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Founding Father EXPLOITED Slave for Sex
By Robert Lee Hotz
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and
third president of the fledgling United States, almost certainly
fathered a child with a slave at his Monticello plantation, scientists
who analyzed genetic material collected from his living descendants
have concluded. The new evidence, made public Saturday (Oct.
31, 1998), sheds the first reliable scientific light on an unusually
emotional controversy over paternity that has simmered for almost
two centuries.
The matter of Jefferson's long relationship with a mixed-race
slave named Sally Hemings is of more than scholarly interest.
As embodied in his hundreds of white and unacknowledged black
descendants, several historians said, Jefferson's divided family
tree today personifies troubling matters of race, slavery, sexuality
and hypocrisy that root in the earliest events of the country
Jefferson helped to found. The new research reveals, within the
limits of scientific certainty, that Jefferson enslaved the mother
of his children and the offspring she bore him. To complicate
matters, historians generally agree that Sally Hemings was the
half-sister of Jefferson's wife. (Which suggests that Jefferson's
wife's father sired children with his slaves too. WFI Editor)
"This is quite stunning news… very shocking," said
UCLA historian Joyce Appleby, an expert on the Jeffersonian era
and a past president of the American Historical Assn. (What kind
of "expert" is Ms. Appleby, to be shocked, when the
majority of black Americans took it for granted that Jefferson
fathered children with his slaves? WFI Editor)
Historian Gary Nash, an authority at UCLA on early America and
the author of a forthcoming book on the history of interracial
relationships, called the finding "extraordinary."
(Quotes like these from so-called experts and authorities have
to call into question whether or not it is time to challenge the
conventional history of the United States, which has always played
down the slavemaster origins of the republic, especially as politicians
discuss the intentions of the Founders. WFI Editor)
Jefferson met the 14-year-old Hemings in 1786 in Paris, where
she was a house slave who took care of his youngest daughter.
Rumors over Jefferson's relationship with Hemings, who eventually
bore at least five children, arose as early as 1802 - in the second
year of his presidency. (Additionally, if he initiated his sexual
relationship with Hemings when she was just 14, today he would
be regarded as a child molester. WFI Editor) During
his lifetime, Jefferson never confirmed or explicitly denied allegations
that he had fathered several children with her in the years after
his wife's death in 1782. There is nothing in the historical
record that proves the relationship existed or, if it did, whether
it was forced or consensual. In the generations since, historians
have argued passionately over whether the red-headed Virginian
who embodied so many of the best qualities of the new nation also
encompassed its worst as well.
THE EVIDENCE
He was a slave owner who early in his career tried to abolish
slavery. Even so, he freed few of his own slaves while other
major slaveholders in Virginia freed thousands during the same
period. (Many of the Founding Fathers emancipated their slaves
in their wills, but they were so valuable that their heirs often
went to court to have their wills overridden. WFI Editor)
He was an inspirational revolutionary who believed fervently
in the equality of men, but who also held that blacks and whites
were separate peoples. (He also stated forthrightly his opinion
that black people were "biologically inferior"
to white people, with a predisposition to steal! Additionally,
the notion that men were equal was a legal contrivance, and was
not meant to imply that there were no "gentlemen" who
because of their social class were the most qualified to rule
the state; none of the Founding Fathers genuinely believed
in democracy. WFI Editor)
To settle a question that generations of historical debate has
not, retired pathologist Eugene Foster in Charlottesville, VA,
recently gathered DNA samples from Jefferson's known white descendants
and from a group of African Americans who many believe also descended
from Jefferson. Foster collected samples from 13 black and white
descendants, as well as a control group, coding them with random
numbers to ensure that laboratory technicians would not know the
source of each DNA sample. Because Jefferson had no surviving
sons, Foster collected material from the male descendants of Jefferson's
brother, with whom he would have shared the same Y chromosome
inherited from their father.
So cautious was Foster that he hand-carried the material to England
for the genetic analysis rather than check it with his other baggage.
"That suitcase was never out of my sight, not ever, ever,"
he said. Through analyzing genetic variations in the Y chromosome,
which is inherited largely unchanged through the male line, geneticists
at Oxford University, the University of Leicester in England and
Leiden University in the Netherlands determined to their satisfaction
that Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings' last son - Eston
Hemings Jefferson.
The researchers looked at variations in 19 locations along the
Y chromosome and found that Jefferson's genetic characteristics
were quite rare. Indeed, a comparison with a sample of 670 Europeans
and 1,200 people worldwide turned up no matches, the scientists
said. Jefferson's genetic makeup matched perfectly, however,
with Eston's male descendants. The researchers were able to conclusively
eliminate the possibility that one of Jefferson's maternal nephews
might have fathered the children, as some historians have suggested.
At the same time, they also ruled out the possibility that Jefferson
fathered Hemings' oldest son, Thomas Woodson, whom many had considered
the most likely child of the union. "A lot of careful work
went into this. We knew there would be all kinds of questions
and controversy," Foster said. "I suppose there will
be some people who will be angry." (It's always uncomfortable
when your fantasies collide with reality. WFI Editor)
However, "I do believe it is close to the first piece of
objective evidence that has been brought to bear on the controversy,"
he said.
A formal research paper is to be published this week in the journal
Nature. "It certainly provides very compelling evidence
that Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings did indeed have a sexual
liaison that produced at least one or more children," said
Eric S. Lander, director of the Center for Genome Research at
the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass.,
who has reviewed the scientific findings. "In any scientific
study, one keeps in mind some doubt, but this now approaches near
certainty," Lander said. "If this [answer] provides
an opportunity for a dialogue about the secret history between
whites and blacks, then this is a good occasion."
CHANGING HISTORY
Without question, the research will make a deep national impression,
several historians said, because Jefferson is nothing less than
an American icon. His profile is carved in Mount Rushmore. His
face is stamped on every nickel and printed on every $2 bill.
His marble memorial on the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., is
a destination for visitors by the millions every year who stop
to contemplate his personal and political legacy. (Of course,
without having any acquaintance with the "real" Jefferson.
WFI Editor) "If America is going to deal with
the horribly difficult problem of race relations, we have to start
by coming face to face with our past, and Jefferson is a big part
of that past," said constitutional scholar Paul Finkelman
at University of Akron School of Law, author of "Slavery
and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson."
Certainly, Jefferson was in public vehemently opposed to miscegenation
(mixing the "races"), and his attitudes toward slavery
in many ways reflected ambivalence of the country's founding fathers
about racial matters. "I think [the research] just increases
our sense of how deeply puzzled, perplexed and troubled he was
about slavery," said Appleby, who studies Jefferson's political
role in America and his career as a statesman. (Aaron Burr, among
others, never thought that Jefferson was a "statesman."
WFI Editor) "What is so interesting is how
deep the vicious tentacles of slavery sank into this man."
It is well documented that he benefited from slave labor and never hesitated to sell his slaves to support his lifestyle. "When he needed another case of Bordeaux, another shipment of books, more paintings from France, or any of the other luxuries he could not live without, Jefferson simply sent someone's son or daughter off to the slave market," Finkelman said. Yet Jefferson's fear about slavery was so strong, that he wrote in 1787, not too long after he met Hemings: "The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the of most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotisms on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it… I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever." SOURCE: Excerpted from the 1 November, 1998, issue of the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition, from an article entitled, "DNA Study Shows Jefferson Fathered His Slave's Child." Reprinted in the public service of the national interest of the American people. |
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