One thing most Americans probably accept as true is the news item that Thomas

Jefferson, third President of the United States, had a sexual relationship with his slave

mistress, Sally Hemings.

But did he really?

On the face of it, things look pretty bad for Mr. Jefferson. Consider, for example, these

five basic facts:

1. Thomas Jefferson was accused of being the father in the press.

2. One of Sally's children (Madison) said his father was Thomas Jefferson.

3. It was TJ's plantation, and Sally conceived the children when he was

there.

4. Some of Sally's children were said to resemble Thomas Jefferson.

5. The DNA evidence indicates a Jefferson was definitely the father of at least one of

Sally's children.

The above string of superficially apparent facts leading to the conclusion that Jefferson

"did it" all began with partisan accusations that were loaded with falsehoods. Moreover,

these apparent facts are just circumstances that are almost inevitable and unavoidable

when a woman has illegitimate children on a plantation.

For example, given the accusation in the press, somebody is likely to have believed it.

And of course it was Thomas Jefferson's plantation -- he would hardly be accused of

fathering children on some other plantation. A pregnancy would occur when people were

relative was the father, the children will naturally look like a Jefferson. The DNA tests

only indicated that "some" Jefferson -- there were many that visited the plantation -- was

the father.

Affair proponents have taken a string of facts that would probably not have happened

any other way, given that Sally Hemings had illegitimate children, and made them look

like they point inevitably to Thomas Jefferson as the father. But just take the above five

apparent facts, assume that some other Jefferson was the father besides Thomas, and you

can still come up with the same five facts!

And because many people, in the absence of a careful study, tend to form their opinions

on a superficial look at the circumstances, it is easy for them to believe that it was

Thomas Jefferson and not someone else who was the father. But a new book, scheduled

to be published May 1, 2001, shows not only that there is insufficient evidence for the

belief that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings' children -- it shows that in

When the above apparently convincing evidence is meticulously taken apart, piece by

piece, as it is in this book, each of the arguments by Thomas Jefferson’s critics falls apart.

This book demonstrates that:

1 The original rumors and accusations were based on gossip from people who could not

possibly know what went on in Jefferson's bedroom, and were published by political

enemies who had a vendetta against Jefferson.

2 Madison couldn't know who his father was of his own knowledge. He no doubt

received the same gossip as everyone else. Did his mother tell him his father was Thomas

Jefferson? Maybe so, maybe no. We don't know, and Madison doesn't say. But even if

she did, that hardly makes it so. Slaves often claimed ancestry from their owners.

Madison even acknowledged that Thomas Jefferson didn't treat him and his siblings like

his children. Moreover, there is new DNA available from Madison’s son William, but the

Hemings family refuses to permit it to be tested. Why would they wish to conceal

potentially relevant evidence if Madison's assertions are so certain?

3 Many Jefferson relatives had access to Sally. It was a big plantation. Would the master

of the plantation have had better access to a slave girl than a relative of that master? We're

talking about a plantation where there are dozens of non-notable people constantly

coming in and out, easily getting together unobserved apart from the general hub-bub,

while the master of the plantation was the President of the United States! He was

constantly surrounded by visitors and hangers-on, probably with hardly a free moment to

but large numbers of them often stayed in the house for weeks at a time!

4 Resemblances can be deceiving, but one thing is certain: whoever was the father of

Eston had Jefferson genes. Even if the Carr brothers were the father of some of the other

children of Sally Hemings, it must be remembered that those brothers were as closely

related to Thomas Jefferson and had as much of the Jefferson genes as Randolph's sons

(except, of course, for the Y chromosome, which is only passed down through the male

line). Callender said that 12 year-old Tom had a resemblance to the President, and if that

was Tom Woodson, we now know from the DNA tests that that accusation was

absolutely false.

5 The DNA evidence only indicates it was some male in the Jefferson family, and

apparently someone at the plantation. No surprise there. But for the casual inquirer, the

very mention of DNA evidence suggests a one-in-a-billion certainty. Not so here,

however. Y chromosomal DNA tests only identify all males in a family as possibilities

with an approximately one-in-a-hundred sureness. It cannot identify specific individuals

The DNA test results plus the circumstantial evidence points to Thomas Jefferson as the

most probable suspect on the basis of a rough approximation and superficial view of the

evidence only. When we go beyond that quick glance and those superficial appearances,

the "evidence" dissolves into mist. But the problem thus far has invariably been a

superficial approach in the media and by affair proponents, from the headline in Nature to

the disregard of family evidence in opposition to the gossip as was done by the Thomas

Jefferson Foundation's Research Committee.

For example, if affair opponents say there is no record of Sally ever having told anyone

that Thomas Jefferson was the father, then affair proponents say that the Madison

interview is "roughly speaking" the equivalent to a record of Sally saying that, even

though the interview doesn't make that claim. Eston changing his name from Hemings to

Jefferson is "roughly speaking" equivalent to claiming Thomas Jefferson as his father,

even though he never made that specific claim, and other slaves on the plantation did the

same thing without making any such claim. The list of such rough distortions goes on

endlessly.

The apparent inability of affair proponents to accept solid, conclusive evidence in order

to support their belief in the Woodson case is an example of how people who are

determined to believe in Thomas Jefferson's guilt will disregard what is by far the most

positive and conclusive evidence to come out of this whole investigation. The Woodson

family tradition is without doubt the most firmly established oral tradition in this whole

Nevertheless, affair proponents continue to try to devise twisted scenarios that would

It is against this onslaught of determined affair proponents, hell-bent on making Thomas

Jefferson the culprit, that the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society (TJHS) has issued its

forthcoming little book. Ten different authors combined their knowledge and talents to

produce a meticulous analysis of all the evidence, plus a revealing account of the

machinations and deceptions surrounding the Jefferson-Hemings myth and those who

promote it. In this book we can discover:

* How the myth that accuses Thomas Jefferson of fathering the children of Sally Hemings

began with allegations made by a scurrilous scandalmonger as part of an unsuccessful

blackmail scheme to force President Jefferson to appoint him to a government job.

* How the results of a 1998 DNA study were presented in such a way as to mislead the

public into believing that scientific tests had proved Thomas Jefferson was the father of

Sally Hemings' last child.

* How information about other Jefferson males living in the vicinity of Monticello who

could have been the father of Sally Hemings' last child was kept from the news media and

even omitted from scholarly books.

* How the news media were provided with the falacious title of a scientific study, and

how some were misled into denigrating Thomas Jefferson as a liar, a hypocrite, and a

fraud based on that false and misleading information.

* How the descendants of Tom Woodson continue to maintain he was the son of Thomas

Jefferson even though the DNA tests conclusively disproved this long-repeated family

story.

* Why exhuming the body of Thomas Jefferson and subjecting it to DNA testing cannot

prove whether or not someone living today is or is not a descendant of his.

* How a research committee ignored all the contrary evidence and suppressed a dissenting

minority report in order to arrive at the conclusion that Thomas Jefferson was probably

the father of all Sally Hemings' children.

* Why a deceptive statistical study indicating a high probability of Jefferson's guilt is

* Why, from a legal viewpoint, the case against Thomas Jefferson is deficient in any

substantial evidence and completely without merit.

* How a key letter written by Jefferson's granddaughter was altered by one author to

reverse its clear meaning and then reprinted and used as authority by other advocates of

the Jefferson-Hemings myth.

* Why a group of citizens felt it necessary to form the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society

in order to expose the false information being disseminated to destroy the reputation of

the Founding Father who, as George Will said, "gave us our creed" and "defined the

American mind."

* How these attacks on Jefferson are also used by some to undermine the principles he

stood for and on which the American republic was founded.

With careful attention to detail, the ten authors of this book explore the above topics plus

many more in this interesting and penetrating investigation into the Jefferson-Hemings

story. One after another, the carefully documented chapters show that the advocates of

Thomas Jefferson’s paternity not only have many of their facts wrong, they also have

given inappropriate weight to most of the facts that they did have at hand. The reader of

this book will come away convinced that there is no evidence at all supporting the

Modified Monday, July 13, 2009