Giving Thomas Jefferson the Business: The Jefferson-Hemings Hoax

A Different Drummer/Middle American News ^ | December, 2003 | Nicholas Stix

[CatoRenasci]

Have not seen it.

[billbears]

Jefferson bump

[cyborg]

You aren't missing much. The only thing they got right were the main actors. Nick Nolte is older and Thandi Newton is half African and half English. I think they alluded to the french lady thing too, but you know what the movie really was about.

[TomServo]

Ping! I believe you had a few links on this junk.

[cyborg]

While some may find Jefferson's sexual business offensive, I don't. He was single, and a widower still has need for a woman. UNLIKE, Bill Clinton who was married, had a child already and catting around with anything and everything in a skirt.

So call me a moral relativist, but if I hear Klintoon or Jackson compare themselves to Jefferson one more time, I'm going to vomit.

[shhrubbery!]

Does it really matter?

Yes. It DOES matter. The Left is systematically trying to tear down all of our founding fathers, to further their ultimate conclusion: That all of American heritage and law is based in racism and hypocrisy, and is therefore illegitimate. All hail the [Communist] revolution!

I tend to believe he did father children for Sally from what I have read in the past.

Only one of Sally Hemings's children, Eston, showed evidence of having a father with Jefferson genes.

Eston's father could have been one of many Jefferson relatives living in Virginia at the time. Suspicion has settled on two of Thomas Jefferson's nephews, both surnamed Carr, who frequented Mount Vernon and who are buried there in the Jefferson family graveyard.

It is far more likely that one of the Carr brothers fathered Eston than Thomas Jefferson, who was quite elderly and who suffered from debilitating migraine headaches at the time of Eston's conception.

[LWalk18]

Malone said that he thought that the father of Sally's children was Peter and Samuel Carr. They were the sons of one of Jefferson's sisters, and they were named by both Jefferson's grandson and his overseer. They must have been telling the truth, right? The grandson even swore he got a confession from either Peter or Samuel himself.

Too bad the DNA excluded both Peter and Samuel Carr! Randolph Jefferson was barely mentioned prior to the DNA test as a possible father. In order to determine the father, you must look to see what Jefferson Y-chromosone holder was there at the time of each Hemings child conception- so far there is only one who was there each time- Thomas Jefferson. That, along with exclusion of the Carr brothers who were the most likely suspects prior to the DNA test, leads me to believe that Jefferson was the father of Sally's children. Of course, no one can ever know the truth.

[John Robertson]

"Yes, but we will never know what the TRUTH of this matter is."

That's CLASSIC moral relativism. Did you train at DU? Will we ever know the truth? Maybe not. But the dissemblers want the issue framed as, This is what we say the situation must be...now you disprove it--prove a negative.

"The 'facts' in the article above are no more definitive than the claims of the other side."

Actually, you're right on this...until you apply logic, reason and common sense. They're not "facts," they're facts. And the other side has made many an unfounded claim. A careful reading can lead one to a reasonable inference: while there is no definitive proof that Jefferson had children with Hemmings, it is still possible. Unproven, but possible.

"Neither side has anything but allegations and vague statistics."

Okay, I get it now. You're just here to piss people off. You don't really have anything intelligent to offer.

"Does either position make Thomas Jefferson less of a great man, indeed a Renaissance Man, and patriot?"

Yes, the side of the race dissemblers and hustlers does make him less of a great man--because attached to the "fact" of his fathering the kids with Hemmings is a whole train car of baggage: he was a hypocrite, a racist, a liar, and that therefore makes him, and his part in founding the country, less legitimate--less great.

Here's what's what: According to the best historical and DNA research, one of a minimum of 25 men in the Thomas Jefferson family fathered at least one child that we know of by Sally Hemmings.

If you read that as, Founding Father Thomas Jefferson made babies with one of his slaves...well, you don't know how to read.

[KC_Conspirator]

Racist black professors and journalists, and their elite white allies, now insist that black oral history be given pride of place over documentary evidence.

I am trying to figure out the angle on the Jefferson-Hemings story, but this "black oral history" is highly suspect. Did you know that the whole theory of academic study of "Cleopatra was black" just because some illiterate grandmother told her professor grandaughter that she heard it when she was young. Not a shred of evidence supports this, yet now it is taken seriously by some lefty academics.

[x]

Good article, but this is a cheap shot: "ignoring the fact that unlike fiction, history is about what DID transpire, not what COULD HAVE transpired." We don't know "what DID transpire," and Stix is as much in the business of looking at "What COULD HAVE transpired" as anyone he criticizes. Probably the verdict is "not proven," and historians have made too much of the rumors. But Stix is not less inclined to use hearsay and rumor when it suits him, and one can't stop historians from looking into such stories. The "Jefferson wouldn't do that" response naturally provokes many historians to demonstrate that he could or did.

While Stix is on the whole on more solid ground than those he criticizes, one can't help pointing out that if Callender was a liar or scandalmonger, he had worked for Jefferson before turning against him. It's only fair that Jeffersonians have to face up to the sort of allegations that their leader encouraged against his own enemies.

[LWalk18]

The Carr were excluded by the DNA test- if those test proved anything, they proved that neither Carr fathered Eston Hemings. That is why everyone is pushed Randolph- notice that neither side mentions them after 1998.

[4CJ]

Based on DNA evidence, one of 25 possible Jeffersons with the same Y chromsome was the father. We couldn't even get a jury to convict OJ with more evidence than that.

[cyborg]

The possibility of Thomas Jefferson's fornication does not bother me. It doesn't change how I regard him as president. It does not invalidate his role in building this country. The left can believe what it wants to, but I know what I believe about this country. It is a good country, and history isn't riddled with dead,white males who were evil wicked people. Besides the left, the arbitors of the sexual revolution, have sown more oats than one dead president.

[cyborg]

People will believe what they want to believe. Somehow Cleopatra being black is supposed to infuse all poor blacks here with self esteem. This is as ridiculous as saying I'm smart because my family came from Europe.

[MichiganCheese]

Didn't Jesse Jackass father an illigitimate child? He doesn't get dragged through the mud. Of course, no one really cares...

[tcuoohjohn]

I tend to disagree with your notion of "Historical activism" The question of Hemming's paternity is one that has existed for nearly 200 years. It is only within the last decade or so that technology has advanced to the point that some reasonably conclusive evidence could he had. The Commission was one that seemed emminently fair to me and followed good historical investigative process. The evidence was weighed in toto and conclusions were drawn on the basis of preponderance of historical and current evidence. There was a full throated minority report and the commission's findings were subject to rigorous peer review

I have no axe to grind in the Jefferson paternity issue and could careless about some obscure political spin placed on the results of their inquiries. That wasn't their charge.

For me the evidence while not absolutely definitive in the sense of the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard used in a criminal trial it overwhelmingly met the preponderance of evidence standard used by historians. The evidence of supporting the conclusion tha Jefferson fathered one or more of Hemmings children dwarfs the evidence that he didn't father Hemming's child.

Those who oppose the conclusion posit what I consider to be strained and tortured explanations that are unsupported by evidence. In the end they are reduced to the position of entertaining speculations of how Jefferson might not be the father of Hemming's child. They remain speculations devoid of evidence.

[x]

There is a film at Monticello (the welcome center or museum or whatever it is) that mentions Jefferson having an affair with some married British female while he was a diplomat in Paris.

That was Maria Cosway. She and her husband were both portrait painters.

Ben Franklin had preceded Jefferson in Paris and was said to have had very many affairs. I don't know about Jefferson, but Franklin's undoubted amorousness puts 18th century life in a different light than most of us got from history textbooks.

[cyborg]

Of course not. Rainbow PUSH hush money is great thing to have.

[CatoRenasci]

You're right that Malone focused on Carr (the "nephew" I referred to in my first post). I don't have the Malone handy, but I seem to recall Randoph being mentioned as a possibility. If I remember the 2000 report, it is not the case that TJ was the only Jefferson male who was present when the Hemmings children were conceived. I'll look it up when I get a chance.

[petitfour]

Here's a bio on Sally Hemings from the Jefferson Foundation:

http://www.monticello.org/plantation/lives/sallyhemings.html