Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy.

        The relationship between Hemings and Jefferson began in France.  Jefferson was appointed the U.S. Ambassador to France in 1786.  In July 1787, he had his nine-year old daughter join him in Paris, to prevent her from getting an epidemic of whooping cough that was going around in America.  The epidemic had just killed his other daughter, Lucy.  His nine-year-old daughter’s name was Maria, but went by Polly.  A 14-year-old slave named Sally Hemings accompanied Polly on the trip.  There is no particular reason why Sally was picked.  The most likely reason is that Sally was the closest friend of Polly. Or perhaps she was selected because she was nearly white and would adjust better in France.  For whatever reason, Sally was the one selected.

        It is known that Sally was ‘light colored and decidedly good looking’, as Jefferson’s grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph put it.  The slave, Isaac Jefferson remembered that she was ‘mighty near white…very handsome, long straight hair down her back.’ Everyone that saw Sally had described her as beautiful.  Abigail Adams was apparently concerned about this when she saw Sally first get off the boat in France.  This may have been one of the reasons why Abigail Adams is believed to have demanded that Sally be put back on the boat and be returned to the United States.         

        It was in France that the affair between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings must have started.  Historians defending Jefferson claim that no sexual affair could have happened, because Sally was only 14 when she came to France, and left when she was only 16.  However, at that time, 16 was the average age for marriage of women in America.  Even Jefferson’s daughter, Martha, got married at the age of 17.  More than likely, their relationship began as early as 1788.  The volume of letters written by Jefferson during that year and the next are missing.  Some people believe that it contained love letters to Sally and was destroyed for that reason.  However, Jefferson’s account book is still remaining.  It contains clear and convincing evidence of a special relationship between Jefferson and Hemings.  Jefferson started spending large amounts of money on Sally Hemings in April 1789, as well as buying her fine clothing and dresses.  The account book also shows that she no longer had to wash her own clothes, indicating she had achieved a high status.  In a period of seven weeks, he spent a total of 216 francs on clothes for Sally.  What is a common thing a man does for a girl he is dating?  He showers her with gifts. The next thing that happens, if the relationship gets serious, is that they move in together.  Jefferson paid rent for Sally to have her own apartment in Paris, in a different section of town from the other family members of Jefferson.  In Paris at this time, every man of importance kept a mistress on the other side of town.   Sally came to France to be a nanny for Polly, however, if that relationship continued she would have lived in the same quarters, and even the same room as Polly.  Yet, starting in April 1789, she was kept away from Polly.

         The final and perhaps the most conclusive evidence proving a relationship between Jefferson and Hemings in France was the fact that at first she refused to return to America.  She was happy in France, and was fluent in French.  If she returned to the United States, she would also loose her freedom, and become a slave again.  However, Jefferson convinced her to return with him.   He promised her that her children would receive their freedom upon reaching maturity.  This agreement proves that she must have been pregnant at the time.  If she already gave birth to a baby, the baby would be born free in France.  There would be no need for an agreement.  The agreement shows that Sally was pregnant, and that the father of the unborn baby must be Jefferson.  Otherwise, why would he suffer the embarrassment of bringing a pregnant girl back to America?  Why not leave her in France with her French lover, if he existed?  There were many other slaves available to purchase.

        Through letters, there is evidence of the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.    Jefferson’s granddaughter, Ellen Randolph Coolidge wrote a letter to her brother in 1858, stating that according to her brother, ‘Dusky Sally’ had been the mistress of a ‘married man’.  In the letter Coolidge states, “One woman known to Mr. J. Q. Adams and others as ‘Dusky Sally’ was pretty notoriously the mistress of a married man, a near relation to Mr. Jefferson’s, and there can be a small question that her children were his.”  What makes this letter so appealing is that the full text of this letter was kept secret by the family for years until it was finally published in the New York Times on May 18, 1974, over a century after it was written.  This letter is used as proof that the actual fathers of Hemings’ children were Peter Jefferson Carr and Samuel Jefferson Carr.  However, DNA tests preformed on the descendants of the Carr brothers prove that they did not father the children of Hemings.  Contrary evidence backs this fact up as well.  No one dared accuse Peter and Samuel Carr of fathering children by Sally Hemings while they were still alive.  Nearly twenty years after their death, in 1874, Henry Randall quoted that Thomas Jefferson Randolph stated that they fathered Hemings’ children.  Randall claimed that Randolph said: “If I should allow you to take Peter Carr’s corpse into court and plead guilty over it to shelter Mr. Jefferson, I should not dare again to walk by his grave: He would rise and spurn me.’  Yet, this statement implies that the claim that Peter Carr was the father of the children of Hemings is not true.  If corpses rise at all, they do not rise when true statements are made about them.  A letter written by Randall, dated June 1st, 1868 is also offered as proof that the Carr brothers were involved with Hemings.  However, in the letter he admitted that a large number of mulatto slaves at Monticello strongly resembled Thomas Jefferson and that many guests constantly got them mixed up. 

        Sally Hemings wasn’t an ordinary slave.  She didn’t even live at ‘Mulberry Row’, where all the other slaves lived.  In the 1868 letter from Henry S. Randall, it stated: ‘Walking around moldering Monticello one day with Col. T.J. Randolph he showed me a smoke blackened and sooty room in one of the colonnades, and informed me it was Sally Hemings’ room.’  There is a room in Monticello that fits the description, labeled the ‘smoke room’.  It’s connected to the secret passage way underneath the house.  Sally Hemings was also one of the few, such as Betty Brown and Betty Hemings, that were allowed to enter the main doors on the ground floor.  

        Another compelling piece of evidence is the statement of Madison Hemings, Sally Hemings’ son.  In 1873, the Pike County Republican in Waverly, Ohio, published an interview with Madison Hemings.  The interview includes the story of how the great-grandmother of Madison became pregnant on the slave ship by the owner of the ship and how his mother became pregnant in France.  These are exclusive pieces of information that were not then available in a public library.  A few historians argue that this interview is not valid, because it is not certain that the man is actually Madison Hemings.  Yet, the details provided could not have been provided by anyone other than someone with a detailed knowledge of life at Monticello.  There are a few minor mistakes, but they all concern matters that occurred before he was even born.  In the interview, he provided the names of all twelve grandchildren of Thomas Jefferson in correct order of birth.  Another factor was that he used to French term, enceinte instead of the English term, pregnant to describe his mother’s condition when she arrived in America back from France.  Sally was a fluent speaker of the French language.  Nobody faking the interview would use the French term for pregnant as Madison attributed.  Madison Hemings stated that his mother, Sally, had told him that he was the son of Thomas Jefferson.  Sally Hemings was devoted to Jefferson.  She stayed with him right up to the day he died.  She even continued to live on Monticello after his death.  Why would she lie to her son about who his father was?  

        During the interview of Israel Jefferson, who was a slave at Monticello, the Sally Hemings episode was brought up.  Israel Jefferson stated that Sally Hemings was the concubine of Thomas Jefferson.  Not only did he note their relationship, he also said that Madison Hemings was their son ‘as any other fact, which I believe from circumstances but do not positively know.’  As a resident at Monticello where Hemings and Jefferson resided, shows that he could have picked up on this information.  

        Historian Winthrop Jordan researched the timings of Sally Hemings pregnancies.  Thomas Jefferson had been with Sally nine months before the birth of each of her children.  For example, on April 17, 1804, Maria, the daughter of Jefferson, died and both Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings attended her funeral at Monticello.  On January 19, 1805, nine months and two days later, Madison Hemings was born. 

        The Will of Thomas Jefferson shows the special connection between Hemings and Jefferson.  In the codicil to his will, he granted freedom to five slaves, and implies that their wives and children will receive their freedom.  Those five slaves were Burwell Colbert, John Hemings, Joe Fossett, Madison Hemings and Eston Hemings.  All five slaves were connected to Sally.  Colbert was Jefferson’s personal valet, and Sally’s relative.  John Hemings was Sally’s younger brother, and Joe Fossett was also Sally’s relative.  Madison and Eston were the children of Sally.  Jefferson not only freed these five slaves who were blood relations of Sally, but he also petitioned the Virginia legislature to allow them to remain in the state.  Another significant fact is that while the will refers to Burwell, John and Joe as his ‘servants’, he uses the term ‘apprentices’ when referring to Madison and Eston.  Sally was not mentioned in his will, but it is known that there was some special arrangement to grant her freedom, as she was proclaimed free two years after Jefferson’s death.

        In 1998, Eugene Foster, a retired pathologist, performed DNA tests on the descendants of Thomas Jefferson’s family and Sally Hemings.  The result of the tests was that Jefferson fathered at least one of her children.  The DNA examinations showed that the Y-chromosomes of Jefferson and Hemings descendants were distinctively similar.  Evidence showed that there was a less than 1% chance that a person chosen at random would share the same set of Y-chromosome mutations that exist in the Jefferson lineage.  Lander, a DNA expert at the Whitehead Institute in Boston said: ‘The fact that Eston Hemings’ descendant has this rare chromosome, together with the historical evidence, seals the case that Jefferson fathered Eston.’  DNA evidence combined with historical evidence, seals the case that Jefferson was sexually involved with Sally Hemings, and produced at least one child from her.

        As of today, many still ponder the possibility that Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and one of the great champions in history of individual rights, freedoms and liberties, was capable of shacking up with a slave.  Jefferson was still a man, and he had desires.  However, the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings is known not just to be purely sexual, but to be full of love and compassion.  Sally lived at Monticello up until the day Jefferson died, and stood by his deathbed.  

Those who claim that Jefferson could not have possibly fathered children by his black slaves argue that the man who wrote the famous words, ‘All men are created equal,’ could not possibly at the same time have been having sex with his black slaves in a shack behind his house.   Yet, if Thomas Jefferson really thought that a black man was equal to a white man, he must have believed that a black woman was just as good as a white woman.   Jefferson was clearly attracted to women, and was not a man to remain celibate for the remainder of his life because he was a widow.  Sally, his dead wife’s half-sister, more than likely resembled Martha and therefore, Jefferson was attracted to her.  Jefferson never denied the story, even when newspapers and gossip was everywhere about this incident.  On the contrary, Sally Hemings stayed right at his side and even in the White House throughout the entire controversy.  She never left him, and he never sent her away.  If the story that Sally Hemings was actually the concubine of Thomas Jefferson, the President of the United States, at the time, were not true, then why would he not deny it?  The answer is obvious.  The story must have been true.  Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings were romantically involved, and the results of their love were children.