Editing Sally Hemings (section)

==Jefferson–Hemings controversy==
{{Main|Jefferson–Hemings controversy}}
[[File:Cock ca1804 attrib to JamesAkin AmericanAntiquarianSociety.png|thumb|left|A caricature showing Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings as chickens, titled "A philosophic cock"; created circa 1804 and attributed to [[James Akin]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/View/8/fig8_16.htm|title=Akin, the Philosophic Cock - A View at the Bicentennial}}</ref>]]

The Jefferson–Hemings controversy is the question of whether Jefferson impregnated Sally Hemings and fathered any or all of her six children of record. There were rumors as early as the 1790s. Jefferson's sexual relationship with Hemings was first publicly reported in 1802 by one of Jefferson's enemies, a political journalist named [[James T. Callender]], after he noticed several light-skinned enslaved people at Monticello.<ref name="Belz, Herman 2012">Belz, Herman. "The Legend of Sally Hemings" ''Academic Questions'' Vol. 25, No. 2 (June 2012), pp. 218–227. Via: Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed October 16, 2014).</ref> He wrote that Jefferson "kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves" and had "several children" by her. After that the story became widespread, spread by newspapers and by Jefferson's Federalist opponents.<ref name="Brief" /> Jefferson himself is never recorded to have publicly denied this allegation.<ref name="Belz, Herman 2012" /> However, several members of his family did. In the 1850s, Jefferson's eldest grandson, [[Thomas Jefferson Randolph]], said that [[Peter Carr (Virginia politician)|Peter Carr]], a nephew of Jefferson, had fathered Hemings' children, rather than Jefferson himself. This information was published and became the common wisdom, with major historians of Jefferson denying Jefferson's paternity of Hemings' children for the next 150 years.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last1=Looney |first1=J. Jefferson |title=Peter Carr (1770–1815) |url= http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Carr_Peter_1770-1815 |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopedia Virginia]] |publisher=[[Virginia Humanities]] |access-date=July 13, 2015}} {{tertiary source|date=May 2024}}</ref>

{{external media |width=210px |float=right |headerimage= |video1=[https://www.c-span.org/video/?119003-1/thomas-jefferson-sally-hemings ''Booknotes'' interview with Gordon-Reed on ''Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings'', February 21, 1999], [[C-SPAN]]<ref name="cspan">{{cite web |title=Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings |work=Booknotes |publisher=[[C-SPAN]] |date=February 21, 1999 |url= https://www.c-span.org/video/?119003-1/thomas-jefferson-sally-hemings |access-date=March 14, 2017}}</ref>}}
In the late 20th century, historians began re-analyzing the body of evidence. In 1997, [[Annette Gordon-Reed]] published a book, ''Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy'', that analyzed the historiography of the debate, demonstrating how historians since the 19th century had accepted early assumptions. They favored Jefferson family testimony while criticizing Hemings family testimony as "oral history", and failed to note all the facts.<ref>{{harvnb|Gordon-Reed|1998}}</ref> A consensus began to emerge after the results of a [[DNA analysis]],<ref name="Nature1998" /><ref>{{cite journal |title=Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the Question of Race: An Ongoing Debate |first=Peter |last=Nicolaisen |journal=Journal of American Studies |volume=37 |number=1 |date=2003 |pages=99–118 |doi=10.1017/S0021875803007023 |jstor=27557256 |s2cid=143875543 |quote=Historians, as is their wont, have usually been more reserved in their evaluation of the Jefferson-Hemings relationship than most journalists. Nonetheless, as the conferences and publications devoted to the topic attest, the DNA revelations have strongly resonated among Jefferson scholars as well. Like the media, most historians now no longer seem to question the 'truth' of the Jefferson-Hemings relationship; the questions raised almost invariably deal with the way we respond to such truth.}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Jan |last=Lewis |title= Forum: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings Redux |journal=The William and Mary Quarterly |volume=57 |number=1 |pages=121–124 |date=2000 |jstor=2674360 |quote=With the publication of E. A. Foster et al.'s study in ''Nature'' on October 31, 1998, what once was rumor now seems to be, if not proven, at least sufficiently probable that virtually all professional historians will accept that Jefferson was the father of at least one of Sally Hemings's children, her son Eston (the only one who left male-line descendants whose DNA might be tested)}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Mia |last=Bay |title=In search of Sally Hemings in the post-DNA era |journal=Reviews in American History |volume=34 |date=2006 |issue=4 |pages=407–426 |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |doi=10.1353/rah.2006.0000 |jstor=30031502 |s2cid=144686299 |author-link=Mia Bay}}</ref><ref name="PBS">{{cite web |url= https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/true/ |title=Jefferson's Blood – Is It True? |work=[[Frontline (American TV program)|Frontline]] |publisher=[[Public Broadcasting System]] / [[WGBH-TV]] |date=2000 |access-date=March 10, 2012 |quote=Now, the new scientific evidence has been correlated with the existing documentary record, and a consensus of historians and other experts who have examined the issue agree that the question has largely been answered: Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one of Sally Hemings' children, and quite probably all six.}}</ref> commissioned in 1998 by Daniel P. Jordan, president of the [[Thomas Jefferson Foundation]],<ref name="Ken Wallenborn">{{cite web |title= Minority Report, Monticello Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Heming |first=White McKenzie (Ken) |last=Wallenborn |date=April 12, 1999 |work=Monticello.org |publisher=[[Thomas Jefferson Foundation]] |url= https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/jefferson-slavery/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-a-brief-account/research-report-on-jefferson-and-hemings/minority-report-of-the-monticello-research-committee-on-thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings/ |access-date=October 19, 2020}}</ref> which operates Monticello as a [[house museum]] and archive. The DNA evidence showed no match between the Carr male line, proposed for more than 150 years as the father(s), and the one Hemings descendant tested. It did show a match between the Jefferson male line and the Eston Hemings descendant.<ref name="Assessment">{{cite web |title=Assessment of DNA Study |url= http://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/ii-assessment-dna-study |work=Monticello.org |publisher=[[Thomas Jefferson Foundation]] |access-date=March 17, 2014}}</ref>

Since 1998 and the DNA study,<ref name="Nature1998">{{cite journal |first=E. A. |last=Foster |display-authors=etal |title=Jefferson fathered slave's last child |journal=Nature |issue=6706 |pages=27–28 |date=November 5, 1998 |volume=396 |doi=10.1038/23835 |pmid=9817200|bibcode=1998Natur.396...27F |s2cid=4424562 }}</ref> several historians have concluded that Jefferson maintained a long sexual relationship with Hemings and fathered six children with her, four of whom survived to adulthood. In an article that appeared in ''Science'',<ref>{{cite journal |first=Eliot |last=Marshall |title=Which Jefferson Was the Father |journal=Science |date=January 8, 1999 |volume=283 |issue=5399 |pages=153–155 |doi=10.1126/science.283.5399.153a |pmid=9925468|s2cid=38586063 }}</ref> eight weeks after the DNA study, Eugene Foster, the lead co-author of the DNA study, is reported to have "made it clear that Thomas was only one of eight or more Jeffersons who may have fathered [[Eston Hemings]]".<ref name="Study">{{cite web |title=Background DNA Study: The Jefferson-Hemings DNA Study as told by Herbert Barger, Jefferson Family Historian |orig-year=1999 |date=August 30, 2000 |url= http://jeffersondnastudy.com/background-dna-study/ |work=JeffersonDNAStudy.com |publisher=Herbert Barger (self-published) |access-date=October 19, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Thomas Jefferson's Y Chromosome Belongs to a Rare European Lineage |first1=Turi E. |last1=King |first2=Georgina R. |last2=Bowden |first3=Patricia L. |last3=Balaresque |first4=Susan M. |last4=Adams |first5=Morag E. |last5=Shanks |first6=Mark A. |last6=Jobling |journal=American Journal of Physical Anthropology |volume=132 |pages=584–589 |date=2007 |issue=4 |doi=10.1002/ajpa.20557 |pmid=17274013 |url= https://www.csueastbay.edu/museum/files/docs/exhibit/dna/dna-thomas-jeffersons-chromosome.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200719173158/https://www.csueastbay.edu/museum/files/docs/exhibit/dna/dna-thomas-jeffersons-chromosome.pdf |archive-date=2020-07-19 |url-status=live }}</ref> The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) published in 2000 an independent historic review in combination with the DNA data,<ref name="monticelloreport" /><ref name="Assessment" /> as did the [[National Genealogical Society]] in 2001; scholars involved mostly concluded Jefferson was probably the father of all Hemings' children.<ref name="Brief" /><ref>{{cite journal |first=Helen F. M. |last=Leary |journal=National Genealogical Society Quarterly |volume=89 |issue=3 |date=September 2001 |pages=207, 214–218 |title=Sally Hemings' Children: A Genealogical Analysis of the Evidence |type=Leary concluded that "the chain of evidence securely fastens Sally Hemings' children to their father, Thomas Jefferson"}}</ref>

In an interview in 2000, the historian Annette Gordon-Reed said of the change in historical scholarship about Jefferson and Hemings: "Symbolically, it's tremendously important for people&nbsp;... as a way of inclusion. [[Nathan Huggins]] said that the Sally Hemings story was a way of establishing black people's birthright to America."<ref name="G-RInterview" />

A vocal minority of critics,<ref>{{cite book |first=Francis D. |last=Cogliano |title=Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |date=2006 |jstor=10.3366/j.ctt1r2623 |quote=For most of the twentieth century serious Jefferson scholars denied the likelihood of a sexual relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. That, by 2001, the primary 'defense' of Jefferson was maintained by a fringe group espousing reactionary politics and employing hysterical rhetoric is testimony to how quickly the historiographical consensus regarding the Jefferson-Hemings question shifted in 1997–8. |pages=183–184|isbn=9780748624997 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Life at Jefferson's Monticello, as His Slaves Saw It |work=NPR.org |publisher=[[National Public Radio]] |first=Karen |last=Grigsby Bates |date=March 11, 2012 |url= https://www.npr.org/2012/03/11/148305319/life-at-jeffersons-monticello-as-his-slaves-saw-it}}</ref> such as the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society (TJHS, founded shortly after the DNA study),<ref name="Martha Hodes">{{cite journal |first=Martha |last=Hodes |title=Sally Hemings: Founding Mother: Reviewed Work: Mongrel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings by Clarence E. Walker |journal=Reviews in American History |date=2010 |volume=38 |number=3 |pages=437–442 |doi=10.1353/rah.2010.0022 |jstor=40865440 |author-link=Martha Hodes |quote=The Thomas Jefferson Foundation which owns Monticello, embraced Jefferson's paternity of Hemings' children in 2000, but a minority opinion stubbornly stuck by Jefferson's single cloak denial and the denials of descendants&nbsp;.... The next year, the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society (founded shortly after the Thomas Jefferson Foundation concurred with the DNA-based conclusions) sponsored a commission that refuted the scientific evidence, and published ''The Jefferson-Hemings Myth: An American Travesty'', an essay collection of considerable convolution and belligerence.}}</ref> dispute Jefferson's paternity of Hemings' children.<ref name="stockman_monticello">{{cite news |last1=Stockman |first1=Farah |title=Monticello Is Done Avoiding Jefferson's Relationship with Sally Hemings |url= https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/us/sally-hemings-exhibit-monticello.html |access-date=January 14, 2020 |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=June 16, 2018}}</ref> All but one of 13 TJHS scholars expressed considerable skepticism about the conclusions.<ref name=JHSC/> The TJHS report suggested that Jefferson's younger brother [[Randolph Jefferson]] could have been the father – the DNA test cannot distinguish between Jefferson males. They also speculate that Hemings might have had consensual or non consensual sexual relations with multiple men.<ref name="JHSC" /> Three of the Hemings children were given names from the Randolph (surname) family, relatives of Thomas Jefferson through his mother. Herbert Barger, the founder and director-emeritus of the TJHS and the husband of a Jefferson descendant, assisted Foster in the DNA study.<ref name="Study" /> By contrast, all but one member of the DNA Study Committee commissioned by TJF thought that the DNA and documentary evidence combined made it probable that Thomas Jefferson was the father of one or more of the Hemings children.

{{Quote box|title=from review of book ''The Hemingeses of Monticello: An American Family'' by [[Annette Gordon-Reed]]||fontsize=92%|quote=Until very recently, American historians were no more receptive to arguments about a sexual relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings than ''[[The Da Vinci Code]]'''s [[Catholic Church]] was to a romance between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The goal of the historians was to protect their hero from charges of hypocrisy. [[Dumas Malone]], the greatest in a long line of Jefferson hagiographers, established the common wisdom when he wrote that an interracial sexual affair was "distinctly out of character, being virtually unthinkable in a man of Jefferson's moral standards and habitual conduct." [[Virginius Dabney]] concluded that given Jefferson's documented horror of miscegenation, "It would indeed have been the height of hypocrisy for a man who entertained such views and expressed them over most of his adult life to have sired mulatto children." Case closed. In a review of [[Fawn Brodie]]'s ''Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History'' (1974),
which was the first scholarly work to credit the Jefferson-Hemings liaison, [[Garry Wills]] accepted the possibility of
Jefferson having "sired" Sally Heming's seven children and saved his scorn for Brodie's contention that Jefferson and Hemings forged a deep emotional bond during an intimate relationship that lasted nearly forty years.|author=Jane Dailey|source=''Law and History Review'', November 2010, Vol. 28, No. 4|align=left|width=35%}}
TJF committee participant W. McKenzie (Ken) Wallenborn wrote a late-1999 [[Dissenting opinion|minority report]] disagreeing with some aspects of the committee's full report (not made public until 2000; TJF also published this dissent in 2000).<ref name="Ken Wallenborn" /> While Wallenborn concurred with the validity of the [[genetic testing]] and with the documentary research collected, he disputed some of the interpretation, and concluded: "The historical evidence is not substantial enough to confirm nor for that matter to refute [Jefferson's] paternity of any of the children of Sally Hemings."<ref name="Ken Wallenborn" /> He gave considerable weight to four pieces of non-genetic evidence. First are a pair of late letters of Jefferson to close associates which can be read as denials of adultery slanders spread by Federalist political enemies (though the letters do not specifically mention Hemings). Second is an unequivocal counterclaim made by Jefferson's foreman Edmund Bacon and published by H. W. Pierson (with the name of the alleged actual father redacted). Third is that Col. Thomas Jefferson Randolph, who was frequently in his grandfather Thomas Jefferson's household and who worked as his farm manager and was later his estate [[executor]], was reported to have denied that any relations between Jefferson and any of the Hemings women existed, but claimed that resident nephew Peter Carr was involved with Sally, while her niece Betsey was openly the mistress of his brother Samuel Carr (though this account is third-hand). Finally, some materials claimed that Martha (Jefferson) Randolph and her sons demonstrated that Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings had been separated for some fifteen months before the birth of the son "who most resembled" Jefferson (presumed by Wallenborn to be Eston Hemings).<ref name="Ken Wallenborn" /> In Wallenborn's view, it was thus quite possible that Sally Hemings bore children to multiple men in the Jefferson/Randolph/Carr clan, and that none of them was necessarily Thomas Jefferson, but that the children were just genetically close, a "Jefferson DNA Haplotype carrier" in at least one case. He conceded that the DNA results "enhance the possibility" of Jefferson's paternity of one or more of the Hemings children but do not prove it. This view is consistent with that expressed by the DNA study's lead, Eugene Foster, regarding what could or could not be concluded from the DNA evidence. While supporting TJF's continued education mission at Monticello, Wallenborn warned that "historical accuracy should never be overwhelmed by political correctness".<ref name="Ken Wallenborn" />

Lucia Cinder Stanton, writing for the majority of the committee, responded a month later with a rebuttal.<ref name="L. C. Stanton">{{cite web |first=Lucia Cinder |last=Stanton |title=Response to the Minority Report, Monticello Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Heming |date=April 2000 |work=Monticello.org |publisher=[[Thomas Jefferson Foundation]] |url= https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/jefferson-slavery/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-a-brief-account/research-report-on-jefferson-and-hemings/response-to-the-minority-report/ |access-date=October 19, 2020}}</ref> She noted that the Jefferson, Bacon/Pierson, and Randolph material contained various ambiguities, partisanship, timeline errors, and contradictions or outright misrepresentations. She suggested that Madison Hemings probably knew who his father was, and there was no evidence that ghostwriter Wetmore injected fiction even if he polished the wording for print. She also indicated that the claim of a Jefferson–Hemings separation during one conception period cannot be sustained, and that Wallenborn did not correctly understand that material. Stanton stated outright that "Sally Hemings never conceived in Jefferson's absence."<ref name="L. C. Stanton" /> TJF president Jordan, though he had insisted on publication of the Wallenborn dissent,<ref name="Ken Wallenborn" /> endorsed the Stanton rebuttal.<ref name="L. C. Stanton" />

The next month, May 2000, the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society (TJHS) emerged: {{blockquote|a group of concerned businessmen, historians, genealogists, scientists, and patriots formed&nbsp;... as a response&nbsp;... to efforts by many historical revisionists to portray Thomas Jefferson as a hypocrite, a liar, and a fraud."  The new group's opening press release specifically accused the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation (TJMF, now Thomas Jefferson Foundation, TJF) and its report of "shallow and shoddy scholarship&nbsp;... to achieve an apparently desired conclusion.<ref>{{cite web |title=Formation of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society |date=May 2000 |work=TJHeritage.org |publisher=Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society |url= https://www.tjheritage.org/thomas-jefferson-heritage-society |access-date=October 28, 2020}}</ref>}}

Wallenborn (a former TJMF/TJF employee before his committee participate,<ref name="Ken Wallenborn 2" /> and now a director of TJHS<ref>{{cite web |title=Directors |work=TJHeritage.org |publisher=Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society |url= https://www.tjheritage.org/directors |access-date=October 19, 2020}}</ref>) produced in June a heated follow-up reply to Stanton's rebuttal.<ref name="Ken Wallenborn 2">{{cite web |title=Reply to the Response to the Minority Report, Monticello Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Heming |first=White McKenzie (Ken) |last=Wallenborn |date=June 29, 2000 |work=Monticello.org |publisher=[[Thomas Jefferson Foundation]] |url= https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/jefferson-slavery/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-a-brief-account/research-report-on-jefferson-and-hemings/reply-to-the-response-to-the-minority-report/ |access-date=October 19, 2020}}  Published July 29, 2000, with notes by Daniel P. Jordan.</ref> He claimed that many scholars agreed with his version, and that Jordan had contradicted his support of Stanton's, having expressing skepticism of a Jefferson–Hemings affair in a [[Public Broadcasting System|PBS-TV]] documentary (though it is unclear if this was recorded before the DNA research and subsequent report). Wallenborn repeated many of his original points in more detail; bolstered the potential reliability of Bacon while casting doubt of that of the Madison-via-Whetmore memoir; and insisted again that "the son of Sally that most resembled Thomas Jefferson" surely meant Eston (without any new evidence). He added the argument that Madison Hemings' probable date of conception was close to that of the death of Jefferson's daughter Maria (arguably not a likely inspiration for sexual involvement); and that during Jefferson's presidency, Sally Hemings' exact whereabouts did not survive in any records. Wallenborn attempted to use two sets of records to show gaps in Jefferson's known location during some of the conception periods – but editorial interpolation of footnotes by Jordan with additional records closed those gaps in every case, supporting Stanton's claim.  Wallenborn added another new observation, of what he called "some striking coincidences", that Sally Hemings' known pregnancies stopped, despite Thomas Jefferson's presence, after both his brother Randolph and Randolph's son Thomas married women outside Monticello, c. 1808 or 1809.<ref name="Ken Wallenborn 2" /> Wallenborn accused TJF of rushing the report to finalization without accounting for his objections, and concluded his letter in a much more hostile tone than in his original minority report: "If the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and the DNA Study Committee majority had been seeking the truth and had used accurate legal and historical information rather than politically correct motivation" that it would have written "''it is still impossible to prove with absolute certainty whether Thomas Jefferson did or did not father any of Sally Hemings' five children''" (emphasis in original).<ref name="Ken Wallenborn 2" /> He continued: "This statement is accurate and honest and it would have helped discourage 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."<ref name="Ken Wallenborn 2" /> TJF did not publish any further back-and-forth disputation.

In 2012, the [[Smithsonian Institution]] and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation held a major exhibit at the [[National Museum of American History]]: ''Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: The Paradox of Liberty''; it says that "the documentary and genetic evidence&nbsp;... strongly support the conclusion that [Thomas] Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings' children."<ref>[http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibition.cfm?key=38&exkey=1669 Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: The Paradox of Liberty] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130530094318/http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibition.cfm?key=38&exkey=1669 |date=May 30, 2013 }}, January 27, 2012&nbsp;– October 14, 2012, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved March 23, 2012. Quote: "The [DNA] test results show a genetic link between the Jefferson and Hemings descendants: A man with the Jefferson Y chromosome fathered Eston Hemings (born 1808). While there were other adult males with the Jefferson Y chromosome living in Virginia at that time, several historians now believe that the documentary and genetic evidence, considered together, strongly support the conclusion that [Thomas] Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings's children."</ref>