Jefferson maligned by poor historian

Today's academic and editorial elites simply cannot forgive our founding fathers for being white males who espoused an 18th-century classical liberalism, rather than a 20th-century New Deal socialism or a postmodern multicultural Marxism. The Herald-Leader's routine mistreatment of Thomas Jefferson provides a case in point.

Herald-Leader columnist Merlene Davis has told us, with absolute certainty, that he "was more than a master to Sally Hemings" and that he "had a whole bunch of black kids."

According to features writer Art Jester, the persistent rumors that "Thomas Jefferson was the father of a child by his slave and chambermaid, Sally Hemings" are "now considerably substantiated by DNA and historical research." Jester further claimed in a Feb. 3 "Uncommon Wealth" column that "recent evidence suggests Jefferson may have had several children by Hemings."

On May 9, syndicated columnist Deborah Mathis told us that for generations, Hemings' descendants have "sought recognition as rightful claimants to the founder's legacy. In 1998, DNA tests backed up their story." Warming to her subject, Mathis proclaims that anyone who "can somehow keep a straight face and actually debate whether the Jefferson-Hemmings (sic) pairing occurred ... even in the face of unwavering oral history and scientific evidence," is proof with a pulse that "racism has a long and hardy lineage."

Herald-Leader contributing columnist George Moorman was even more pointed in his May 26 accusation: "Thomas Jefferson raped Sally Hemings. He didn't love her; he owned her."

Acclaimed historian Joseph Ellis, who was awarded a Pulitzer for Founding Brothers, had written an article in which he claimed that new DNA evidence provided proof that Jefferson had sired at least one child by Hemings. Actually, the so-called evidence had proved no such thing. What it had proved was that Thomas Jefferson, his brother Randolph, another male Jefferson or a male slave sired by a Jefferson had fathered one of Hemings' sons, Eston. However, Ellis seldom allows mere facts to interfere with a good polemic.

Last year, Ellis was forced to admit that his claims of combat service in Vietnam were untrue. Nevertheless, in a remarkably unapologetic apology, he denied telling lies. What he had been telling, he said, were metaphors, which were justified to add interest" and relevance to his academic endeavors.

Davis, Jester, Mathis, Moorman and the legions of lefties who have cited, with unseemly certitude, Ellis' unfounded allegations have been willing and eager accomplices in the transmission of his metaphor of white evil and black virtue.

In a similar vein, the PBS series Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery, lauded by Herald-Leader pop culture writer Heather Svokos when it aired on KET, pilloried Thomas Jefferson. One of the series' writers and an author of the companion book was Patricia Smith, a columnist who had been fired by The Boston Globe for fabricating facts.

And then there is noted historian David McCullough, who, just one month after Ellis' admissions of "metaphor," confessed that Jefferson had never said what McCullough had quoted him as saying in McCullough's widely acclaimed biography of John Adams.

Add to all this the recent revelations of outright plagiarism by such award-winning historians as Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin, and a disturbing pattern emerges. All of the aforementioned academics and the ink-stained wretches who cite them in the Herald-Leader agree that the history we learned in school is a myth written by straight white Christian males and, as a consequence, is in need of correction and inclusion. Mere facts are irrelevant to the narrative spun by deconstructionists, post-modernists and politically correct progressive pedagogues and their Midland Avenue admirers.

Permit me to propose a radically new idea. Rather than listening to those who tell us what Jefferson said and thought, why don't we listen to his own words as to what he really thought about the institution of slavery? Let us try a quotation that is engraved in the wall of the Jefferson Memorial: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between Master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free."

Strangely, nothing that has appeared in the Herald-Leader has remotely resembled this reality. Why?

I was amazed to see something other than the usual leftist drivel in the Lexington (KY) LIBERAL-Leader...Way to go, Professor Burch!

I wonder what page this editorial was buried on. It's a common practice among these red rags to print an occasional opinion from the right. That way, they can at least make some claim, however specious, to journalistic objectivity. But it's a fact that at least 95% of the time, all their readers will see is leftist lies and spin.

All of the aforementioned academics and the ink-stained wretches who cite them in the Herald-Leader agree that the history we learned in school is a myth written by straight white Christian males and, as a consequence, is in need of correction and inclusion

It's ironic that the "aforementioned academics," who accuse others of mythologizing, are actually the ones writing historical mythology (aka lying).

It's a case of the pot calling the silver chafing dish black.

Gore Vidal's "Burr", about Aaron Burr, of course, stated that Hemmings was the daughter of one of Jefferson's father's slaves. Ergo, Hemmings and Jefferson were half-siblings. That could also explain quite a bit of the DNA.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.