Jefferson-Hemings Controversy - Background

Background

Jefferson became a widower at age 40 in 1783, and remained so to his death in 1826. He is believed to have had a relationship with Sally Hemings that lasted nearly four decades, until his death, and six children by her. As the Monticello Website says:

"Through his celebrity as the eloquent spokesman for liberty and equality as well as the ancestor of people living on both sides of the color line, Jefferson has left a unique legacy for descendants of Monticello's enslaved people as well as for all Americans."

In 2000, PBS Frontline produced Jefferson's Blood, an extensive documentary about the historic controversy and changes in the academic consensus of historians and other experts, who by then widely agreed that Jefferson probably fathered all of Hemings' children. They also note there are dissenting views of those who do not agree:

"Now, the new scientific evidence has been correlated with the existing documentary record, and a consensus of historians and other experts who have examined the issue agree that the question has largely been answered: Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one of Sally Hemings' children, and quite probably all six. The language of "proof" does not translate perfectly from science and the law to the historian's craft, however. And the DNA findings in this case are only one piece of a complicated puzzle that many in previous generations worked hard to make sure we might never solve. In this section, FRONTLINE has gathered some of the key scientific and documentary evidence which has led historians to believe in Jefferson's paternity, as well as the 'dissenting views' of those who continue to maintain that the evidence is not conclusive."

In the antebellum period, the Hemingses would have been called a "shadow family." Sally Hemings was three-fourths white and is believed to be a half-sister to Jefferson's late wife, as her father was likely John Wayles. As a widower, Wayles had six children by his 12-year liaison with his mulatto slave Betty Hemings; the youngest was Sally. As the historians Philip D. Morgan and Joshua D. Rothman have noted, this was one of numerous interracial relationships in the Wayles-Hemings-Jefferson families, which were also common in Virginia and the Upper South. Often succeeding generations repeated the pattern.

Hemings' children were seven-eighths European in ancestry and legally white according to Virginia law of the time. (The "one-drop rule" did not become law until 1924.) Of the four who survived to adulthood: William Beverley, Harriet Hemings, Madison Hemings and Eston Hemings, all but Madison eventually identified as white and lived as adults in white communities.

In 1997, Annette Gordon-Reed published a book analyzing the historiography of the controversy; she demonstrated that historians since the nineteenth century had accepted early accounts by Jefferson descendants, while ignoring or denying the account by Madison Hemings and other Monticello slaves. They failed to note all the relevant facts related to the events. Since 1998 and the DNA study, most historians have accepted that the widower Jefferson had a long intimate relationship with Hemings, and fathered six children with her, four of whom survived to adulthood. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF), which runs Monticello, conducted an independent historic review in 2000, as did the National Genealogical Society in 2001; both were among those that concluded Jefferson was likely the father of all Hemings' children. Scholars have based their conclusions on interpretation of historical evidence and the 1998 Y-DNA study, which showed a match of the Jefferson male line with a descendant of Eston Hemings, Sally's youngest son. Prominent historians and biographers such as Joseph Ellis, Andrew Burstein and Philip D. Morgan have said that such studies had led to their accepting his paternity. Since then, Jeffersonian scholarship has generally changed to acknowledge his paternity. New works have been published, such as that by Joshua Rothmann, of the interracial societies of Monticello, Charlottesville, and nearby towns. The Scholars Commission Report (2001) and other scholars argue against Jefferson's paternity; they generally favor his younger brother Randolph Jefferson as a candidate as father of Hemings' children, although he was never seriously proposed before the results of the DNA study.