton,
Jefferson Vindicated
, pp. 133–34.

21.
I am grateful to Jon Kukla for providing his transcriptions of the Cocke Diary, from the Cocke Papers, box 188, MSS no. 640. TJ's defenders question Cocke's truthfulness, claiming that he nursed a grudge against TJ for a variety of reasons, one being that his roof leaked because he had followed a Jeffersonian design: “He was probably jealous and resentful.” Burton,
Jefferson Vindicated
, pp. 94–96.

22.
Lanier and Feldman,
Jefferson's Children
, p. 19. A TJ defender has alleged that the exclamation is a later interpolation by an unknown person, but the handwriting is identical to that on the rest of the page.

23.
In his 1874 biography James Parton briefly brought up the Hemings story in order to dismiss it. Parton,
Life of Thomas Jefferson
, p. 569.

24.
Hemings, “Life Among the Lowly”; Israel Jefferson, “Reminiscences of Israel Jefferson,” in Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, p. 481. Israel Jefferson's original last name is now known to have been Gillette; he adopted the Jefferson surname at the urging of the Albemarle County clerk. Jeff Randolph's unsent letter: Justus,
Down from the Mountain
, pp. 148–52. McMurry and McMurry,
Anatomy of a Scandal
, p. xxxi.

25.
Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, p. 476; Lucia Stanton and Dianne Swann-Wright, “Bonds of Memory: Identity and the Hemings Family,” in Lewis and Onuf,
Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson
, p. 176; “Extract from a letter Fiske Kimball to Gibboney,” Oct. 28, 1938, Genealogical data pertaining to the Hemings family of Monticello, MSS 6636 6636-a 6636-b 6636-c, Special Collections, University of Virginia. Quite possibly, Kimball made his remark not out of any prejudice of his own but from an awareness of the prejudice of his recipient.

26.
Dos Passos was then writing
The Head and Heart of Thomas Jefferson
. Malone and Hochman, “Note on Evidence,” p. 523. McMurry and McMurry,
Anatomy of a Scandal
, p. xxxi.

27.
They wrote, “Our concern here…is with the circumstances of its appearance rather than its contents.” Malone and Hochman, “Note on Evidence,” pp. 524, 526.

28.
Peterson,
Jefferson Image in the American Mind
, pp. 186–87. In addition to the Madison Hemings memoir, Peterson was discounting kinship claims by the Fossett family that had appeared in
Ebony
magazine.

29.
Brodie also gave tentative credence to James Callender's allegation that TJ had been the father of “President Tom,” supposedly the firstborn child of Sally Hemings, even though Madison Hemings made no mention of a brother named Tom in his memoir, listing his siblings as Beverly, Harriet, and Eston. He said his mother became pregnant in France by TJ and that the infant died at Monticello shortly after its birth. Brodie explained the contradiction by speculating that Tom had left Monticello before Madison's birth and that Sally wished to keep Tom's existence a secret even from his siblings to protect Tom's new identity. But Brodie rejected claims by Joseph Fossett's descendants that he was TJ's son. Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, pp. 292, 558n45.

30.
Ibid., pp. 229–30.

31.
Ibid., pp. 292, 439, 536n21; Harold Coolidge to Brodie, Dec. 14, 1970, in Bringhurst, “Fawn Brodie's
Thomas Jefferson
,” p. 441.

32.
Ellen (Eleanora) Wayles Randolph Coolidge to Joseph Coolidge, Oct. 24, 1858,
Monticello.org
, Family Letters Digital Archive,
http://familyletters.dataformat.com/default.aspx
. Ellen's letter was published in
Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society
84, pt 1 (April 1974), pp. 65–72, and in
New York Times,
May 18, 1974.

33.
New York Times
, July 4, 1984, p. C9.

34.
Dabney and Kukla, “Monticello Scandals,” p. 61.

35.
Herbert Barger website:
http://jeffersondnastudy.com/
(accessed Dec. 7, 2011).

36.
No descendants of Beverly Hemings could be found—he had disappeared into the white world—and Madison had no living direct male descendants.

37.
The DNA findings brought not just revelation but destruction. Fawn Brodie's “vindication” had been partial and very ambiguous. Though she thought there had been a “President Tom” Woodson born of Hemings and TJ in 1790, the DNA evidence proving that the Woodsons had no blood tie to the Jeffersons suggested to some that “President Tom” might never have existed, that James Callender had lied or been misled by his sources, and that Brodie had chased a phantom. In any case, Brodie, who died long before the DNA tests, had not been entirely convinced that the Woodson family was descended from President Tom: “The tie relating Thomas Woodson to Jefferson and Sally Hemings is not yet binding, but further research may uncover the essential links. The tenacious Woodson family oral history cannot be discounted just because all the links have not yet appeared.” Brodie, “Thomas Jefferson's Unknown Grandchildren.” The strength of the Woodson family's oral history suggests that they have some connection to the Monticello community.

38.
Lander and Ellis, “Founding Father.”

39.
Nature
, Jan. 7, 1999, p. 32.

40.
As one of Jefferson's defenders wrote: “The new ‘evidence' was rushed to press in the middle of the congressional impeachment inquiry of Bill Clinton. Prof. Ellis actively opposed the impeachment effort, and he repeatedly used his new position to draw parallels in defense of Mr. Clinton.” Turner, “Truth About Jefferson.”

41.
Safire, “Sallygate.”

42.
Media Research Center,
CyberAlert
, Nov. 3, 1998,
www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/1998/cyb19981103.asp#2
.

43.
Daniel P. Jordan, statement on the
Report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
, Jan. 26, 2000; “Jefferson Likely Dad of Slave Child,” Associated Press, Jan. 26, 2000.

44.
Daniel Jordan quote:
www.pbs.org/jefferson/archives/interviews/jordan.htm
.

45.
Philip D. Morgan, “Interracial Sex in the Chesapeake,” in Lewis and Onuf,
Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson
, p. 78. One member of Monticello's staff committee, White McKenzie Wallenborn, M.D., dissented from the majority view. He contended in his minority report that TJ had denied the Hemings allegations, and he concluded, “The historical evidence is not substantial enough to confirm nor for that matter to refute his paternity.” In a later statement he wrote that the Monticello committee's conclusion had opened the door to “the campaign by leading universities (including Thomas Jefferson's own University of Virginia), magazines, university publications, national commercial and public TV networks, and newspapers to denigrate and destroy the legacy of one of the greatest of our founding fathers and one of the greatest of all of our citizens.” In Dr. Wallenborn's view a more accurate conclusion would have been that “it is still impossible to prove with absolute certainty whether Thomas Jefferson did or did not father any of Sally Hemings's five children.”
Thomas Jefferson Foundation DNA Study Committee Minority Report
, April 12, 1999;
Reply to Thomas Jefferson Foundation Response to the Minority Report to the DNA Study Committee
, 2nd revision, June 29, 2000; both at
Monticello.org
.

46.
Shipp, “Reporting on Jefferson,” p. B06.