CONVERSATIONS ON JEFFERSON AND JEFFERSONIAN POLITICS
Focusing on Sally Hemings
From the H-SHEAR, subject: "Hemings-Jefferson: a new approach?":Sharon Block:
[Sharon Block first asked how the TJ Heritage Society could fund a truly independent report -- see The Scholars Commission Report.]Regardless, most disturbing to me is that historians are so focused on Jefferson's paternity that Sally Hemings is virtually erased from our discussions. We always will know far more about Jefferson, but by continually focusing on paternity, we deprive ourselves of a more complex understanding of the workings of gender, sexuality, and slavery. Whichever Jefferson may have fathered children with Sally Hemings, we can't doubt that elite white men fathered enslaved children. We should be asking important questions about the relation of sexual practices to social identity in early America, rather than repeatedly covering the same ground. For instance, why do so many find (to paraphrase Annette Gordon-Reed) Jefferson having sex with a slave more problematic than his owning of other human beings? What makes sex such a (excuse the pun) hotspot?
I was recently struck by this continuing absence of Sally Hemings from popular consciousness, despite some historians' best efforts. I reviewed the excellent collection edited by Jan Lewis and Peter Onuf on Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. As their title shows, Lewis and Onuf make a special point of re-centering Hemings in this debate. Yet when I sent in my review, the journal sent me a postcard thanking me for my review of the book, Sally Menings and Thomas Jefferson."
Originally posted on H-SHEAR, April 24, 2001.
Eyler Coates
Sharon Block notes that the focus on Jefferson's paternity "virtually erased" Sally Hemings from our discussions. It is difficult to conceive how this could be so, since the issue of paternity specifically involves the question of whether Jefferson had an affair with Ms. Hemings. But in any case, this discussion here began with an examination of the Scholars Commission Report, which itself was limited to a review of the evidence related to "the question of whether Thomas Jefferson fathered one or more children by his slave Sally Hemings." The workings of gender, sexuality, and slavery, while perhaps of great interest to a historian discussing in a classroom the social context of the times, would push the present discussion far beyond the bounds of what appears to be relevant to the main question. In fact, as Block points out, there is no doubt that some white men fathered enslaved children. Whether this practice was as prevalent among "elite" white men as it was among non-elite white men is an interesting question in itself. But even that has no necessary relationship to the specific question of whether it was practiced by the elite white male, Thomas Jefferson. Even if it were shown to be a general practice, we cannot, on that basis, say that Thomas Jefferson also did it.
Similarly, the question, Why is having sex with a slave more problematic than the owning of other human beings? is a diversion from the specific question, Did Thomas Jefferson have sex with his slave Sally Hemings? Admittedly, the former, more general question is fascinating. As a person of 71 years of age, I can recall a time in my own lifetime when for a white male to have sex with a black female was considered strictly declasse. Obviously, it is not so now, but was it so in the early 1800's? That is a question worth investigating.
Comparing owning other human beings with having sex with a slave betrays a certain amount of "presentism," however. Without doubt, we are living in a time when unmarried sex is de rigueur, whereas owning slaves is unthinkable. But the early 1800's were a time when owning slaves was, at least amongst most white Southerners, perfectly acceptable, whereas unmarried sex was as roundly condemned as it was in my own early years.
All of these related issues are extremely interesting, but they are also a diversion from the narrow question, Did Thomas Jefferson father children by his slave Sally Hemings? Although the concern that certain persons have for turning the spotlight off of Thomas Jefferson and onto some of these fascinating racial and feminist issues is understandable, the proper focus here surely should be on Thomas Jefferson, not on these other issues. After all, but for Thomas Jefferson, the existence of Sally Hemings would probably not be lodged in the consciousness of a single human being living today.
July 29, 2001
Jan Lewis:
Sharon Block makes an interesting point. I am reluctant to say too much about the so-called Scholars Commission Report having read only the thirty-some-odd page summary. (The full report is not supposed to be available until the end of this month.) But in attempting to raise questions about whether Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings' children, the Scholars make an odd move, one that should be of interest to those who, like Sharon Block, believe that historians should concern themselves with Sally Hemings as well as Thomas Jefferson. The DNA evidence, whatever its limitations, did seem to answer one question rather definitively: Neither Sam nor Peter Carr could have been the father of Sally Hemings' son Eston. This fact presents something of a problem for those who want also to believe that Thomas Jefferson wasn't Eston's father, because since the middle of the nineteenth century, members of Jefferson's white family have cast the blame (or responsibility -- they were casting blame, but we may not think the act as shameful as they did) on one or the other of Jefferson's Carr nephews. If the DNA evidence rules out the Carrs, then it must cast doubt upon the reliability of this testimony from Jefferson's white grandchildren. Yet, for a variety of reasons, the Scholars want us to consider Jefferson's white family credible.With the Carrs ruled out as Eston Hemings' father, the Scholars shift the responsibility to Jefferson's brother Randolph, who seems to them to be the most likely candidate of all those male Jeffersons who carried the right DNA. At the same time, they also assert (for example, on p. 30 of their report) that while they believe Randolph Jefferson was the father of Eston Hemings, "the Carr brothers might have fathered some of Sally's older children," thereby bringing the Carr brothers back into the picture, in the process rescuing the credibility of the white Jeffersons. The Scholars continue with a discussion whose convoluted wording is in itself revealing : "We make no finding that Sally was not monogamous (with someone other than Thomas Jefferson) because the evidence is simply not there to resolve that issue either way." This reader's inference from this oddly worded sentence with its confusing double negative is that the Scholars want to leave the impression that Sally Hemings was promiscuous without their having to use that loaded word.
Of course, almost nothing is known about Sally Hemings' life, which makes it, I suppose, easy to speculate about her. But I find it a bit depressing when those speculations take the same turn as so much of the literature on black female sexuality, which takes black female promiscuity as a given.
Originally posted on H-SHEAR, April 30, 2001.
Eyler Coates, Sr.:
Jan Lewis notes that "Jefferson's white family have cast the blame ... on one or the other of Jefferson's Carr nephews. If the DNA evidence rules out the Carrs, then it must cast doubt upon the reliability of this testimony from Jefferson's white grandchildren." But why so? As with most questions of paternity involving an unmarried female, it is often difficult for anyone to know who the father was -- sometimes even the female herself! The DNA evidence only related to Sally's last child. The other children could have been fathered by other men, unless, of course, promiscuity is first eliminated. But all this various evidence itself suggests the possibility of promiscuity, and since the pieces of evidence from the various sources are not mutually exclusive, why should such a possibility be ruled out? Why must this be taking "black female promiscuity as a given" as Prof. Lewis asserts? It is merely a rational possibility drawn from the available evidence related to one person -- Sally Hemings.By the way, Jefferson's white family did not blame "one or the other" of the Carr brothers. Ellen Coolidge stated her reasons for believing it was Peter Carr who fathered Sally's children, and then added, "There is a general impression that the four children of Sally Hemings were all the children of Col. [Samuel] Carr." A "general impression" refers to plantation scuttlebutt. Obviously, no one knew with absolute certainty what went on behind Sally's closed doors, or who she did it with -- not Ellen Coolidge, and certainly not Madison Hemings, who was an infant when Sally's last child was conceived.
What we see in all these points of view are hints of unconscious bias: a fixation on the racial elements involved that blots out other considerations; an enthusiastic support of one position that results in an exaggerated denunciation of the other side; an assumption of one viewpoint that ignores additional related evidence; an accusation of bigotry based on an unreasonable refusal even to admit opposing evidence for consideration.
Originally posted on H-SHEAR, May 29, 2001.