Giving Thomas Jefferson the Business: The Jefferson-Hemings Hoax

A Different Drummer/Middle American News ^ | December, 2003 | Nicholas Stix

[mrustow]

In today’s America, a race hoax industry manned by black activists and their white benefactors in the media, politics, and academia produces one outrage after another, with the aim of denigrating white heroes, elevating often obscure blacks, making black racists rich and powerful, and waging race war.

So it is with the smear invented in 1802, and in recent years conscripted anew to sully the name of arguably the most brilliant of all of America's Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). The Jefferson-Hemings Hoax claims, without any evidence, that the third president, renaissance man, and author of the Declaration of Independence fathered the children of slave Sally Hemings (1773-1835). Hoaxers seek to drag Jefferson through the mud, expropriate his legacy on behalf of Hemings' descendants, and supplant scholarship with Afrocentric propaganda. The perpetrators of the Jefferson-Hemings hoax seek, without firing a single shot, to rob the American people of their patrimony.

In July, the New York Times published articles by Jefferson descendant, Lucian Truscott IV, and Times staffers James Dao and Brent Staples, insisting that “most everyone knows” (Truscott) that Jefferson had fathered some or all of Hemings’ children. Dao alleged that “compelling” DNA evidence existed, while Staples spoke of a “new reality” that vindicated the claims made for generations by “the black oral tradition.”

Truscott, Dao, and Staples all left out of their tales, that there is no evidence that Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings ever were lovers, that based on genetic evidence, any one of at least 25 men on Jefferson’s side of the family may have fathered one or more of Hemings’ children (Jefferson family historian Herbert Barger argues persuasively that Jefferson’s brother, Randolph, was Hemings’ lover.), and that the Jefferson paternity story was born as the fabrication of a disappointed office seeker (James Thomson Callender) with a history of libeling the Founding Fathers. Truscott and Staples resorted instead to insinuating that only a racist would deny the story.

The same race-baiting strategy prevails in academia, where scholar David N. Mayer observes, “…among many proponents of the Jefferson paternity claim there has emerged a truly disturbing McCarthyist-like inquisition that has cast its pall over Jefferson scholarship today. Questioning the validity of the claim has been equated with the denigration of African Americans and the denial of their rightful place in American history.”

Here’s what is known: Thomas Jefferson owned a slave named Sally Hemings. Hemings bore at least six children, but otherwise, little is known about her. During Hemings’ childbearing years, not even within the Jefferson clan, was she known as Thomas Jefferson’s lover.

In 1798, scandal-mongering newspaper editor James T. Callender, was imprisoned by President John Adams, under the Sedition Act. When Jefferson was elected president, and Callender freed, Callender demanded the job of postmaster of Richmond, Va. The demand was also a veiled threat. Although Jefferson had been Callender’s benefactor, he refused to meet the latter’s demand. Callender responded, in 1802, by loosing his libel on the world, claiming that Jefferson had a slave “concubine” named “Sally,” with whom he had fathered a child named “Tom.” (There is no evidence Hemings then had a son named Tom; her son, Thomas Eston, was not born until 1808.) Callender sought unsuccessfully to destroy Jefferson politically. In 1805, Jefferson privately denied the claim, and the myth died off.

After Jefferson’s death, propagandists periodically dug up the Callender hoax.

In 1954, racist Ebony magazine editor, Lerone Bennett Jr. (who later, in Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America, would claim that African seafarers had reached America before Europeans did), revived the hoax in an Ebony story.

In the 1970s, the myth was recycled by white “psychohistorian” Fawn Brodie, who simply projected her whimsical speculations onto the historical record.

The modern turning point in the hoax came with black law professor Annette Gordon-Reed’s 1997 book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. Gordon-Reed uncritically accepted certain black oral traditions, heaped abuse on leading Jefferson biographers, and misrepresented the contents of an 1858 letter by Jefferson’s granddaughter, Ellen Randolph Coolidge, to her husband, in which Coolidge had denied the possibility of a Jefferson-Hemings liaison.

Bryan Craig, research librarian at the Jefferson Library, at Monticello, Jefferson’s estate, faxed this reporter a photocopy of the original Coolidge letter.

The letter actually said, "His [Jefferson’s] apartments had no private entrance not perfectly accessible and visible to all the household. No female domestic ever entered his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be there and none could have entered without being exposed to the public gaze."

In Prof. Gordon-Reed’s hands, the second sentence changed, as if by magic, to "No female domestic ever entered his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be in the public gaze."

Gordon-Reed’s changes turned the letter’s meaning on its head, supporting claims that Jefferson could have had secret trysts with Hemings. Either Gordon-Reed committed one of the most dramatic copying errors in the annals of academia, or one of the most egregious acts of academic fraud of the past generation.

Ironically, it was Prof. Gordon-Reed, who politely, promptly, directed me to the Jefferson Library, where I obtained a copy of the original Coolidge letter. After I e-mailed her three times about the discrepancy, Prof. Gordon-Reed finally responded, “As to the discrepancy, there was an error in transcription in my book. It was corrected for future printings.”

In January, 2000, a panel of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation (TJMF, since renamed the Thomas Jefferson Foundation), which owns Jefferson’s Monticello home, released its Monticello report claiming there was a “strong likelihood” that Jefferson had fathered ALL of Hemings’ children.

The “scholars” who prepared the tendentious, 2000 Monticello report, led by Prof. Gordon-Reed’s reported friends, Dianne Swann-Wright and Lucia Stanton, could not be bothered to study the original Coolidge letter, and instead cited the false version published in Gordon-Reed’s book. Likewise, in 2000, Boston PBS station, WGBH, presented a “documentary,” Jefferson’s Blood, which perpetuated the hoax. The Monticello Report still cites the altered Coolidge letter (on p. 6, under "Primary Sources", and the PBS/WGBH web site for Jefferson’s Blood still has the phony version posted, in its entirety,, three years after it was proven to be false, a practice typical of the Jefferson-Hemings hoax industry as a whole.

While in her book, Prof. Gordon-Reed purports not to take a position on whether Jefferson and Hemings were lovers, she takes the lawyer’s tack of “Plan B” made famous by the TV show, The Practice. She attacks all of the most celebrated white biographers of Jefferson, such as Dumas Malone, while accepting at face value dubious black oral traditions. Thus does Prof. Gordon-Reed set up the reader to fall for the hoax, with the false Coolidge letter providing the knockout punch. Supportive reviewers insisted that Gordon-Reed had proved the “possibility” of such an affair, ignoring the fact that unlike fiction, history is about what DID transpire, not what COULD HAVE transpired.

The party of tenured academic hoaxers now insists that the burden of proof rests on those who deny the existence of a Jefferson-Hemings liaison, to prove a negative! And so does the politics of racism enjoy yet another triumph over the truth.

In November, 1998, Nature magazine published an article based on the research of a team of scientists led by Dr. Eugene Foster, with the dishonest title, “Jefferson Fathered Slave’s Last Child.”

Although Foster & Co. could not possibly have confirmed (as opposed to disconfirming) Jefferson’s paternity, they leaped over the evidence to Foster’s desired conclusion: “The simplest and most probable explanations for our molecular findings "are that Thomas Jefferson … was the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson [sic] …”

Foster & Co. studied DNA from male-line descendants of Thomas Jefferson’s paternal uncle, Field Jefferson (who would have the same male Y chromosome as Thomas Jefferson), and from male-line descendants of Hemings’ last son, Eston, determining that one Jefferson male was Eston’s father. But that left at least 25 Jefferson men as candidates!

(An accompanying article in Nature by liberal historians Joseph Ellis and Eric Lander, sought to exploit the hoax, to rescue the authors’ sexually compromised hero, Bill Clinton.)

Descendants of Sally Hemings' son, Madison, refused to permit Madison's son, William, to be exhumed. Such cooperation would have resulted either in Madison's being shown to be the offspring of some male-line Jefferson, or of his being genetically excluded from the Jefferson line.

But male-line descendants of slave Thomas Woodson, whose family oral tradition insists he was born to Jefferson and Hemings, were genetically excluded from the Jefferson line. (The Thomas C. Woodson Family Association has ignored the finding.) Woodson has been assumed by the hoaxers to be the slave whom James T. Callender claimed was Hemings' first child (“Tom”). Either Woodson was not Hemings' son, or Hemings was not monogamous. If the former case is true, James T. Callender was a complete and utter liar. If the latter case is true, black oral traditions and contemporary pseudo-scholarship that have claimed that Hemings carried on an almost 40-year, monogamous love affair with Thomas Jefferson are refuted, and Hemings was not involved with ANY Jefferson male in late 1780s Paris, the time and place the legend insists the affair began.

Unscrupulous journalists and professors immediately insisted that the Foster study had “proven” that Jefferson was the father of Hemings’ children. The spirit of James T. Callender was alive and well.

The other source of claims of Jefferson’s paternity is the “black oral tradition.” However, the hoaxers have ignored Hemings descendants’ mutually contradictory oral traditions, the DNA evidence, the fact that Eston Hemings never claimed to be Jefferson’s child, and scholars’ persuasive argument that the “black oral tradition” that insists on Jefferson’s paternity, is itself the bastard offspring of the Callender hoax.

Racist black professors and journalists, and their elite white allies, now insist that black oral history be given pride of place over documentary evidence. But oral history has always been the stuff of myth, and in the case of the black tradition, often racist myth. Relying on “oral history” would open the door to instant historical rewrites through contemporary black race hoaxes.

Scandalized by the TJMF’s conduct, a group of scholars formed a blue-ribbon Scholars Commission. Excepting one dissent, its members found no evidence to support the Hemings story. Dissenter Paul A. Rahe, determined that although it was for him somewhat likelier than not that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings (1808-?), ultimately the case was inconclusive. The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society was also formed, and in 2001 published the invaluable book, The Jefferson-Hemings Myth: An American Travesty, that is highly critical of the Foster and TJMF reports, and accompanying media and academic circus.

The Jefferson-Hemings story is a case study in the use of scholarly and journalistic fraud and racial intimidation by people for whom the written word functions solely as a weapon in a race war. The Jefferson-Hemings hoaxers seek to steal America’s history, and replace it with a counterfeit version, in order to oppress America’s white majority.

Originally published in the December, 2000, Middle American News.

[The Raven]

If libs always tell fibs....what good are they???

[lepton]

Didn't Benjamin Franklin have a child in illegitimacy too?

"A" child? :)

[cyborg]

Just 'A' child... I hope. I wasn't there...LOL I need to stop these all day FReepings.

[lepton]

Yeah, I tend to agree with you.

How do you know what he's read in the past?

[cyborg]

I've read things from credible resources, and since there's no definitive conclusion that he isn't, I tend to believe he is. That does not make him any less a president. My favorite president happens to be Ron Reagan BTW. I was more disappointed about Rudy Giuliani openly waving his adulterous girlfriend in front of his son, than thinking about Jefferson.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Sobering.

Lies, damned liars, and liberals!

(Not much difference.)

[lepton]

I guess they can find some strained method to question the DNA evidence

Or have some idea what the DNA evidence actually says: Simply that some male member of the general Jefferson family is an ancestor of at least some of the Hemmings descendants.

Etymology can help you.

[Servant of the 9]

Yes, the side of the race dissemblers and hustlers does make him less of a great man--because attached to the "fact" of his fathering the kids with Hemmings is a whole train car of baggage: he was a hypocrite, a racist, a liar, and that therefore makes him, and his part in founding the country, less legitimate--less great.

No, both sides are premising their arguments on the belief that if Jefferson did father children on his slave he was a hypocrite and a racist.
I reject that.
Whether or not he had a black concubine, he was living an honest and moral life within the mores of the time and place.
He cannot be judged by a standard that was completely unknown during his life.

Did he deny it during his lifetime? Yes.
If what he said was untrue, he was acting as a gentleman to protect his privacy and dignity. Calling that a lie is simplistic.

So9

[Puppage]

How do you know what he's read in the past?

Ah, that's cute.

I agree with his view on the subject based on what I HAVE read, as well. His reading, my reading....same conclusion, etc.

[cyborg]

I agree that we can't judge these people to today's standards. Anyone living that kind of lifestyle now should know better. Any man leading a life of bastardry with the other woman (no matter what race/ethnicity is involved) is condemning that child to a life of stigma and sloppy seconds affection. If the child makes it, it will inspite of the man and woman's lust for sex over having a real family.

[Sabertooth]

In the News/Activism forum, on a thread titled Giving Thomas Jefferson the Business: The Jefferson-Hemings Hoax, TomServo wrote: Ping! I believe you had a few links on this junk.

Here you go...

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings

An article in the November 5, 1998, edition of Nature provides DNA evidence that Thomas Jefferson or some other male Jefferson such as Randolph, the brother of Thomas, could have been the father of one of the sons of Sally Hemings, who was a slave at Jefferson's Monticello. The technique relies on the fact that the human Y-chromosome is handed down directly from father to son and that all paternally related males will have the same Y-chromosome. Although Thomas Jefferson did not have any sons who survived to produce children, his father's brother, Field Jefferson, did have sons and it has been possible to locate 5 descendants of Field Jefferson who are in a direct male-line of descent. Thus, these individuals (descendants of Field Jefferson) should have the same Y-chromosome DNA as the Y-chromosome DNA of Thomas Jefferson and any male-line descendant of his.
The male-line descendants of two of Sally Hemmings sons were located and their Y-chromosome DNA was examined for comparison to the Y-chromosome DNA of Field Jefferson's descendants. The DNA from the five male-line descendants of Thomas Woodson, oldest son of Sally Hemings, did not match the Jefferson DNA. In fact, one of Woodson's descendants did not match well with the other four. However, the DNA from the one descendant of Eston Hemings, youngest son of Sally Hemings, did match the Jefferson DNA.
This lends credence to the supposition that Thomas Jefferson may have been the father of Eston Hemings. However, historian Williard S. Randall, notes, "There were 25 men within 20 miles of Monticello who were all Jeffersons and had the same Y chromosome. And 23 of them were younger than Jefferson, who was 65 years old when Eston was conceived." Randall, wrote a 1993 biography of Jefferson, titled, Thomas Jefferson: A Life. More detailed information is available. Three different authors provide some perspective on Jefferson and Hemings in The Nation. Finally, the The Jefferson-Hemings Scholars Commission concluded that Randolph Jefferson, Thomas' brother, was more likely to have fathered Eston Hemings.

Other Sites of Interest

• Web resources on the Hemings Controversy (Monticello)
• The Jefferson/Hemings DNA Story (Jefferson Family Historian)
• The Jefferson-Hemings Scholars Commission (April 12, 2001)
• Summary of above by Robert F. Turner

This document maintained by Robert J. Huskey Last updated on February 25, 2003.

LINK

There's more...

Y Chromosome DNA Data on Jefferson and Hemings

Defining the Possible Link Between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings:
Lineages and DNA Markers

In order to answer the question of whether or not Thomas Jefferson could have been the father of any of Sally Hemings' sons it is necessary to compare the Y-chromosome DNA from the living male-line descendants of Jefferson and Hemmings. Is has been possible to locate male-line descendants of two of Sally Hemings' sons, Thomas Woodson (the oldest) and Eston Hemings the (youngest), but not Madison Hemings whose male-line descendants did not survive the Civil War. Shown in the figure to the right is the lineage of the one male-line descendant (H21) of Eston Hemmings and the five male-line descendants (W55, W56, W69, W70, and W61) of Thomas Woodson whose DNA was analyzed as part of the study.
Furthermore, Thomas Jefferson did not have a son survive to reproduce so it was necessary to locate the male-line descendants of Thomas Jefferson's paternal uncle, Field Jefferson. Five such descendants (J41, J42, J47, J49, and J50) were located and their DNA was analyzed.
It was also possible to locate three male-line descendants (C27, C29, and C31) of Samuel and Peter Carr -- the sons of Thomas Jefferson's sister -- whom some consider as the possible fathers of Sally Hemings' children.
In the table below are the results of an examination of the Y-chromosome DNA of the 14 male-line descendants described above. Where an individual differs from the other members of his cohort, the allele difference is shown in bold face. The five descendants of Field Jefferson (and proxies for Thomas Jefferson) have identical Y-chromosome DNA alleles except for one microsatellite DNA from J50. This difference is most reasonably accounted for by assuming that a mutation occured.
The lone descendant of Eston Hemings has the same set of Y-chromosome DNA alleles as the descendants of Field Jefferson. This supports the claim that Thomas Jefferson could have been the father of Eston Hemings although it does not prove it since the father could have been any male who had the same Y-chromosome as Thomas Jefferson and was in the immediate vicinity of Sally Hemings nine months before the birth of Eston Hemings. In fact, historical evidence implicates Randolph Jefferson, Thomas' brother, as the more likely father of Eston Hemings. The Carr descendants have similar DNA among themselves but are clearly different from either the Jefferson or Hemings descendants.
Four of the descendants of Thomas Woodson are quite similar among themselves but different from Jefferson and Hemings although they do have similarities to the descendants of the Carr line. One of the Woodson descendants is quite different from all of the other individuals which suggests that one of the genetic ancestors was not in the direct line from Thomas Woodson.

	Family	Pedigree Member	Bi Allelic Markers	Microsatellite STR	Mini Satellite MSY1
	Jefferson	J41	0000001	15,12,4,11,3,9,11,10,15,13,7	(3)5, (1)14, (3)32, (4)16
J42		0000001	15,12,4,11,3,9,11,10,15,13,7	(3)5, (1)14, (3)32, (4)16
J47		0000001	15,12,4,11,3,9,11,10,15,13,7	(3)5, (1)14, (3)32, (4)16
		J49	0000001	15,12,4,11,3,9,11,10,15,13,7	(3)5, (1)14, (3)32, (4)16
J50		0000001	15,12,4,11,3,9,11,10,16,13,7	(3)5, (1)14, (3)32, (4)16
	Hemings	H21	0000001	15,12,4,11,3,9,11,10,15,13,7	(3)5, (1)14, (3)32, (4)16
Carr	C27	0000011	14,12,5,12,3,10,11,10,13,13,7	(1)17, (3)36, (4)21
	C29	0000011	14,12,5,11,3,10,11,10,13,13,7	(1)17, (3)37, (4)21
	C31	0000011	14,12,5,12,3,10,11,10,13,13,7	(1)17, (3)36, (4)21
Woodson	W55	0000011	14,12,5,11,3,10,11,13,13,13,7	(1)16, (3)27, (4)21
	W56	0000011	14,12,5,11,3,10,11,13,13,13,7	(1)16, (3)27, (4)21
	W69	0000011	14,12,5,11,3,10,11,13,13,13,7	(1)16, (3)27, (4)21
	W70	1110001	17,12,6,11,3,11,8,10,11,14,6	(0)1, (3a)3, (1a)11, (3a)30, (4a)14, (4)2
	W61	0000011	14,12,5,11,3,10,11,13,13,13,7	(1)16, (3)28, (4)20

Other Sites of Interest

• Web resources on the Hemings Controversy (Monticello)
• The Jefferson/Hemings DNA Story (Jefferson Family Historian)

This document maintained by Robert J. Huskey Last updated on February 25, 2003.

LINK

[CatoRenasci]

As you no doubt know, the DNA tests only excluded the Carrs as Easton Hemmings' father. And Woodson was clearly not fathered by any Jefferson. There were several Jeffersons who were present during the times Easton was concieved. There is also no evidence that Hemmings children all had the same father. The descendents of her other son's line refuse to permit DNA testing.

All in all, case not proven. And still unlikely.

[centurion316]

First a disclaimer. I am a descendant of Field Jefferson, the uncle whose descendants provided the DNA used to test the paternity.

I fully support the findings that Eston Hemmings is a Jefferson descendanty, and thereby, my cousin. We have known for decades that such misogyny occurred and was common among white slave owners and their slaves. We now know for certain that the Jefferson family engaged in this practice. Recent revelations about Senator Thurmond confirm that the practice did not end with emancipation.

We must also accept that Thomas Jefferson must be counted among the several potential candidates. Statistically, he must stand as the favored candidate by virtue of opportunity and circumstance. But, since conception requires but one encounter, a statistical case is hardly appropriate. So we are left with several candidates who also had at least some opportunity to produce this offspring. The case would be much stronger if other descendants proved to be Jefferson progeny, but so far only Eston's descendants have been confirmed. There are other possible lines of research, but descendants have thus far declined to cooperate.

I do not question the research premise. It was a legimate line of questioning from both a technical and historical perspective and one well worth doing. My objection is to the conclusion that so many so quickly embraced. Any who have taken the position that this conclusion is not supported by the facts have been labeled racist, ignorant, and worse. Its not healthy these days to refute the dogmatic views of the Academy.

You need to read the Blue Ribbon Commission report before you again say that conclusions are speculation devoid of evidence. I certainly do not consider their work to be strained and tortured - that characterization would better fit the views of the other side.

[FormerLib]

Great post, thanks!

There is never any substitute for the truth.

[Al Simmons]

"Sally Hemmings was half white, the half sister of his wife. She probably looked A LOT like his dead wife."

Bingo. You just nailed the most crucial piece of circumstantial evidence, completely omitted by the above hagiography.

Jefferson, as I recall, was deeply grieved by his wife's untimely death. Her half-sister was, by all accounts, a dead-ringer, younger, and a slave to boot (the easier to keep the matter quiet.) Does anyone think Jefferson was celibate for the rest of his life after his wife's death?

Her kids (some anyway) were reputedly red haired and freckle-faced. I admit that either Jefferson or his brother could have been the fathers. Based on the above,my dime is on Jefferson. After all, she was HIS slave, not his brother's, right?

[lepton]

We have known for decades that such misogyny occurred and was common among white slave owners and their slaves. We now know for certain that the Jefferson family engaged in this practice. Recent revelations about Senator Thurmond confirm that the practice did not end with emancipation.

Nit-pick alert: Emancipation, by definition, ended the practice.

[cyborg]

That's why I think it was him. Of course people are welcomed to disagree with me but as you say, she was his slave not his brother's slave.

[centurion316]

In order to determine the father, you must look to see what Jefferson Y-chromosone holder was there at the time of each Hemings child conception- so far there is only one who was there each time- Thomas Jefferson.

You are making a serious error in logic here. We only have evidence for one of Sally Hemmings children, Eston. We do not know the father of the others, except that a Jefferson did not father Thomas Woodson. Since two of the children had different fathers, how do you conclude that the others had the same father?

[centurion316]

You have struck a fair blow, and are awarded a point, although I had intended to refer to exercises between the sheets, the name for which activity escapes me.

[CatoRenasci]

Excellent point. For my money, absent further testing of the William Hemmings line, the Carr nephews are the most likely candidates for the known children other than Easton, based on all of the evidence avaiable. As to Easton, the matter is less clear, but there are several possiblities besides Thomas: Randolph was invited to come when Eason was conceived, and some of his sons may have been present.

Of course there is also Randolph's proclivity for fraternizing with the slaves:

Isaac Jefferson, in his "Memoirs of a Monticello Slave," as dictated to Charles Campbell, made the following statement:

"Old Master's brother, Mass Randall[sic], was a mighty simple man: used to come out among black people, play the fiddle and dance half the night; hadn't much more sense than Isaac." (JB p 22)

My sympathies are with your family as you deal with both the reality of some connection and the calumny heaped upon your most distinguished family member.