[livius]

Personally, I don't care one way or the other, and I would doubt that many other people do, either. (BTW, I think oral family histories, based on my experience, are pretty unreliable because people tend to embroider the heck out of their past.)

But the whole Sally Hemmings uproar was clearly an attempt by the Clinton crowd to say, "See? Jefferson was as bad as Billy (Jefferson) Clinton." It was clearly a political thing that had nothing to do with a desire for historical accuracy.

[Verginius Rufus]

Agreed that some people try to embroider their family history. W. J. Cash in his classic The Mind of the South cites a family history which claimed that their German immigrant ancestor, a dirt farmer in the backwoods of South Carolina, was the grandson of the German emperor.

I don't think the Sally Hemings issue is entirely because of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal--some people would be pushing it for other reasons. But it certainly did appear in the fall of 1998 that the publicity being given to the DNA evidence about Sally's descendants was partly designed to help Bill Clinton.

One important difference is that Jefferson was a widower when the alleged liaison took place...he wasn't guilty of adultery.