NOW THEY'LL EAT THEIR WORDS!! This was printed in 1994 by the Monticello people: The Hemings-Jefferson Controversy: A Brief Account The belief that Thomas Jefferson had a number of children by his slave Sally Hemings has had both a public and a private life. Its public life began in September 1802, when James Thomson Callender, a disappointed office-seeker, published an account of a liaison between the President and his slave in a Virginia newspaper. Callender's story was taken up by partisan newspapers and often repeated during the remainder of Jefferson's presidency, becoming, in John Dos Passo's words, "part of the political mythology of the Jefferson era." It was sustained through the nineteenth century by British critics of American democracy and northern enemies of slavery, and its vitality in the American population at large is revealed in the accounts of European travelers. Running parallel with this public story, which was initiated by someone who had never been to Monticello and perpetuated by those who had never met Jefferson, was a deeply-held private belief. At least two of Sally Hemings's children were reported as saying that Jefferson was their father, and this belief has passed from generation to generation of her descendants to the present day. In an interview in 1873, her son Madison Hemings, who described himself as the son of Jefferson, stated that his mother had become Jefferson's "concubine" in France in the late 1780s. His descendants, some of whom are participants in a current project to record and preserve the oral traditions of the African-American families of Jefferson's Monticello, continue to pass on this belief as an important family truth. Thomas Jefferson himself, in accordance with a lifelong policy, made no public response to attacks on his character, and he apparently never made any explicit reference to this issue. A private letter of 1805 has been interpreted by some historians as a denial of the charge. Sally Hemings left no known account of the matter, except what might be inferred from the recollections of her son Madison. Callender wrote that he heard the story linking the master of Monticello with his slave from some "Virginia Gentlemen," and it seems that there were whispers of such a relationship before his 1802 article. Visitors to Monticello wrote of slaves that were almost white, and Jefferson's grandson, Thomas J. Randolph, later reported that the resemblance of Sally Hemings's children to Jefferson was noticeable. Randolph said, however, that one of Jefferson's nephews had admitted being the father of these children. Jefferson's daughter Martha Randolph always strongly repudiated published versions of the story, and her daughter Ellen, who lived at Monticello until the year before Jefferson died, considered such a relationship "morally impossible." While some historians accept the possibility of a connection, scholars who specialize in Jefferson studies are generally united in finding the case for such a relationship unpersuasive. Only two Jefferson biographers (Fawn Brodie and Page Smith) give it credence. At present the existence of a sexual relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings can be neither refuted nor clearly substantiated. For those who would like to explore and evaluate its probability, the attached bibliography contains sources on both sides of the question. A separate biography of Sally Hemings is found in the "Matters of Fact" section. --Lucia C. Stanton, Monticello Research Department, March 1995 Pictured: portion of Jefferson's Farm Book, in which he recorded the distribution of slave rations by family. Courtesy Massachusetts Historical Society. BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Accounts: 1847. Isaac Jefferson's recollections, in James A. Bear, Jr., ed. Jefferson at Monticello, Charlottesville, 1967, p. 4. 1858. Ellen Randolph Coolidge letter to Joseph Coolidge, 24 October 1858, in Dumas Malone, "Mr. Jefferson's Private Life," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society (April 1974), 1-8. 1862. Edmund Bacon's recollections, in Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, pp. 99-100, 102. 1868. Henry S. Randall letter to James Parton, 1 June 1868, printed in Milton E. Flower, James Parton, The Father of Modern Biography, Durham, NC, 1951, pp. 236-9. 1873. Madison Hemings account, Pike County Republican, 13 March 1873, printed in Fawn Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, New York, 1974, pp. 471-6. 1873. Israel Jefferson account, Pike County Republican, 25 December 1873, printed in Brodie, Jefferson, pp. 477-82. Secondary Accounts: Douglass Adair, "The Jefferson Scandals," in Fame and the Founding Fathers, ed. Trevor Colbourn, New York, 1974, pp. 160-91. Lerone Bennett, "Thomas Jefferson's Negro Grandchildren," Ebony, X (November 1954), 78-80. Fawn M. Brodie, "The Great Jefferson Taboo," American Heritage, XXIII, no. 4 (autumn 1979), 78-87. ---, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, New York, 1974. ---, "Thomas Jefferson's Unknown Grandchildren: A Study in Historical Silence," American Heritage, XXVII (October 1976), 23-33, 94-99. Virginius Dabney, The Jefferson Scandals: A Rebuttal, New York, 1981. ---, "The Monticello Scandals: History and Fiction," Virginia Cavalcade, XXIX (autumn 1979), 52-61. Scot A. French and Edward L. Ayers, "The Strange Career of Thomas Jefferson: Race and Slavery in American Memory, 1943-1993," in Jeffersonian Legacies, ed. Peter S. Onuf, Charlottesville, 1993, pp. 418-56. Pearl M. Graham, "Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings," Journal of Negro History, XLVI (1961), 89-103. Judith Justus, Down From the Mountain: An Oral History of the Hemings Family, Perrysburg, Ohio, 1990. Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801-1805, Boston, 1970, appendix II, pp. 494-8. Dumas Malone and Steven Hochman, "A Note on Evidence: The Personal History of Madison Hemings," Journal of Southern History, XLI (November 1975) 523-8. Sidney P. Moss and Carolyn Moss, "The Jefferson Miscegenation Legend in British Travel Books," Journal of the Early Republic, VII, no. 3 (fall 1987), 253-74. Laura B. Randolph, "Thomas Jefferson's Black and White Descendants Debate His Lineage and Legacy," Ebony (July 1993), 25-29. Minnie Shumate Woodson, The Sable Curtain, Washington, 1987, appendix. --Monticello Research Department, November 1994