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To: LS; AmishDude; George W. Bush
as best as I can keep up with the developments, without question "a" Jefferson fathered one of the Hemmings kids. The question is, which Jefferson?
. . . and as I understand it, the one "Hemmings kid" evidently fathered by a Jefferson was conceived after Thomas Jefferson had returned from Europe--and after TJ been accused of fathering older Hemmings kids. Which charges the DNA tests now indicate were not correct.

And after TJ was older than he had been when he apparently had not been intimate with Hemmings.

One can certainly understand a desire of a decendant of "a" Jefferson to believe him/herself to be a decendant of "the" Jefferson. And the incentive of the race hustlers to promote that view is no less patent.

But IMHO delegitimating the writings of TJ--the Declaration of Independence being chief among them--is a deeply unpatriotic project. But then, it was convenient at the time for x42 . . .


19 posted on 12/13/2003 11:35:58 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion (Belief in your own objectivity is the essence of subjectivity.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
Either way, the folks made out. Proving or disproving doesn't matter AND everyone knew it from the start.
20 posted on 12/13/2003 11:55:09 AM PST by Sacajaweau (God Bless Our Troops!!)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
I don't in any way buy the notion that Jefferson's writings were "delegitimated" by any relationship he had with Hemmings, regardless of whether they resulted in a child.

I do think it relevant that, as some historians suggest, if TJ is proven to have had relations with Sally Hemmings, that it may well have influenced his willingness to emancipate her and her children. More than one reputable historian claims that Jefferson was deeply compromised by this relationship, and that without it his ideological points would have produced real-world fruit that would have seen him, like Washington and Franklin, free his own slaves while championing the liberty of all. It's not a minor point, nor one we should cede to the leftists who want TJ's writings to fail for other obvious reasons.

47 posted on 12/14/2003 4:59:41 AM PST by LS
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