LITR 4332: American Minority Literature

Rhonda Fisher

Thomas Jefferson—

Not Just Father of a Nation

As old as the institution of American slavery itself is the notion that white slave owners often fathered the mulatto children of their female slaves. Frederick Douglass asserts in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, “My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever heard speak of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father. . .” (1004). In fact, it has been reported that at least four-fifths of African Americans today are descended from a white slave master. Perhaps the most highly publicized and scrutinized example of a slave owner fathering the children of his slaves can be found in the third president of the United States, one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, and it is important to consider the implications that result from the possibility of the truth of such an allegation made against one of the founding members of our great nation.

Rumors persist to this day that Jefferson fathered one or all of the children of one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, though Jefferson himself never publicly commented on the accusations. Despite these rumors and the fact that he himself owned many slaves throughout his lifetime, Jefferson often fought for the abolition of slavery during his career in public service. He even attempted to condemn the institution of slavery being transferred to the New World by stating in a draft of the Declaration of Independence that Britain “has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere. . .” (Selections from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America). Of course, this language was ultimately omitted from the Declaration by the committee, but it is deemed highly hypocritical that one of the founding fathers of our nation would propose such language for the Declaration of Independence while all the while owning many slaves and perhaps fathering the children of one of them. And it is the prospect of this hypocrisy that has likely fueled the historical debate over whether Jefferson actually fathered children of one of his female slaves.

Several written accounts throughout history assert or allude to the fact that Jefferson fathered the children of one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, though the Jefferson family has always denied such claims. The first public report appeared in the Richmond Recorder on September 1, 1802 and was written by James Thomson Callendar. Twenty-seven years after Jefferson’s death, in 1853, John Hartwell Cocke, a close friend of Jefferson’s wrote of how sex was prevalent across color lines and cited Jefferson as a “notorious example” of this fact. Later, in 1908, following the death of one of Sally Heming’s grandsons, Beverly Jefferson, a friend of Beverly’s wrote to the Chicago Tribune, which had published Beverly’s obituary, and stated that “[Beverly’s] death deserves more than a passing notice as he was a grandson of Thomas Jefferson, father of the doctrines of the [D]emocratic party. . .” For years, the Jefferson family rebuked claims such as these by attributing the parentage of Hemings’ children to one or the other of two of Jefferson’s cousin’s, Samuel or Peter Carr.

In addition to these various written accounts, there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that Jefferson quite possibly fathered the children of Sally Hemings. First, Jefferson, who frequently traveled, was always happened to reside in the presence of Hemings around nine months prior to her giving birth to each of her children. Further, the Hemings children have been said by many to have born a striking resemblance to Jefferson. This resemblance was again explained away by the Jefferson family as being the result of Hemings’ children being fathered by one of Jefferson’s cousins.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence in the debate over the paternity of the Hemings children, however, was discovered in 1998 when Dr. Eugene Foster used DNA to attempt to prove or disprove the historical assertions that Jefferson fathered Hemings’ children. Because Thomas Jefferson did not have a male line of descent, the scientist had to use Y-chromosomal DNA exclusively, which is the DNA that is passed unchanged from generation to generation. The results of this DNA testing in combination with the existing record on Jefferson’s life seems to indicate that Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one, if not all, of Sally Hemings’ children. Additionally, this study ruled out the possibility that either Samuel or Peter Carr could have been the fathers of any of the Hemings children. The National Genealogical Society Quarterly later published an article reviewing the findings of the 1998 study from a genealogical point of view and asserted that the association between Jefferson and Hemings was indeed valid. Nevertheless, while the 1998 study concluded that there was a link between some of the Hemings descendants and the Jefferson family, it could not conclusively prove that Jefferson himself fathered the Hemings children. Therefore, debate over this issue is likely to continue, even in the wake of such astonishing discoveries.

That slave children were often fathered and then neglected or denied by their white masters is only one of the circumstances that serve to compound the suffering of the African American slave. While I do not contend that Jefferson physically neglected any of his slave children, provided he did father one or more of them, there is something quite disturbing in knowing that our nation was formed in part by a man who wrote against “[keeping an] open market where men should be bought and sold” (Selections from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America) while all the while exerting his rights of ownership over at least one of his female slaves by holding her as a concubine. Furthermore, it is widely known that Jefferson and his family have always denied the fact that he fathered any of Hemings’ children, thereby forcing them to grow up ashamed and without a father.

Works Cited

Albrecht, K., and D. Schultheiss. “Proof of paternity: historical reflections on an

            andrological-forensic challenge.” Andrologia 36.1 (2004): 31-37. Academic

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“Jefferson’s Blood.” PBS.org. 2 May 2007.

            http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/

Stanton, Lucia. “The Other End of the Telescope: Jefferson Through the Eyes of His Slaves.” William & Mary Quarterly 57.1 (2000): 139. Academic Search Premier. 2 May 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com.

“Thomas Jefferson.” Wikipedia.com. 2 May 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson.

Williams, Patricia J. “Diary of a Mad Law Professor.” Nation 267.17 (1998): 10-10. Academic Search Premer. 2 May 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com.