Posted on 10/09/2024 9:14:29 AM PDT by Starman417
Whatever faults Jefferson may have had, if you make a real study of his life and character it seems very much OUT of character for him to have been behaved this way.
Of course everyone is imperfect; but people also have certain personality traits. It was simply not in Thomas’s character; but it was very well within the character of his brother. Thomas wasn’t a very ‘passionate’ person; in a way, he was sort of what we’d call today a ‘cold fish’. His brother was a VERY different sort.
(And politics were every bit as nasty then as they are today. Just because a story began contemporaneous with Jefferson’s life doesn’t mean it was at all true to begin with. Preposterous stories are always made up to damage people - some people still believe all kinds of crap that has been put out about Trump and may still believe and recirculate it a hundred years hence.)
You are forgetting the strong taboos that would have existed in the minds of people at the time. Marriage affinity laws and taboos were still very much a ‘thing’.
Only by degrees. The real first Democrat was Andrew Jackson.
Not really - you could argue that it was an ancestor, but not direct.
Yes, the newspapers were rough in those days, but the rumor was spreading before it hit the papers. Other people already believed Jefferson had a relationship with Hemings. As noted earlier, the practice was not uncommon, and Jefferson’s father-in-law had children (Sally being one of them) with a slave. So, was that practice really taboo in Jefferson’s time and place? Or, was it only taboo to talk about it?
We have the luxury of living in a different era. But, even in our lifetime, ideas have changed drastically. Travel back 200-250 years, and things were very different.
Sometimes, people are complicated. Jefferson wrote extensively about the issues of his time, including slavery. He believed slavery should be abolished, yet he himself held slaves.
To me, the evidence overwhelmingly points to Jefferson as the father of Hemings’s children. But, we can agree to disagree.
What was ‘taboo’ was the marriage affinity, not her race. She was the half-sibling of Jefferson’s dead wife.
She was of 3/4 European descent. The gossip centered around his allegedly fathering ‘illegitimate’ children with a slave, who was the half-sister of his wife through her father.
Imagine, it must’ve made quite the story at the time.
I’m sure it did. But my point has nothing to do with her race or the stories passed around. I’m arguing that, besides being out of his character generally, Thomas would not have done it because at the time there was great social, cultural and religious stigma surrounding in-law affinity - even more than any stigma regarding race or slavery. It was a strong taboo in the minds of Christians in early America.
People took this very seriously back then; and taking the sister of one’s dead wife is still considered indecent in some cultures today.
Yes, but people often rationalize what they do. For example, Jefferson believed slavery should be abolished, but he himself continued to hold slaves he never freed.
He might not have viewed Hemings as a legitimate sister-in-law; in a letter, he referred to her only as "Maria's maid."
But, sure, Randolph could've been the father. Another possibility is that the children had different fathers. Still, Thomas Jefferson himself has not been ruled out.
Members of the family believed it was not Thomas, and rumors at the time were that it was Randolph. This website has a lot of interesting information, including a letter from one of Jefferson’s grandddaughters:
https://www.tjheritage.org/ellen-coolidge-myth
Jefferson's opponents considered him dangerously radical - he really *was* a Deist (and had a Bible from which he crossed out all the words of Christ and "superstitions"). When he served in the Virginia legislature, he was very busy abolishing things like primogeniture, which put everyone's back up. Things didn't get any better while he was Vice-president. By the time he ran for president, nothing was too evil to accuse him of. Here's an example (a bit later, but also mild compared to some):
That’s Jamestown, of course. Sry.
For me, it absolutely negates any of the accusations -- because the book accusing Jefferson materially altered the Coolidge letter to completely reverse its meaning.
There's a well known adage in the law: "Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus." Juries are charged on this principle and instructed that if they find a witness has knowingly and intentionally testified falsely, they may disregard ALL his testimony. The fact that a letter was deliberately altered to make it say the opposite of what it says, for me is dispositive: the book is based on falsehood and should be wholly disregarded.
As a historian, I was very suspicious of the entire narrative - as a lawyer, I now have proof of its falsity. That's the end of the story for me.
My pleasure.
(That entire website is very informative.)
I am not familiar with that book you both mentioned, but I read the letter linked by Jamestown1630.
Unfortunately, that letter does not settle the matter. It only adds to the controversy.
Yes, it was written by a granddaughter, Ellen Coolidge, who clearly loved and admired her grandfather very much. The letter was written to her husband. However, some of what she wrote does not match what we know to be true.
First, she pointed out that her grandfather was a “kind master” who set several slaves free, and he took steps to enable those freed slaves to stay in Virginia. She argued, “Would he who was always most considerate of the feelings and the well being of his slaves, treat them barbarously only when they happened to be his own children, and leave them to be sold in a distant market when he might have left them free?”
However, all of Sally’s children (allegedly fathered by Jefferson) were set free by him. They were not “sold in a distant market.” They were freed at a younger age than other slaves freed by him, and he enabled them to stay in Virginia.
Ellen wrote that Jefferson looked the other way when “three young men and one girl” who were “white enough to pass for white” walked off. That description matches Sally’s daughter, Harriet; her son Beverly; and possibly others in the Hemings family, or Ellen might have been thinking of Sally’s younger two sons who were freed by Jefferson’s will.
Ellen pointed to other culprits who could’ve fathered the children. She pointed at the Irish workmen who built Monticello. She also claimed Sally was “notoriously the mistress of a married man, a near relation of Mr. Jefferson’s.”
With that line, I don’t think she’s referring to Randolph, who was unmarried when most of Sally’s children were born. She is referring to Peter Carr, who was Jefferson’s nephew and a married man. Ellen’s brother said Carr was the father, and at the end of her letter, Ellen wrote that her brother blamed Peter and Samuel Carr.
However, as we now know, DNA tests ruled out the Carrs. DNA tests found a relation between the Hemings and Jefferson lines.
Of course, when DNA results pointed to the Jeffersons, then Randolph was blamed.
In the end, no one knows for sure whether Thomas or Randolph fathered the children. There are many clues that point to Jefferson, but I don’t want to write a book here.
I understand it does not fit Jefferson’s reputation, but the DNA test results, proximity, and other factors do point to him.
I appreciate the civil discussion. I don’t really care who the father was. I just enjoy discussing topics that most people find pretty boring. :-)
It’s not the content of the letter that concerns me at all - it’s the dishonest alteration by the author of the book that brought this all back to light.
That seriously invalidates the entire thing - what else did she alter? and shows an invidious motive: not an honest inquiry into history on her part. Suggests to me that the whole thing is yet another attack on the Founders in order to denigrate the country.
I also think it matters when a great man’s reputation is dirtied by lies and invented ‘evidence’. The lies are intended to discredit not only Jefferson, but our American political philosophy and history.
William Hyland, Jr. has written a fascinating book going over all the evidence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMaR6kZVPKE
I think we’re entirely agreed. This is what ‘higher education’ has come to. Embarrassing.
A lot of people today don’t understand the relationships that sometimes existed between slaves - especially the domestic ones - and slave-owning families. There was often real affection and family-like ties existing between them. It’s been brought up that the mother of Martha Jefferson died very shortly after Martha was born, and that Sally’s mother acted as a sort of surrogate mother to Martha (possibly the only mother-figure she really had).
Over time, all or most of the Hemings family were assigned to the house when they were old enough, and they naturally became very close to the family. (I know from my own Grandmother that the last slave her grandparents had owned wanted to stay with the family after emancipation; and she did, as a family member, until she died. She had stood in a similar ‘maternal’ role to my great grandmother.)
Again, Thomas could very well have treated the Hemings with special concern in honor of his wife and her family and their relationship with them.
(And it would be very cruel to just release slaves without any concern for their ability to make it on their own. The change in situation could be drastic - Sally’s brother, James, was chef to Thomas. Only a few years after Thomas manumitted him, James unfortunately killed himself.
All the evidence was that Thomas was indeed a ‘kind master’, in the sense of having concern for and taking responsibility for his slaves, and did not try to retrieve them when they ‘ran away’ if he felt they were doing alright. There is also evidence that many of the slaves thought very highly of him, even loved him.
Again, thank you both for the conversation.
I am not familiar with the book you both have criticized. I, too, would not trust any source that misrepresented a document by changing the text. (One of my pet peeves is that the writings of Christopher Columbus have been taken out of context, and although he was not a perfect man, either, he has been unfairly maligned through the years, but I digress...)
I did not read the altered text of Ellen Coolidge’s letter. I read her letter only at the link provided by Jamestown1630. I was not arguing with Ellen’s statement that her grandfather was a “kind master.” Rather, my point was that Ellen seems confused on the details. Also, she accuses Peter Carr of fathering the children, but now we know he couldn’t have been the father because DNA results ruled out the Carrs. (She never mentions Randolph in her letter.)
We don’t have to agree. I’m not going to change your minds, and I don’t want to.
But, I would like to make this observation: Where we live might explain the difference in our viewpoints. I have lived my whole life near (and, for several years, in) the birthplace of our nation, where the Founding Father who receives the most attention has always been Benjamin Franklin. He was not a paragon of virtue, but we like him. He was not a perfect man, but he was intelligent and interesting, to say the least. No man deserves godlike status. The Founding Fathers were products of their time, and as mere mortals, they were flawed, just as we all are. Yet, they came together to form a great nation, and they should not be ‘canceled’ or erased from history, and I’m sure the three of us would agree on that point.
I will check out the last link from Jamestown1630, as soon as I have a chance.
Have a great weekend!
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