1

LIE #1

Thomas Jefferson Fathered Sally
Hemings’ Children

In 1998 the journal Science released the results of a DNA inquiry into whether Jefferson had fathered any children through his slave Sally Hemings, specifically her first child, Thomas, or her fifth child, Eston.¹ In conjunction with the announcement, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Professor Joseph Ellis wrote an accompanying article in the journal Nature declaring that the question was now settled—that DNA testing had conclusively proved that Thomas Jefferson had indeed fathered a Hemings child, thus scientifically affirming a two-centuries-old rumor.²

That 1998 announcement concerning early American history was actually relevant to events occurring at the time, for it came at the commencement of President Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings for lying under oath to a grand jury about his sexual activities with a young intern inside the Oval Office. News reports immediately pounced on the fortuitous DNA announcement, arguing that if a man as great as Thomas Jefferson had engaged in sexual trysts, then President Clinton should not face questions about his sexual misbehavior. After all, such conduct had not diminished the stature of Jefferson, they argued, so it should not be allowed to weaken that of Clinton.

Professor Ellis agreed, candidly admitting, “President William Jefferson Clinton also has a vested interest in this [DNA] revelation.”³ Significantly, just weeks before Ellis’ bombshell announcement about Jefferson, he had added his signature as a cosigner of an October 1998 ad in the New York Times opposing the impeachment of Clinton.⁴ Henry Gee, a staff writer for Nature who also wrote a piece as part of the initial revelation, acknowledged that the DNA report provided much-needed cover for President Clinton:

2

The parallels between the story of Jefferson’s sexual indiscretions and the travails of the current President are close. Thomas Jefferson came close to impeachment—but the scandal did not affect his popularity and he won the 1804 Presidential election by a landslide. And if President William Jefferson Clinton has cause to curse the invention of DNA fingerprinting, the latest report shows that it has a long reach indeed—back to the birth of the United States itself.⁵

Dr. David Mayer, professor of law and history, was a member of an independent “Scholars Commission” later convened over the Jefferson-Hemings issue. He agreed that the timing of the DNA article had not been by accident:

Professor Ellis’ accompanying article also noted, quite frankly, “Politically, the Thomas Jefferson verdict is likely to figure in upcoming impeachment hearings on William Jefferson Clinton’s sexual indiscretions, in which DNA testing has also played a role.” In television interviews following release of the article, Professor Ellis elaborated on this theme; and Clinton’s apologists made part of their defense the notion that every President—even Jefferson—had his “sexual indiscretions.”⁶

As far as Clinton defenders were concerned (especially his supporters in the media), the announcement of Jefferson’s alleged moral failings was a gift from heaven. The entire nation was bombarded with the Jefferson paternity story for weeks; and the news of his moral failings was burned deeply into the consciousness of Americans. But many groups beyond Clinton supporters also welcomed the test results as useful to their particular agendas.

3

For example, the Jefferson-Hemings affair became the perfect platform for the feminist movement to discuss the nature of sexual relations. Many in that movement had already asserted that any type of sexual relations between a male and a female constituted rape,⁷ but this development seemed especially to prove their point.⁸ It was questioned whether any sex could be consensual if it was between individuals from different stations in life—such as Hemings and Jefferson. Many feminist writers, including Fawn Brodie, Barbara Chase-Riboud, and Annette Gordon-Reed, had even authored books about the older Jefferson and the younger Hemings.⁹

Another movement that benefited from the Jefferson-Hemings story included those who wished to keep open the racial wounds of previous generations. They pointed to Jefferson and his sexual exploitation of the slave Hemings as proof of how all African Americans were treated by all white Americans, not only in Jefferson’s day, but also throughout much of the rest of American history.¹⁰ The Jefferson announcement rekindled demands for restitutionary policies that would provide preferential treatment and elevation of status and opportunity as repayment for past wrongs committed.

However, only eight weeks after the initial blockbuster DNA story was issued, it was retracted quietly and without fanfare, with the scientific researcher who had conducted the DNA test announcing that it actually had not proven that Jefferson fathered any children with Hemings.¹¹ But this news exonerating Jefferson did not make the same splash in the national headlines, for it aided no agenda being advanced at that time. Since doing justice to Jefferson’s reputation was not deemed to be a worthy national consideration in and of itself, the retraction story was simply buried or ignored.

4

Consider the damage done by this false reporting. Ask any adult today whether it has been scientifically proven that Jefferson fathered illegitimate children with Hemings, and they will likely answer with a resounding “Yes!” The nation certainly heard and still remembers the news barrage following the initial report, but the silence surrounding its retraction was deafening.

Yet notwithstanding the 1998 DNA testing results, the fact remains that charges of a Jefferson moral failure with Hemings had circulated for almost two centuries before the DNA testing was undertaken. Even without the DNA testing results, it is still appropriate to ask why such charges were originally leveled against Jefferson. Did he actually commit the sexual misbehavior with which he has long been charged? After all, we’re often told that where there’s smoke, there’s surely fire; and if it had not been for the charges raised long ago, no one today would have even considered undertaking DNA testing.

Here is some background to this situation. Sally Hemings was a young slave girl who served Jefferson’s daughters at the family home, Monticello. Jefferson had five daughters: Martha (nicknamed “Patsy”), Mary (nicknamed “Maria” but also called “Polly”), Jane (who died very young), Lucy Elizabeth I (who also died very young), and Lucy Elizabeth II. During the American Revolution Jefferson was frequently away from his beloved family, serving in the Virginia legislature, the Continental Congress, and as state governor.

In 1784, following the Revolution, Jefferson was sent by Congress as an ambassador to Paris. His wife had recently died, so he took Patsy, the oldest of his three remaining daughters, with him to France. The other two daughters, Mary and Lucy Elizabeth II, stayed behind with their aunt. But after Jefferson departed Monticello with Patsy, the toddler Lucy Elizabeth II unexpectedly died, so Jefferson sent for his only remaining daughter, Mary, to join him in France. Accompanying the eight-year-old Mary on the voyage as her companion was the fourteen-year-old Sally Hemings, whom Jefferson described as “Maria’s maid.”¹²

5

Critics charge that after the girls arrived in Paris, Jefferson began a sexual relationship with Hemings, who was nearly thirty years his junior and the same age as his oldest daughter, fourteen-year-old Patsy¹³—a relationship that produced some or all of Sally’s children. (Most scholars believe that Hemings had five children.)¹⁴

Following the initial DNA testing announcement that Jefferson was the father of Hemings’ fifth child, Eston, some historians, including many who had previously believed Jefferson to be innocent of the paternity charges, declared Jefferson guilty, and the two-century-old debate finally closed.¹⁵ But the subsequent retraction certainly changed matters. Yet, regardless of the on-and-then-off DNA testing results about Eston, was there a sexual moral failure between Jefferson and Hemings?

The evidence against Jefferson may be divided into three categories:

1. The original 1998 DNA report. While this category of evidence is now discredited, it is important to understand the reason behind the retraction.

2. Oral tradition from two of Sally’s children, the strongest of which involved Thomas Woodson, her first child. Two centuries ago, he claimed (and others repeated) that Sally Hemings was his mother and Thomas Jefferson his father. The fact that Sally had named the boy Thomas was used as evidence to confirm that he had indeed been fathered by Jefferson. Sally’s fourth child, Madison, also made similar claims.

3. Published newspaper reports from Jefferson’s day specifically charging him with fathering Hemings’ children.

Consider the evidence.

6

Category 1: The DNA Evidence

To delve further into the story behind the retraction of the 1998 DNA testing results, begin with Professor Ellis’ original announcement in Nature, which had declared:

Almost two hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson was alleged to have fathered children by his slave Sally Hemings. The charges have remained controversial. Now, DNA analysis confirms that Jefferson was indeed the father of at least one of Hemings’ children [Eston].¹⁶

In the two weeks following that announcement, 221 printed news articles repeated the claim, embedding it deeply in the minds of Americans.¹⁷ Typical articles declared:

Did the author of the Declaration of Independence take a slave for his mistress? DNA tests say yes. . . . The evidence here, in other words, removes any shadow of a doubt that Thomas Jefferson sired at least one son by Sally Hemings.

—U.S. News Online¹⁸

DNA Test Finds Evidence of Jefferson Child by Slave.

—New York Times on the Web¹⁹

Jefferson affair no longer rumor. . . . The DNA tests end nearly two centuries of speculation. . . . The evidence has shifted so startlingly that it now appears likely that Jefferson fathered four or five children by Hemings.

—USA Today²⁰

[G]enetic testing almost certainly proves that our third president fathered at least one child by Sally Hemings.

—Washington Post²¹

7

The opportunity to announce these results afforded many Deconstructionists in the media a welcome occasion to denigrate Jefferson. One national columnist gloated, “What a relief. Now Jefferson can be brought down off the god-like pedestal on which some have tried to elevate him.”²² He continued, “How are we to view Jefferson now? How about ‘deadbeat dad’? That’s what you call fathers who run away from their responsibilities to their children.”²³

Another described him as a “slave-owning, serial flogger, sex maniac.”²⁴ Others portrayed him as a child molester, using an innocent adolescent girl for sex:

We have recently learned through DNA testing that Jefferson was probably the father of Sally Hemings’ youngest child, a boy, and maybe the father of the other four children as well. . . . He took her to Paris when she was 13, and when she returned two years later, she was pregnant.

—Washington Post²⁵

What type of relationship could this have been, considering the profound power differences between master and slave? . . . [S]he was 13 or 14 and he was 43.

—Chicago Tribune²⁶

In 1789, Sally Hemings returned with the Jefferson family to Virginia. By then, Sally was 16 or 17 and pregnant.

—New York Times on the Web²⁷

The hysterics against Jefferson became so great that some questioned why his image appeared on our coins;²⁸ others clamored for “the dismantling of the Jefferson Memorial” in Washington, DC, and “the removal of his face from Mount Rushmore.”²⁹

The DNA evidence as originally presented by Professor Ellis and reported by the media had seemed both unassailable and irrefutable, but there were several critical facts in the report that most Americans never heard.

8

For example, the original 1998 report contained a significant finding about which scholars and the media remained conspicuously silent:

President Thomas Jefferson was accused of having fathered a child, Tom, by Sally Hemings. Tom was said to have been born in 1790, soon after Jefferson and Sally Hemings returned from France, where he had been minister. Present-day members of the African-American Woodson family believe that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Thomas Woodson, whose name comes from his later owner. . . . [But DNA testing shows] Thomas Woodson was not Thomas Jefferson’s son.³⁰ (emphasis added)

So, the longest rumored charge against Jefferson, originally printed two centuries ago in publications of the day, was now proven wrong. Jefferson had been completely exonerated of that longstanding claim.

Additionally, when Nature issued its embarrassing retraction, it sheepishly confessed, “The title assigned to our study was misleading.”³¹ Why? Because no DNA sample from the Thomas Jefferson family line had been used in the testing—and the public was never told of this significant omission. It does seem that if someone wanted to test Jefferson’s paternity that his DNA should be used.

Genetic DNA paternity testing requires the testing of a Y chromosome from a male descendant of the subject because the Y chromosome in males remains virtually unchanged from generation to generation. But Thomas Jefferson had no male descendants from which to take a DNA sample. His only son had died at birth. Since Jefferson had no surviving male descendants, the researchers therefore chose to test the Y chromosomes from the descendants of Field Jefferson, Thomas’s uncle.

9

The researchers found that the configuration of the Y chromosomes in the descendants of Field Jefferson—a general configuration common to the entire Jefferson family—was indeed present in the descendants of Sally Hemings’ youngest child, Eston. Therefore, on the basis of DNA testing, the most that researchers could conclusively say was that some Jefferson male—and there were twenty-six Jefferson males living in the area at the time—had a relationship with Sally Hemings that resulted in the birth of Eston. But which Jefferson was it?

A distinguished commission of noted authorities was convened to examine the matter, and it concluded:

There are at least ten possible fathers for Sally Hemings’ children who could have passed down genetic material that might produce children physically resembling Thomas Jefferson and who are thought to have visited Monticello regularly during the years Sally Hemings was having children.³²

After investigating the ten possible fathers, the group concluded that the “case against some of Thomas Jefferson’s relatives appears significantly stronger than the case against him.”³³ It was these other nine unaddressed paternity alternatives that made the DNA testing announcement suspect. Thomas Jefferson’s own DNA was not checked, and with the exception of Field Jefferson, the DNA was not checked for the rest of the Jefferson males living in the area. World therefore correctly reported:

According to the genetic evidence, the father could have been Jefferson. Or it could have been his brother Randolph. Or one of Randolph’s sons. Or, presumably, his uncle Field, or his son George or one of his sons. . . . Any of these men had access to Monticello and could have been culpable.³⁴ (emphasis added)

10

National columnist Mona Charen accurately summarized the scope of the testing results:

The DNA data did rule Jefferson out as the father of Thomas Woodson, the eldest of Sally’s sons, and shed no light on the rest. That leaves a scenario in which Jefferson’s sexual liaison with his slave [that produced Eston] is estimated to have begun when he was 65 years old. Possible certainly, but likely? While the DNA data adds to our knowledge—it is clear that there was mixing of Hemings and Jefferson genes sometime in the past 200 years—they do not provide names or dates. They most definitely do not “prove” anything about Thomas Jefferson himself.³⁵

Herbert Barger, the Jefferson family historian and genealogist who assisted in the DNA testing, explained:

My study indicates to me that Thomas Jefferson was NOT the father of Eston or any other Hemings child. The DNA study . . . indicates that Randolph [Thomas’ younger brother] is possibly the father of Eston and maybe the others. . . . [T]hree of Sally Hemings’ children, Harriet, Beverly, and Eston (the latter two not common names), were given names of the Randolph family.³⁶ (emphasis added)

Significantly, a blue-ribbon commission of thirteen leading scholars was assembled to examine the Jefferson paternity issue. Those scholars were all PhDs, and most were department heads from schools such as Harvard, the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina, the University of Kentucky, Indiana University, and others.³⁷ The group was not composed of Jefferson supporters; in fact, many believed that Jefferson might indeed be the father of Hemings’ children.³⁸ But after spending a year investigating the evidence, they all concluded that Randolph was indeed the most likely father, explaining:

11

[T]he circumstantial case that Eston Hemings was fathered by the President’s younger brother is many times stronger than the case against the President himself. Among the considerations which might point to Randolph are:

In Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, former slave Isaac Jefferson asserts that when Randolph Jefferson visited Monticello, he “used to come out among black people, play the fiddle and dance half the night . . .” In contrast, we have not a single account of Thomas Jefferson spending his nights socializing with the slaves in such a manner. . . .

[W]e have Jefferson’s letter inviting Randolph (and presumably his sons as well) to come to Monticello shortly before Sally became pregnant with Eston. It was common for such visits to last for weeks.

Pearl Graham, who did original research among the Hemings descendants in the 1940s and believed the story that Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings’ children, wrote in a 1958 letter to a leading Jefferson scholar at Princeton University that a granddaughter of one of Sally Hemings’ children had told her that Randolph Jefferson “had colored children” of his own.

Until Fawn Brodie [recently] persuaded the descendants of Eston Hemings that President Jefferson was his father, their family oral history had passed down that Eston was fathered by “Thomas Jefferson’s uncle.” That is not possible, as both of his paternal uncles died decades before Eston was conceived. But [according] to Martha Jefferson Randolph [Jefferson’s oldest daughter], who was generally in charge of Monticello during Eston Hemings’ entire memory there, her father’s younger brother was “Uncle Randolph”—and he was referred to as such in family letters.

12

We don’t know exactly when Randolph’s first wife died, but we do know that he remarried—to a very controlling woman—shortly after Eston Hemings was born. About the same time, Thomas Jefferson retired from public office and spent the rest of his life at Monticello, where he could presumably have had access to Sally Hemings any night he wished. But Sally, although only in her mid-thirties, gave birth to no known children after Eston was born in 1808. Even the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation report acknowledges that Sally’s childbearing years may have corresponded to the years in which Randolph Jefferson was a widower.³⁹

Significantly, in its retraction even Nature ruefully conceded, “It is true that men of Randolph Jefferson’s family could have fathered Sally Hemings’ later children.”⁴⁰ But this scholars’ report was just as widely ignored by the media as had been both the DNA testing results that exonerated Jefferson and the retraction of its initial errant announcement. In fact, PBS’s Frontline, A & E’s Biography, the Washington Post, and others actually had in their possession reports that tended to exonerate Jefferson but deliberately omitted that information from their reporting.⁴¹

Incidentally, Dr. Eugene Foster, who conducted the DNA testing, had been very clear about the limitations of his testing, but his findings were misrepresented by Joseph Ellis, historian and professor at Mt. Holyoke College. Ellis, who opposed what was happening to President Clinton at the time, had written the sensationalistic “announcement” for Nature, but his personal spin went well beyond Foster’s scientific findings, making the story both inaccurate and unfactual. Perhaps this should not be surprising; four years later, in 2002, it was revealed that Ellis was also guilty of publicly lying to his classes on many occasions. (For example, he told students that he went to Vietnam as a platoon leader and paratrooper in the 101st Airborne and served on General Westmoreland’s staff during the war; he did neither. He also said that he did active civil rights work in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement and was harassed by the state police for his efforts; again, neither was true. He claimed that he scored the winning touchdown in the last football game of his senior year in high school; it turns out he wasn’t even on the team.⁴²) As one columnist properly queried, “How can you trust a historian who makes up history?”⁴³

13

In hindsight, looking back over the complete fiasco, the Wall Street Journal correctly noted of the unreported retraction, “[T]he backtracking comes a little late to change the hundreds of other headlines fingering Jefferson.”⁴⁴ The effect of the original news flood was toxic. One reporter who covered the story accurately noted, “[D]efective scholarship is difficult to recall.”⁴⁵ The Jewish World Review therefore properly asked, “Was Jefferson libeled by DNA?”⁴⁶ The evidence answers “Yes!”

In short, the DNA testing did not show Jefferson to be guilty of any sexual liaison with Hemings. The so-called smoking gun turned out to be a waterlogged pea shooter.

Category 2: The Evidence of Oral Tradition

The second source of Hemings’ evidence used against Jefferson is oral tradition, but the DNA findings significantly weakened this source. The strongest evidence in this category had long been the two-century-old charge that Jefferson had fathered Thomas Woodson, but the DNA findings were conclusive that no Jefferson—not any of the twenty-six Jefferson males—had fathered Woodson. That original test was later repeated by Dr. Foster with the same results.⁴⁷ Consequently, that oral tradition is now authoritatively disproved. (Incidentally, DNA testing has been conducted on descendants from two of Hemings’ five children. As already noted, testing on the Thomas Woodson branch was negative for any Jefferson genes. The Eston Hemings branch showed some Jefferson genes, but it did not show from which of the twenty-six Jefferson males they came. The remaining three branches of Hemings’ progeny have so far declined to participate in DNA testing.)

14

The other major oral tradition challenging Jefferson’s sexual morality came from Sally Hemings’ son Madison (the fourth Hemings child, born in 1805). In an article published in an Ohio newspaper in 1873, Madison Hemings claimed that in France “my mother became Mr. Jefferson’s concubine, and when he was called back home she was enceinte [pregnant] by him” with Thomas Woodson.⁴⁸ But the DNA testing disproved two of Madison’s major claims: (1) there were no Jefferson genes in Sally’s first child, Thomas; therefore, (2) Sally did not return home pregnant by Jefferson.

Several other of Madison’s claims about Jefferson have also been shown to be erroneous—including his claim that Jefferson was not interested in agriculture.⁴⁹ Yet modern authors such as Annette Gordon-Reed, professor of law at New York University, believe that Jefferson was guilty of all that Madison charged him with; she dismisses outright all evidence to the contrary and even concocts evidence in her attempts to “prove” her claims.

For instance, in her book Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, she “reprinted” a letter written in 1858 by Ellen Randolph Coolidge (Thomas Jefferson’s granddaughter) describing the rooms at Monticello. According to Reed, Coolidge had written:

His [Jefferson’s] apartments had no private entrance not perfectly accessible and visible to all the household. No female domestic ever entered his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be in the public gaze.⁵⁰

15

So, based on Reed’s quotation of Jefferson’s granddaughter, female domestics such as Hemings entered Jefferson’s apartment only at hours when no one was watching.

Significantly, however, Coolidge’s actual letter had said exactly the opposite:

His [Jefferson’s] apartments had no private entrance not perfectly accessible and visible to all the household. No female domestic ever entered his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be there; and none could have entered without being exposed to the public gaze.⁵¹ (emphasis added)

The emphasized portion above is what Gordon-Reed omitted, thus completely reversing its message. Significantly, the granddaughter had actually said that (1) no one could have entered without being seen and that (2) no female staff entered his room unless he was not there. But Reed, in order to bolster her own arguments against Jefferson, twisted and rewrote what Jefferson’s granddaughter had actually said.

Sadly, when someone dismisses Madison Hemings’ claims because of their many provable and obvious inaccuracies, writers such as Gordon-Reed cry “Racism!” and lament that black witnesses from history are automatically given less credence.⁵² Other writers such as Jan Lewis and Peter Onuf believe that those who do not accept the testimony of Madison Hemings carte blanche are simply racists.⁵³

Such irrational refusals to consider the substantial evidence that contradicts Madison Hemings’ claims indicates that personal predilections and political agendas have been placed above an honest search for the truth. Genuine scholars require verifiable documentation—something completely lacking in the case of Thomas Woodson’s and Madison Hemings’ oral testimonies. In fact, their oral testimonies are factually disprovable, which eliminates the second category of “evidence” used to “prove” Jefferson’s paternity through Hemings.

16

Category 3: The Charges Published Two Centuries Ago

The earliest printed charges alleging Jefferson’s paternity with Hemings appeared in newspaper articles written from 1801 to 1803 by James T. Callender (1758–1803).

Callender first rose to attention in 1792 in Scotland when he authored The Political Progress of Great Britain. That work, highly critical of the British government, led to his indictment for sedition. After being “oftimes called in court, he did not appear and was pronounced a fugitive and outlaw.”⁵⁴ Facing prison, Callender and his family of young children fled to America for refuge in 1793, arriving with no means or prospect of support. American patriots, learning of Callender’s plight, sympathetically embraced him as a man suffering British persecution. Many, including Thomas Jefferson, personally provided charitable contributions to help Callender and his children.

In 1796 Callender secured a job writing for a Republican (an Anti-Federalist, pro-Jefferson) newspaper in Philadelphia. Promising “a tornado as no government ever got before,”⁵⁵ Callender resumed the defamatory writing style that had landed him in trouble in Great Britain, only this time it was against prominent Federalist Americans such as Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and George Washington. By attacking the Federalists, Callender considered himself to be the mouthpiece for Jefferson’s Republican Party and believed he was rendering it a valuable service.

The Northern states tended to be Federalist while the Southern ones tended to be Anti-Federalist (Republican). Callender was therefore in a northern state writing against Federalist statesmen highly regarded in that region. His writings not only raised great ire but were so defamatory as to invite litigation even in that land of free speech. So, fearing legal punishment, Callender fled from Philadelphia to Richmond in 1799.

Arriving there, he took a job with another Republican newspaper where he continued his attacks on the Federalists. Because of his vicious writings, Callender was convicted under the federal Sedition Law in 1800, fined $200 (about $3,000 today), and imprisoned for nine months. Still he did not relent. While in prison he authored two more attack pieces in the same style that had so frequently caused him difficulty. Callender proved to be a troublesome hothead with no sense of discretion.

17

During this time, Jefferson was serving as vice president under President John Adams. Callender wrote Jefferson twenty-nine letters, but Jefferson largely ignored him, replying only five times in a two-year period. Because of Jefferson’s lack of response, Callender complained to James Madison that he “might as well have addressed a letter to Lot’s wife.”⁵⁶ Jefferson avoided Callender but continued occasional charitable gifts for the support of Callender’s young children.

When Jefferson became president in 1801, he declared the Sedition Law to be unconstitutional and pardoned everyone who had been prosecuted under it (about two dozen individuals).⁵⁷ Jefferson also ordered that the fines collected under that law be returned with interest. But the Federalist sheriff who had collected the $200 fine from Callender refused and even ignored direct orders from Secretary of State James Madison to refund the fine.

Callender, now free, was unaware of these difficulties with the sheriff and became infuriated against Jefferson, blaming him for not returning his $200. Secretary of State Madison reported to Virginia governor James Monroe, “Callender, I find, is under a strange error on the subject of his fine, and in a strange humor in consequence of it.”⁵⁸

Callender became enraged at Jefferson. Believing that Jefferson’s party owed him something for what he considered his long “service” on their behalf, he demanded a presidential appointment as the US postmaster for Richmond—an appointment that both President Jefferson and Secretary of State Madison properly refused him.

Meanwhile, Jefferson, still unable to obtain the return of the fine from the Federalist sheriff, took steps to repay Callender’s fine from private funds. As he told Governor Monroe:

18

I think with you we had better refund his fine by private contributions. I enclose you an order on Gibson & Jefferson for $50, which I believe is one fourth of the whole sum.⁵⁹

Only three days later, following a meeting in which Callender responded viciously against Jefferson’s offer of personal help, the formerly sympathetic Jefferson understandably underwent a complete change of heart toward Callender. As he explained to Monroe:

Since [my last letter, three days ago], Callender is arrived here. He did not call on me; but understanding he was in distress, I sent Captain [Meriwether] Lewis to him with $50 to inform him we were making some inquiries as to his fine, which would take a little time; and lest he should suffer in the meantime I had sent him &c. His language to Captain Lewis was very high-toned. He intimated that he was in possession of things which he could and would make use of in a certain case: that he received the $50 not as a charity, but a due, in fact as hush money; that I knew what he expected, viz. a certain office [Richmond postmaster], and more to this effect. Such a misconstruction of my charities puts an end to them forever. You will therefore be so good as to make no use of the order I enclosed you [to repay the fine by private funds].⁶⁰

Jefferson’s instructions to withhold further relief from Callender arrived too late. As Governor Monroe told Jefferson, “Your [letter] just received. It is to be regretted that Capt[ain] Lewis paid the money. . . . [Y]our resolution to terminate all communication with him is wise.”⁶¹

19

On the same day Monroe wrote Jefferson, Madison wrote Monroe describing the outrageous nature of his own meeting with Callender:

Callender made his appearance here some days ago in the same temper which is described in your letter. He seems implacable [bull-headed] towards the principle object of his complaints and not to be satisfied in any respect without an office. It has been my lot to bear the burden of receiving & repelling his claims. . . . It is impossible however to reason concerning a man whose imagination & passions have been so fermented [soured].⁶²

Madison then explained to Monroe part of the reason why he believed Callender was so irrational:

Do you know, too, that besides his other passions, he is under the tyranny of that of love? . . . The object of his flame is in Richmond. . . . He has flattered himself, and probably been flattered by others, into a persuasion that the emoluments [compensations] and reputation of a post office would obtain her in marriage. Of these recommendations, however, he is sent back in despair. With respect to the fine even, I fear that delays, if nothing more, may still torment him and lead him to torment others. . . . Callender’s irritation, produced by his wants, is whetted constantly by his suspicion that the difficulties, if not intended, are the offspring of indifference in those who have interposed in his behalf [Jefferson].⁶³

Five days later Governor Monroe responded to Madison’s letter, telling him of his own meeting with Callender:

I have your [letter] and have since seen Mr. Callender, with whom I had much conversation. . . . I dwelt particularly on the remission of the fine. . . . Still he added that some little office would greatly accommodate him, and without one he did not know how he should subsist. That he was tired of the press &c.⁶⁴

20

But even while Jefferson was working to obtain the return of the fine, Callender announced his intention to punish Jefferson. Having obtained neither the postal appointment (or any other “little office”) nor the full return of his fine, he became incensed against Jefferson. Complaining that Jefferson had turned his back on him, he grumbled “I now begin to know what ingratitude is”⁶⁵ and issued the ominous warning that he was “not the man who is either to be oppressed or plundered with impunity.”⁶⁶

The disgruntled Callender who previously had written only for Republican newspapers—that is, pro-Jefferson and Anti-Federalist publications—actively sought a job with the Recorder, a Federalist newspaper in Richmond that was openly critical of President Jefferson. Callender then launched a series of virulent attacks against Jefferson in articles written throughout 1801, 1802, and 1803, accusing him, among other things, of “dishonesty, cowardice, and gross personal immorality.”⁶⁷ It was in these defamatory articles that Callender charged that Jefferson had fathered a child by Hemings.

Callender’s charge about Hemings received broad circulation when the Federalists of Massachusetts—strident and vocal opponents of President Jefferson, who used every opportunity to attack him—reprinted the charges about Jefferson and Hemings in a series of articles entitled “Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. Thomas Jefferson.”⁶⁸

Significantly, the claims about Jefferson and Hemings were always associated with partisan smear politics. Callender died less than a year after publishing his charges. During that time he was constantly drunk, and after threatening suicide on several occasions, he eventually drowned in three feet of water in the James River. A coroner’s jury ruled his death accidental, due to intoxication.

21

Before his death, however, Callender acknowledged that his attacks against Jefferson had been motivated by his belief that Jefferson had refused to repay his $200 fine.⁶⁹ In fact, in his article that first “exposed” the Jefferson-Hemings “relationship,” Callender confirmed his own personal, vindictive motivation by closing the article with these stinging words:

When Mr. Jefferson has read this article, he will find leisure to estimate how much has been lost or gained by so many unprovoked attacks upon J. T. Callender.⁷⁰

History has proved many of Callender’s charges against Jefferson to be totally inaccurate. For example, in his initial article in which he first “revealed” the Jefferson-Hemings “affair,” Callender had asserted:

It is well known that the man whom it delighteth the people to honor [President Jefferson] keeps, and for many years past has kept as his concubine one of his own slaves. Her name is Sally. The name of her eldest son is Tom. His features are said to bear a striking, although sable [dark-skinned] resemblance to those of the president himself. The boy is ten or twelve years of age. His mother went to France in the same vessel with Mr. Jefferson.⁷¹

This story was widely circulated, and the “striking resemblance” hearsay was often repeated to point to Jefferson’s guilt. For example, the 1802 Frederick-Town Herald declared:

Other information assures us that Mr. Jefferson’s Sally and their children are real persons. . . . Her son, whom Callender calls president Tom, we also are assured, bears a strong likeness to Mr. Jefferson.⁷²

22

Interestingly, the “striking resemblance” charge is still invoked today as “proof” that Jefferson fathered Hemings’ children,⁷³ but since the recent DNA testing unequivocally proved that Sally’s son Tom was not the son of Thomas Jefferson, Callender’s allegations that Tom bore a “striking resemblance to the president himself” are completely meaningless.

Furthermore, Callender claimed that Jefferson and Sally “went to France on the same vessel,” which was also wrong; they went on two separate vessels, one in 1784 and the other in 1787. Callender made many other similarly erroneous claims.

He also wrongly predicted that Americans—especially the Federalists—would widely embrace his charges against Jefferson as true. Only three weeks after his first article, he forewarned:

More About Sally and the President. For two days after the publication of the Recorder of September 1st, the [Jefferson’s supporters] were at a loss what to say or think. The Philistine priesthood were not more confounded when they saw their idol Dagon prostrate and broke to pieces [1 Samuel 5:1–4]. . . . Sally’s business makes a prodigious [monumental] noise. . . . After this discovery, I do not believe that at the next election [of 1804], Jefferson could obtain two votes on the eastern side of the Susquehanna [the general location of Jefferson opponents], and I think hardly four upon this side of it [the area of Jefferson supporters]. He will, therefore, be laid aside [i.e., not reelected].⁷⁴

But Jefferson was easily reelected. Even many of his Federalist opponents rejected Callender’s ludicrous charges. For example, David Humphreys of Philadelphia wrote in that city’s newspaper, the Aurora, that he had “shown that the story of Sally was a falsehood,”⁷⁵ and General Henry Lee, an ardent Federalist, declared that “there is no foundation whatsoever for that story.”⁷⁶

23

Callender was also wrong when he believed that he could besmirch the character of Jefferson supporters. He made an absurd string of accusations against James Madison’s character,⁷⁷ and he also proffered equally ridiculous claims against Presidents George Washington and John Adams. He charged Washington with filling the American governmental process with “confusion and iniquity” and with “corrupt[ing] the American judges.”⁷⁸ He charged Adams with attempting to overthrow the Constitution, betraying the nation to foreign powers, committing voter fraud and ballot tampering, allowing the slaughter of Americans by the Indians, ruining American morals, and even wishing that the British had won the American Revolution.⁷⁹

The charges Callender made against Washington, Adams, and Madison were so ridiculous that they were never believed by objective historians—or, for that matter, by thoughtful citizens. So why, then, have Callender’s charges against Jefferson survived when his charges against all the others deservedly perished long ago?

Because a few Deconstructionist writers in recent years have revived the work of Callender (called the “single poisoned spring” of Jefferson history⁸⁰), citing his allegations against Jefferson as if they were indisputably proved while failing to mention Callender’s established and well-documented pattern of false reporting, as well as the scurrilous, self-serving motives behind his published accusations. As Pulitzer Prize–winning historian James Truslow Adams explained, “Almost every scandalous story about Jefferson which is still whispered or believed can be traced to the lies in Callender’s book.”⁸¹

Merrill Peterson, professor of history at the University of Virginia, holds the same opinion,⁸² and Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Dumas Malone described Callender as “one of the most notorious scandalmongers and character assassins in American history.”⁸³ Stanford University historian John C. Miller describes Callender as “the most unscrupulous scandalmonger of the day . . . a journalist who stopped at nothing and stooped to anything.”⁸⁴ He explains:

24

Callender made his charges against Jefferson without fear and without research. He had never visited Monticello; he had never spoken to Sally Hemings; and he never made the slightest effort to verify the “facts” he so stridently proclaimed. It was “journalism” at its most reckless, wildly irresponsible, and scurrilous. Callender was not an investigative journalist; he never bothered to investigate anything. For him, the story, especially if it reeked of scandal, was everything; truth, if it stood in his way, was summarily mowed down.⁸⁵

Even historian Benjamin Ellis Martin—a strident, nineteenth-century Jefferson-bashing critic who easily might have accepted Callender’s charges—found no basis for believing them. To the contrary, he described Callender as a writer who did “effective scavenger work” in “scandal, slanders, lies, libels, scurrility” and one who excelled in “blackguardism” (unprincipled, vile writing).⁸⁶ Martin, a confirmed anti-Jeffersonian, therefore concluded:

I am unable to find one good word to speak of this man. . . . He was a journalistic janizary [mercenary], his pen always for sale on any side, a hardened and habitual liar, a traitorous and truculent [malicious] scoundrel; and the world went better when he sank out of sight beneath the waters of the James River.⁸⁷

Significantly, Jefferson’s long political career had been characterized by numerous personal attacks launched against him, especially during his presidential election. Jefferson placed the number of attacks in the thousands,⁸⁸ of which Callender’s had been just one. In fact, after surveying the charges published against Jefferson by his opponents, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Charles Warren concluded that “no other presidential campaign in American history ever brought forth such vicious and scurrilous personal attacks.”⁸⁹ And Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Dumas Malone similarly observed that Jefferson “suffered open personal attacks which, in severity and obscenity, have rarely if ever been matched.”⁹⁰

25

Jefferson knew that he could never rebut the falsehoods as rapidly as they could be concocted. So long before Callender leveled his charges against him, Jefferson had made it his standing personal policy to ignore all ridiculous claims made against him by his enemies.

He gave three reasons for this policy: First, any response he made might seem to dignify the charges.⁹¹ Second, he was convinced that his personal integrity would eventually prevail over the false accusations made against him.⁹² And third, Jefferson trusted the good judgment of the people.⁹³

Jefferson acknowledged that he could have successfully taken libelers like Callender to court, but he refused to lower himself to that level, instead turning them over to the Judge of the universe to Whom they would eventually answer. As he explained:

I know that I might have filled the courts of the United States with actions for these slanders, and have ruined perhaps many persons who are not innocent. But this would be no equivalent to the loss of [my own] character [by retaliating against them]. I leave them, therefore, to the reproof of their own consciences. If these do not condemn them, there will yet come a day when the false witness will meet a judge Who has not slept over his slanders.⁹⁴

26

Amazingly, Jefferson’s lifelong policy of refusing to answer false claims has today been translated into culpatory evidence against him. In fact, one prominent national news outlet pointed out that since Jefferson “never directly denied”⁹⁵ having an affair with Sally, it was proof that he had fathered her children! (Consider the unreasonableness of declaring that an individual is guilty of whatever he does not deny.)

Even though Jefferson’s public policy was silence, on two occasions he privately took pen in hand to recount his relationship with Callender to two friends. One was a lengthy letter to Governor James Monroe in which Jefferson explained:

I am really mortified at the base ingratitude of Callender. It presents human nature in a hideous form. . . . When the Political Progress of Britain first appeared in this country [in 1794] . . . I was speaking of it in terms of strong approbation to a friend in Philadelphia when he asked me if I knew that the author [Callender] was then in the city, a fugitive from prosecution on account of that work and in want of employ for his subsistence. This was the first of my learning that Callender was the author of the work. I considered him as a man of science fled from persecution, and assured my friend of my readiness to do whatever could serve him. . . . In 1798, I think, I was applied . . . to contribute to his relief. I did so. In 1799 . . . I contributed again. He had, by this time, paid me two or three personal visits. When he fled in a panic from Philadelphia to General Mason’s [in Virginia], he wrote to me that he was a fugitive in want of employ. . . . I availed myself of this pretext to cover a mere charity [and sent him] fifty dollars. . . . I considered him still as a proper object of benevolence. The succeeding year, he again wanted money. . . . I made his letter, as before, the occasion of giving him another fifty dollars. He considers these as proofs of my approbation [approval]. . . . Soon after I was elected to the government, Callender came on here, wishing to be made postmaster at Richmond. I knew him to be totally unfit for it; and however ready I was to aid him with my own charities (and I then gave him fifty dollars), I did not think the public offices confided to me to give away as charities. He took it in mortal offense. . . . This is the true state of what has passed between him and me.⁹⁶

27

In the second private letter about the Callender situation, written to Abigail Adams, Jefferson substantially repeated what he had said in his letter to Monroe and then closed by telling her:

I am not afraid to appeal to the nation at large, to posterity, and still less to that Being Who sees Himself our motives, Who will judge us from His own knowledge of them.⁹⁷

Jefferson repeatedly affirmed that he had nothing to hide.⁹⁸

Therefore, none of the three sources of evidence often invoked against Jefferson (the DNA testing, oral tradition, or the early published claims of Callender) provide any credible basis for believing that Jefferson fathered any of Hemings’ children. Nevertheless, Deconstructionist attempts to convict Jefferson continue and have even expanded into new venues.

For example, Jefferson is now being subjected to the tests of “psychohistory” in order to “prove” that he had an affair with Hemings. “Psychohistory” occurs when, rather than accepting what someone actually said, a psychological counteranalysis of that person’s words is attempted in an effort to establish their “true” motives. In my opinion, the result of such an analysis is psychobabble. Fawn Brodie used this method in her book Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History in order to extract an implied confession from Jefferson. She explains:

28

The first evidence that Sally Hemings had become for Jefferson a special preoccupation may be seen in one of the most subtly illuminating of all his writings, the daily journal he kept on a seven-week trip through eastern France, Germany, and Holland in March and April of 1788. . . . Anyone who reads with care these twenty-five pages must find it singular that in describing the countryside between these cities he used the word “mulatto” eight times.⁹⁹

Since Sally Hemings was mulatto, Brodie concludes that Jefferson’s use of that word when describing Land proves that he had a sexual relationship with her. Yet mulatto is used by Jefferson—who was by profession a farmer, scientist, and botanist—in his diary to describe the composition and color of the soil.

Notice the examples Brodie provides—examples that she claims “prove” Jefferson’s sexual infatuation with Hemings:

“The road goes thro’ the plains of the Maine, which are mulatto and very fine . . .”; “It has a good Southern aspect, the soil a barren mulatto clay . . .”; “It is of South Western aspect, very poor, sometimes gray, sometimes mulatto . . .”; “These plains are sometimes black, sometimes mulatto, always rich . . .”; “. . . the plains are generally mulatto . . .”; “. . . the valley of the Rhine . . . varies in quality, sometimes a rich mulatto loam, sometimes a poor sand . . .”; “. . . the hills are mulatto but also whitish . . .”; “Meagre mulatto clay mixed with small broken stones . . .”¹⁰⁰

Since the word mulatto is used only in a racial sense today, Modernist Brodie concludes that it was only used this way two centuries ago. She therefore claims that her psychoanalysis of Jefferson’s observation of soil in Europe is “proof ” of an affair with Hemings, but by so doing, she shows herself unfamiliar with both agriculture and linguistic etymology. Consider a few examples of the word mulatto as commonly used in early American agriculture:

Land rich—very rich; a deep stiff mulatto soil.

—Texas, 1846¹⁰¹

Both the deep black soil of the uplands and the light colored or mulatto soil peculiar to the bluff deposit are alike noted for productiveness.

—Iowa, 1875¹⁰²

The soil . . . is a sandy, mulatto-colored soil; it has been called the corn soil, though it produces wheat, cotton, tobacco, potatoes, etc.

—Tennessee, 1879¹⁰³

Highland is in the center of a tract of dark, “mulatto” soil of exceptional fertility, whence comes a large amount of farming trade.

—Kansas, 1883¹⁰⁴

[T]he soil is called a “mulatto soil,” and is that kind best adapted to the raising of cotton. It is a loamy clay, composed largely also of vegetable mould.

—Arkansas, 1889¹⁰⁵

According to Brodie’s reasoning, apparently all of these farmers who reported on soil conditions in their state must have also had “a special preoccupation” and attraction for women of mixed race since they also used the word mulatto in an agricultural context.

30

As Jefferson biographer Willard Sterne Randall correctly notes, Brodie’s entire supposition is farcical:

[W]hen Jefferson used the term mulatto to describe soil during his French travels, Sally was still on a ship with Polly, accompanying her to France. If he [Jefferson] had ever noticed her or remembered her at all, Sally had been only ten years old when Jefferson last visited Monticello hurriedly in 1784. . . . She was only eight when Jefferson last resided at Monticello and was mourning his wife’s death. Unless Brodie was suggesting that Jefferson consoled himself by having an affair with an eight-year-old child, the whole chain of suppositions is preposterous.¹⁰⁶

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Garry Wills similarly observed of Brodie’s work:

She has managed to write a long and complex study of Jefferson without displaying any acquaintance with eighteenth-century plantation conditions, political thought, literary conventions, or scientific categories—all of which greatly concerned Jefferson. She constantly finds double meanings in colonial language, basing her arguments on the present usage of key words [i.e., Modernism].¹⁰⁷

In summary, there exists no evidence, either modern or ancient, that Thomas Jefferson fathered even one child with Sally Hemings, much less five. In fact, if Jefferson were alive today and if he were charged with a crime for allegedly having sex with the young Hemings, it would be an open-and-shut case: he would be acquitted.