“It is correct that the DNA testing shows that the Woodsons are not descended from Jefferson. That is a far cry from your assertion that “DNA has proven the main charge against Jefferson, one many believed for 200 years, the one his opponents circulated during his life, was false.”
No. The primary accusation, the one almost all accepted as most likely to be true, was that Woodson was Thomas Jefferson’s.
“James Callender’s charges against Jefferson were true, as even Jefferson’s family and friends knew at the time.”
Not according to Jefferson’s friends and family.
” However, whether it was Thomas Jefferson or another of his family is not key.”
It certainly is to his detractors!
Not according to Jefferson’s friends and family.
On the contrary, everyone knew that there were house slaves at Monticello with a striking resemblance to Jefferson. Abigail and John Adams knew quite well what was going on with Sally. Jefferson's grandson and executor Thomas Randolph invented the story that the Carr nephews were the fathers of Sally's children. He only spread this false story after the principals were dead. Randolph, of course, couldn't know about DNA testing that would prove the Carr story false.
Madison Heming's memoir, told in 1873, partly his own memory and partly from his mother, is almost certainly the correct story.
I see that Callender did mention a Tom, as son of Sally. However, Jefferson’s own slave records do not show this, nor does the Hemings family history. There seems to be no documentary evidence linking Thomas Woodson to Monticello.
Note Hillsdale Professor Paul Rahe’s comments. Rahe is the most distinguished member of the “Scholars Commission”.
https://ricochet.com/archives/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-a-dissent/
“What we do know, however, is damning enough. Despite the distaste that he expressed for the propensity of slaveholders to abuse their power, Jefferson either engaged in such abuse himself or tolerated it on the part of one or more members of his extended family. In his private, as in his public, life, there was, for all his brilliance and sagacity, something dishonest, something self-serving and self-indulgent about the man.”
See also Professor Rahe’s critical Minority Report at the end of this Scholars Commission report.
https://www.tjheritage.org/scholars-commission-pdf