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Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy | 
 enlarge | Author: Annette Gordon-reed
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
List Price: $17.95
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Rating:  32 reviews
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0813918332
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.46092
EAN: 9780813918334
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of law at New York Law School, doesn't take a position for or against the proposition that Thomas Jefferson may have had a liaison of nearly 40 years with a slave named Sally Hemings, and that Hemings may have borne him several children. Instead, in this scrupulously researched book, Gordon-Reed examines the evidence both for and against Jefferson's liasion with Hemings. Among the strongest evidence in this provocative book is the fact that though Jefferson's time in Virginia was limited when he was in public life, Hemings's six children--born over 15 years--were delivered with months after each of Jefferson's stays at Monticello.
Product Description
In light of DNA evidence supporting a Jefferson-Hemings relationship, Gordon-Reed has added to her acclaimed study a new Preface in which she finds fresh reasons for seeing Thomas Jefferson as a complicated metaphor for the American character.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 27 more reviews...
 wonderful reading September 11, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I bought and read this book before the DNA results. This is the most unbiased look at the Jefferson-Hemings story I have read so far. The author examines the facts pro and con. According to Madison Hemings, Sally's son, the child she had after returning to Monticello from Paris died. Why can't this be believed? This would explain why the Woodson DNA test was negative. Despite all his greatness, Thomas Jefferson was just a man, subject to all the weaknesses that we all possess. The true feelings that these two had for each other will never be known but I choose to believe that he loved her. That is the only way that I can forgive him for being a slave owner.
Very Skillful Lawyerly Presentation of History July 7, 2007
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
This is a very solid and well researched book. The author makes a very thorough and logical presentation to prove her case. Much in the manner of a courtroom argument. It is effective. I came away from reading the book convinced that Jefferson, in all reasonable liklihood, did father Sally Hemings five mixed race children.
Sally Hemings was 1/4 African in descent, 3/4's European. By all accounts, she was a picture of beauty. Jefferson was, apparently, unexpectedly presented with her youthful beauty when Sally accompanied his youngest daughter from his former, deceased wife to France where Jefferson was representing US government interests.
Some reviewers have referred to Jefferson as a rapist and a child molestor. I think that's a bit much. The "past is a different place" as some thoughtful historian once described it. Teenage girls in the 18th century--and for much of the 19th century--were seen as legitimate romantic interests and potential wives for middle aged men of substance. It, apparently, was not particularly frowned upon during that period. Gordon-Reed gives an example of this with Jefferson's friend James Madison who was hopelessly in love with a teenage girl. She rejected him for someone closer to her own age. However, he eventually wound up with a much younger Dolly Madison for a wife. And apparently was not socially condemned for it. The past is a different place. Not better by any means, necessarily, but different. Something to keep in mind....
The author makes the argument that Jefferson's real sin was not in loving a "slave girl." The real sin was his enslavement of other humans for his own financial benefit. He couldn't let go of the financial benefits and the ease of living that his slaves brought him. He could never close the distance between his high sounding and beautifully eloquent rhetoric about human equality, fraternity, and liberty and his actual practices--however relatively enlightened for the times--as a slave owner at Monticello.
It's far from inconceivable that Jefferson and Hemings might have been lovers and even married in a social environment with slavery extinct. She was, after all, the 1/2 sister of his beloved deceased wife. And as stated, she was 3/4's European descent. If one--or society for that matter--wants to set up a binary system of black/white, then it sounds like Sally Hemings would logically be more closely classified as "white." However, Americans, then and even now, subscribed to the slavemaster's logic of "one drop of African blood" means that the person must be "black." An artifical social construct, but one tune many of us still dance to. I think humans are far more complicated and multi-faceted than "racial fundamentalists" would have us believe.
Jefferson is guilty of being a slaveowner and of being a hypocrite given his political and philosophical idealism. However, if he did love and have affection for Sally Hemmings in the manner that the author implies and suggests, then I am in agreement with the author that that would be no crime. However, we'll never know for sure, because the probable relationship was so evidently carefully concealed, as best as it could be, from the prying eyes of future generations.
I first heard about the Sally Hemings "scandal" from Gore Vidal. He said that the conventional historians who defend Jefferson against the "abomination" of loving a slave girl argue this way:
Thomas Jefferson was a great man.
Great men do not live with their slave girls.
Consequently, Thomas Jefferson did not live with Sally Hemings.
This is the type of conventional idiocy that sometimes passes itself off as "history."
Annette Gordon-Reed's book is well worth the effort of reading if you're interested in the subject. I thought it a very well balanced and intellectually honest effort.
Believe it, I do. May 17, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Shame, on these so called Historians, that turn away from what is so plan to me and anyone else with common sense. Why is it so hard to believe that Thomas Jefferson did in fact have a relationship with his slave, Sally? Yes, he is one of the key figures in establishing the United States, Yes; he spoke of freedom and equality. However, he did not practice what he was preaching. He fought for freedom and independence and kept slaves in bondage, he recorded births of his slaves along side the inventory of his animals. They were property no more, no less, including Sally, she was taken advantage of, and that is the bottom line. A 40+ male having sex with a 14 yr old child, makes me sick to my stomach. I visited Monticello last week, the view was breath taking, the house was all it appeared on television, but I secretly mourned for the slaves that were made to live, work and die there. No matter what they individually wanted to call it, love, lust, rape, what it was, was wrong. And, why the Jeffersonians don't want to acknowledge it, is simple, it is racism, fueled by some magnificent notion that Jefferson was better than they average slave owner. He kept all his fair colored slaves close to the house and all the darker slaves in the fields. He would leave the plantation when they were whipped; he was no better that any other slaveholder. He violated rights, and profited from their labor, and what was their reward ....he had them sold off to get out of debt, with the exception of Sally's children. If he thought slavery was so wrong, why did he do nothing to stop it?
As my 11 year old said to me; if he was president why didn't just stop slavery? After all he was so moral, respected and powerful. Wasn't he?
Check out Jefferson's Blood on PBS website...very interesting.
No longer a "Controversy" March 16, 2007
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Jefferson owned slaves. As did his father before him. Jefferson was a man of his times and Sally Hemings a slave woman of hers. There is no big 'mystery' here. Jefferson and Hemings had a sexual relationship that produced offspring. DNA is not necessarily needed to help prove that. Reed does not state this in her book as fact, but she makes it clear that this was the most likely scenario. And exposes the bigotry throughout the centuries that have tried to cover it up. Great book if you're really interested in this subject. I have never read a finer book on it.
A detailed analysis of the alleged Jefferson Hemmings affair from a different angle November 6, 2006
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
The author has done her homework and is well-versed on this particular subject. She goes into extreme detail, analyzing multiple pieces of historical evidence, both circumstantial and documented. The latest version of her book also has an introductory chapter on the light that physical evidence, DNA, has shed on what is already known.
While careful not to draw a definitive conclusion about whether or not Jefferson fathered the children of Sally Hemmings, the author very tactfully points to certain pieces of evidence and interjects her opinions, sometimes subtly, while other times being quite obvious. While this may be considered bias by some, in essence, she appears to be responding to what she considers ongoing extreme bias and prejudice in past biographies by Jefferson historians. This is really what her book is about, more than anything, is how historians have, in her view, edified Jefferson and chosen to ignore certain pieces of important evidence, downplaying and ridiculing some, while choosing to emphasize other.
This writing is a direct attack on the way American history has been controlled and propagated by white males at the expense of slaves and their descendants. Annette Gordon-Read is a well educated, African American historian/attorney, who is taking a stand, and she presents a compelling case. She feels the voice of blacks in history has been squelched and ridiculed, and on this particular subject she points out the shortcomings of historians who have glorified Jefferson while maintaining a stereotypical view of blacks.
On the downside, I personally felt the author came across too strong in labeling Jefferson a "racist". She could have presented the facts in this area and let readers make up their own minds, rather than coming across as harsh and judgmental. She also provides a lot of speculation throughout the book. She is careful, however, to avoid statements as fact when she cannot prove them (this is what she continually accuses her predecessors as doing). Perhaps much of this conjecture is necessary to counter the multitude of speculation that has been articulated by so many historians who have downplayed or disputed the likelihood (or to them, even the possibility) of the Jefferson-Hemmings affair. The author is also very repetitive. The book could have easily been cut in half and been just as effective. However, this repetition also drives certain points home and helps the reader remember certain key elements.
Overall, this is very interesting reading, and it is also very well-written. The author communicates extremely well and her writing flows nicely and is easy to understand.
If you have any interest in the (likely) Jefferson-Hemmings affair, this book is a must read. I gave it 5 stars, despite my criticisms, as 4 stars would not have given this book the credit is deserves (perhaps a 4.5?).
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