The Highest Calling, page 8
That Jefferson wrote this statement is paradoxical because of his commitment to slavery. While he recognized its immorality, he stopped early in his political career from trying to do much about it, as he believed it should be gradually abolished. Indeed, Jefferson had a large estate that he recognized was economically viable only because of slavery. He understood and precisely calculated the economic value to him of each slave. And he developed a sexual relationship with an enslaved person at Monticello, Sally Hemings.
This relationship was made public by one of his political enemies at the time, and Jefferson never publicly denied or admitted to it. (It has been interpreted that he later denied its existence in a private letter.) But it has widely been thought that he fathered six children with Sally Hemings, whom he probably first met when she was 14 and bringing Jefferson’s youngest daughter to France.
Many who had worshipped Thomas Jefferson were troubled that the great intellect and author of the Declaration of Independence could have had a relationship with an enslaved person. And for several centuries the relationship with Sally Hemings was not widely accepted by his admirers, or by those who worked to shape his public image.
But DNA evidence has changed all that. Historian, legal scholar, and Harvard professor Annette Gordon-Reed wrote the Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Hemingses of Monticello, in which she provided essentially incontrovertible evidence that Thomas Jefferson was indeed the father of six of Sally Hemings’s children, four of whom lived to adulthood. Those four were freed by Jefferson through the terms of his will, consistent with a promise that he apparently made to Hemings upon the beginning of their relationship in France. He did not free her in his will, supposedly because she wanted to remain in Virginia. Under Virginia law in those days, a freed slave needed permission from the state legislature to remain in the state if freed, and Jefferson presumably did not want the legislature discussing her even after his death. (Jefferson’s daughter effectively later freed Sally Hemings, who lived the remainder of her life in the Charlottesville area.)
We know little about Sally Hemings. She may have been illiterate, because enslaved people were generally not allowed to learn how to read and write. But we do know one fact that may have attracted Jefferson to her. Sally’s father, John Wayles, had impregnated one of his slaves. Wayles was also the father of Thomas Jefferson’s wife, Martha. And so it seems that the 44-year-old Jefferson saw a 14-year-old version of his wife (who died at 33) when he first saw Sally Hemings, who was herself apparently three-quarters white.
That Jefferson was a slave owner has attracted much criticism in recent years from those who think he should not be lionized by monuments and memorials. My own view is that, unlike certain Confederate generals, he is not being lionized for his active support of slavery. So I have thought that, in light of Jefferson’s having written the Declaration of Independence, among many other accomplishments, that it is still appropriate to honor him. In my own case, I decided to do so in three ways. First, I provided the lead funding to refurbish Monticello, Jefferson’s home, as long as the slave area, Mulberry Row, was rebuilt and that the visitors would be reminded about this aspect of his life. Second, I provided the lead funding to refurbish the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, provided that more information about Jefferson’s life—the good and bad—would be made available to visitors. And third, I have bought and put on public display more than a dozen rare copies of the Declaration of Independence, including the one now at Monticello.
I interviewed Annette Gordon-Reed about her book at the New-York Historical Society on March 19, 2017. Jefferson’s life was extraordinary in many ways, and while there are many interesting books on Jefferson, this one is so significant that it seemed important to include it and its author in this book.
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DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN (DR): You’ve written two books so far about Jefferson. One was the original book you wrote about him and Sally Hemings. The other one builds upon the first, The Hemingses of Monticello, which won the Pulitzer Prize. For people who may not be familiar with the background, who was Sally Hemings and when did Thomas Jefferson first meet her?
ANNETTE GORDON-REED (AGR): Sally Hemings was the daughter of Elizabeth Hemings, an enslaved woman who belonged to a man named John Wayles, who also happened to be Jefferson’s father-in-law. When Jefferson married Martha Wayles, she brought with her to Monticello Elizabeth Hemings and the six children that Elizabeth Hemings had with John Wayles. One of them was Sally Hemings. So Jefferson would have met Sally Hemings when she was two or three.
DR: Thomas Jefferson’s wife dies when he’s 39. She has given him two children who survived. On her deathbed she said, “I want you to promise me you’ll never marry again.” And he says?
AGR: “Yes.” He promised that. This is the story that’s told by the members of the Hemings family. Martha Jefferson had difficulty with childbearing and she died as the result of complications from childbirth.
DR: So she died. Thomas Jefferson had already written the Declaration of Independence, and we’ll get to that in a moment. He’s 39. His wife dies. He’s very distraught. Ultimately he gets an assignment to go to France to more or less serve as our ambassador, and he brought one of his daughters over?
AGR: He went to Paris in 1784 with his eldest daughter, Martha, and he takes along with him a man named James Hemings, who was Sally Hemings’s older brother. James is going to be taught to become a French chef. Jefferson liked French cooking, and he wanted a French chef for Monticello. He’s left two younger daughters with his sister-in-law, in the company of Sally Hemings as sort of a companion. They are at his sister-in-law’s home. Now, in this convoluted story, the sister-in-law is Sally’s half sister.
So they’re all there at Eppington, and one of the girls dies, and Jefferson at this point says, “I want my other daughter with me.” He wants to have his daughter Polly brought over by, as he says, “a careful Negro woman, such as Isabel.” Isabel Hern was about 28 years old at that point. But instead, Elizabeth—another Elizabeth, all these people have the same names—his sister-in-law, sends Sally Hemings over with the younger daughter. She’s 14, and she’s the minder for a 9-year-old. Abigail Adams is aghast. They go to London to the Adamses’ house before they go to Paris and she’s like, “What is this kid doing with this other kid?”
DR: Sally Hemings’s father was also Jefferson’s wife’s father. So Sally Hemings was the half sister of his wife. When Sally Hemings came over to Paris, she was then 14 years old?
AGR: Yes.
DR: He never actually saw his wife at 14, but he could imagine that’s what she might have looked like?
AGR: We don’t know. Sally Hemings could have looked like her. A half sister sometimes does.
DR: Sally Hemings was three-quarters white.
AGR: Yes.
DR: Okay. So Sally Hemings ultimately connects with Thomas Jefferson.
AGR: That’s a way to put it. What happens is that instead of going to get his daughter, Jefferson sends one of his servants, Adrien Petit, to London to pick up the girls, and Abigail Adams is furious.
DR: That he didn’t show up.
AGR: “You made her come over here and now you’re not even going to come to get her.” So Abigail was not happy with him. In Virginia, they had actually tricked the daughter onto the boat. They had Sally Hemings go on the ship with her, and then they said to the young daughter, “Oh, we’re just going to play a game.” And then the daughter falls asleep, and when she wakes up, they’re out to sea. So Abigail was not happy with him.
DR: So Sally Hemings shows up in Paris. Thomas Jefferson doesn’t like living in Paris, or he loves living in Paris?
AGR: He loves living in Paris. He likes the music. He likes the architecture, the civilization. He was a little frightened of the women.
DR: Was he fairly flirtatious?
AGR: Fairly, but Ben Franklin was sort of a bon vivant. He was all out in Paris.
DR: Franklin was in a league by himself.
AGR: He was in a league by himself. Jefferson was more a homebody. He went to salons, but he went to English-speaking salons, and he really didn’t like the women, whom he thought were a little forward. In Jefferson’s view, they’re prostitutes, almost, out in the streets seeking pleasure and talking politics.
DR: There’s no slavery in France then, is that right?
AGR: There’s slavery in the French colonies. There’s not supposed to be slavery in Paris. There are no slaves in France, they said, but sometimes French colonials did bring their slaves to Paris. And when they did, very often people would petition for freedom, and every petition for freedom that was made in Paris during that time was granted. It was pretty much a pro forma thing.
DR: So at some point Thomas Jefferson decides to go back to Monticello in Virginia. He says to James Hemings, “You’re free, more or less. You could be free. I can’t force you back, but you should come back.” And what does he say to Sally Hemings?
AGR: By this time she is going to have a baby, and Madison Hemings (another Jefferson-Hemings child who later gave an account of his life) said the baby is Jefferson’s baby. She did not want to go back to the United States, because if she had a child in the United States, the child would be enslaved, because slavery followed the mother. Whatever your mother was, you were. And Jefferson promises her that if she comes back with him, she will have a good life at Monticello. Any children they had would be freed when they were 21. And she agreed to that.
I should say at the time nobody really wanted to go. Jefferson was the only person who wanted to come back to the United States. His daughters didn’t want to come back. His secretary, William Short, did not want to come back. James Hemings didn’t want to come back. They were having the time of their lives there. And Jefferson was like, “I’m losing control of all these people.” He was the one who was keen on getting everybody home.
DR: You indicated that Madison Hemings said the deal was, “You come back, our children will be freed at the age of 21.” Who was Madison Hemings, and when did he say this?
AGR: Madison Hemings was the third child of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Beverly, male, was the oldest. Then there was Harriet. And then there’s James. His name was James Madison Hemings. He was born in 1805. He gave an interview to a reporter in 1873, a Pike County, Ohio, Republican, in which he was talking about his life at Monticello and mentioned this in passing, but not as the main point of the recollections that he gives. It’s annoying in a way, because you want them to say, “All the stuff about you is interesting, but we really want to know about your mother and father.” But he’s talking about his life in Ohio and life at Monticello.
DR: They go back to Monticello. Sally Hemings delivers six children?
AGR: Yes. Four survived.
DR: Of those children, most were conceived presumably when Thomas Jefferson was there at Monticello?
AGR: Yes.
DR: At the time the children were born, he was at Monticello?
AGR: Not for every one. I think only for two of the four who survived: Harriet and Eston. The other ones, Beverly and Madison, he was away at Washington.
DR: Was it common for slave owners to have affairs—if affair is the right word—with their slaves?
AGR: To have children with, yes, it was common. It was very common, and you can see that now in the DNA testing. You can see it in the family histories of African American people. But now it’s been confirmed, using DNA, by population geneticists who go around and test people and find European Y male chromosomes in almost half of African American men.
DR: Thomas Jefferson, when he comes back, gets back into government matters. When he comes back from France he’s made secretary of state under George Washington. Ultimately he quits, goes back to Virginia, then becomes vice president under John Adams. Then he’s elected our third president. At the time he’s running for president, does anybody mention Sally Hemings?
AGR: Yes, but not by name. The rumors about him began around 1798–99. They’re blind items, if you know Page Six of the New York Post. “What senior statesman is known for his interest in yellow-skin women?” Those kinds of things started appearing, and poems and so forth that people were writing about it. But not her name. Nobody mentioned Sally until James Callender, after Jefferson is president.
DR: Who is James Callender?
AGR: James Callender was a Scottish émigré who came to the United States. I guess you could call him a journalist. Jefferson was interested in his talents and paid him, actually supported him as he was writing some pretty rough things about John Adams in the 1790s during a very, very contentious time.
DR: Because Jefferson and Adams might be competitors to be president?
AGR: Absolutely. And the Federalists were giving as good as they got. Callender had supported Jefferson in the 1790s. Then, under the Alien and Sedition Act, he was put in jail by Adams’s people under the laws that he supported. Jefferson promised to pardon everybody who was put in jail for writing allegedly seditious things about the president. And once he got to the presidency, he did. He lets Callender out. Callender then wants to be paid back for all of the work that he had done.
DR: He wanted to be paid hundreds of dollars?
AGR: No. He wanted to be the postmaster of Richmond. He wanted a patronage job. It happens to people who are sort of attack dogs during a campaign and then come and want to be a secretary or something, and people say, “No, you’re an attack dog. We don’t make you the postmaster of Richmond. We want responsible people opening the mail.” And Jefferson said, “No, I’m not going to give it to you.”
That’s when James Callender says, “I know all of these things about you that people have told me in Charlottesville and Richmond.” He actually went to Charlottesville and Richmond and asked around among Jefferson’s neighbors. And he wrote a story in 1802 called “The President, Again.” “By this wench Sally he has five children,” and so forth. That’s when the news broke on not just the national scene but also the international scene. People wrote about it.
DR: If somebody’s accused of having children with a slave, which was not considered to be socially appropriate for whites in those days, certainly not for the president of the United States, the accused presumably would respond. What did Jefferson say?
AGR: Nothing. He said nothing. First of all, Jefferson was not a fool. He was many things, but not that. Not to say that Alexander Hamilton was, but just a few years before, he had gotten into trouble because people assumed that he was stealing from the Treasury. He said, “I’m not stealing from the Treasury. All those payments that I’m giving, they’re for some other reason.” And he basically admitted in a pamphlet that he was being extorted by the husband of a woman with whom he was sleeping. He was carrying out an adulterous affair, thinking, “If I’m okay on the public side, this private stuff isn’t anybody’s business.” It was the worst thing for him to have done.
So Jefferson, who was a very savvy politician, just shut up. His surrogates came out and said, “Oh, this didn’t happen.”
DR: Jefferson never admitted it, never denied it.
AGR: He did say things like, “All these things they’re saying about me are untrue.” And so what people say is, “Aha. That’s a denial.” Except it’s really not, because they were saying lots of things about him. And some of them were true.
DR: When he was president, did Sally Hemings ever come to the White House?
AGR: We don’t know. People went back and forth between Monticello and the White House, or the President’s House as it was called, all the time.
DR: So when Jefferson is finished being president, he goes back to Monticello. He’s got his oldest daughter, Martha, the only surviving child from his marriage, living there. And she has 11 children?
AGR: She had 12, but one died.
DR: So the scene at Monticello is there are 11 children of Martha’s living there, his grandchildren. He’s got his children from Sally Hemings living there. What was it like with all these kids?
AGR: Madison Hemings describes Jefferson as being kind, but he says, “He was not in the habit of showing us partiality or fatherly affection.” He was affectionate with his grandchildren, meaning he bounced them on his knee and was playful. But he was not in the habit of doing that with children.
There are several letters where he writes to his overseer at Poplar Forest, his retreat, and he says, “I’m coming up with Johnny Hemings and his two assistants.” Now all of the sons were apprenticed to John Hemings, who was the master carpenter. So he and Madison Hemings and Beverly and Eston would be at Poplar Forest for weeks at a time. It’s not a sense of him not being around them. It’s that he’s not acting toward them like they are his legitimate white children, which he wouldn’t have done.
DR: Why didn’t Thomas Jefferson just say, “I’m in love with you. I’m with you for 38 years of my life. Why don’t we get married?” Why couldn’t they just get married? It was against the law?
AGR: It was against the law. They couldn’t marry. You couldn’t marry someone from a different race in Virginia until 1967 and Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision.
