“The Jefferson-Hemmings Controversy”

Thomas Jefferson greatly influenced American government and culture, shaping policies on major issues like church-state relations and federal authority. However, his reputation is complicated by allegations of an affair with Sally Hemings.

Sally Hemings was an enslaved girl who worked for Thomas Jefferson’s eldest daughter, Martha, at the Jefferson residence, Monticello. When Jefferson traveled to Paris as an American diplomat in 1787, he brought his youngest daughter, nine-year-old Polly, and thirteen-year-old Sally Hemings to accompany Polly. Some historians assert that during his time in Paris, Jefferson entered into a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, who was nearly thirty years his junior, and that this union may have resulted in the birth of several of her children, four of whom survived to adulthood.

Accusations regarding the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings have persisted for over two centuries. Although many Jefferson scholars have expressed skepticism about these claims, a significant portion of the public currently regards them as true. Media portrayals such as CBS’s “Sally Hemings” and the film “Jefferson in Paris” continue to present this narrative. This raises questions about the evidence concerning Thomas Jefferson's alleged involvement with Sally Hemings.

The evidence against Jefferson stems from three primary sources:
              •            The recent DNA testing which was reputed to provide proof that Jefferson fathered at least one of Hemings’s children.
              •            Oral tradition, the strongest of which comes from
Thomas Woodson. Two centuries ago, Woodson claimed (and others repeated) that Sally Hemings was his mother and Jefferson his father, and it was thus speculated that Sally had named the child “Thomas” because he had been fathered by Jefferson.
              •            The published newspaper reports from Jefferson’s day charging him with fathering Hemings’s children.

Although the evidence against Jefferson seems strong, many leading historians have long dismissed the accusations. Why do they disagree despite seemingly clear proof? What is the reality?
Three legal principles should guide the search for truth.
              •            First, an individual is innocent until proven guilty.
              •            Second, there must be opportunity for cross-examination so that the other side of the story may be offered. (According to the following proverb, presenting the other side of a story is vital:
Proverbs 18:17 (KJV)
17He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him.

• Guilt must be established by a preponderance of the evidence, meaning there can be no reasonable doubt after all evidence is considered. If a rational alternative explanation creates legitimate doubt, the individual cannot be presumed guilty.

According to these guidelines, review the three sources of evidence regarding Jefferson. Begin with the most recent source, which is the scientific testing.

In 1998, the journal Nature reported DNA tests showing that Thomas Jefferson fathered a child with Sally Hemings. According to Nature:
“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.”1

Within days of  the release of this story, writers and columnists across the nation spread the report.2 In fact, within only a few days, Jefferson had become a sexual predator,3 and several reports made him into a child molester.4

These authors ignored the DNA test results showing non-paternity. The original Nature article reported that Thomas Woodson, claimed by oral tradition to be Sally's child after her return from France, was not fathered by Jefferson.

“President 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. No known documents support this view.”5

This finding was important because it disproved the widely accepted oral traditions against Jefferson. A few—but only a very few—even bothered to report this non-paternity aspect of the DNA findings.6
Nature reported that DNA evidence showed Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings, Sally’s youngest child, but not Thomas Woodson. This story quickly gained national attention.

Just eight weeks after publication, Nature retracted the story, acknowledging, “The title assigned to our study was misleading.” Their conclusion regarding Jefferson fathering Eston was found to be based on incomplete and inaccurate scientific and historical data.
Although researchers found Jefferson genes in Eston Hemings’ descendants, they could not confirm they belonged to Thomas Jefferson since they did not test his direct descendants—only those of his uncle, Field Jefferson, and his nephews, Samuel and Peter Carr. With twenty-six Jefferson males living in central Virginia at that time, other family lines were not ruled out. As one report accurately observed, “Experts have noted the total absence of accurate Jefferson ancestry charts in the study.”8

Of the twenty-six Jefferson men near Monticello, only eight lived within one hundred miles and are possible suspects. Herbert Barger, the Jefferson family historian who helped with the original Nature DNA study and disagreed with its conclusions, explained:

“My study indicates to me that Thomas Jefferson was not the father of Eston or any other Hemings child. The study indicates that Randolph [Thomas’ younger brother] is possibly the father of Eston and the others. Randolph, named for his maternal Randolph family, was a widower and between wives when, shortly after his wife’s death, Sally became pregnant with her first child.… She continued having children until 1808 when Eston was born. Randolph Jefferson would marry his second wife the next year, 1809.… [Significantly, t]hree of Sally Hemings’ children, Harriet, Beverly and Eston (the latter two not common names), were given names of the Randolph family.”9
Interestingly, in its retraction even Nature ruefully conceded:
“It is true that men of Randolph Jefferson’s family could have fathered Sally Hemings’ later children.”10

Although Nature later retracted and revised its initial announcement, this update received limited attention. As a result, Jefferson's reputation has been influenced by “scientific evidence” that did not conclusively demonstrate that Thomas Jefferson fathered any illegitimate children. But, as the Wall Street Journal noted, “Of course, the backtracking comes a little late to change the hundreds of other headlines fingering Jefferson.”11 The effect has been unfortunate, for as one reporter who covered the DNA story accurately noted, “Defective scholarship is difficult to recall.”12

The recent scientific testing focused on the previously published allegations regarding Jefferson, which were first publicly presented two centuries ago. These claims originally appeared in newspaper articles written between 1801 and 1803 by James T. Callender, a Scottish immigrant.

James T. Callender (1758–1803) gained recognition in 1792 in Scotland for his critical work The Political Progress of Great Britain, which resulted in his indictment for sedition. After being “oftimes called in court, he did not appear and was pronounced a fugitive and an outlaw.”After the pronouncement, Callender and his young family fled to America in 1793 with no job prospects. American patriots, including Jefferson, saw him as a victim of British persecution and offered charitable support.

In 1796, after three years in America, Callender found a job with an Anti-Federalist (pro-Jefferson) newspaper in Philadelphia. Callender announced to his readers that he would deliver impactful commentary, resuming a critical writing approach that had previously led to trouble in Great Britain. This time, his focus was on prominent Federalist Americans such as Alexander Hamilton.

In 1799, fearing prosecution, Callender left Philadelphia for Richmond, Virginia, where he continued criticizing the Federalists through journalism as a supporter of Jefferson’s party. In 1800, he was convicted under the Sedition Law, fined $200, and jailed for nine months, but persisted in publishing criticisms even from prison.
Throughout this period, Callender wrote Jefferson several letters—most of which Jefferson declined to answer or even acknowledge. In fact, because of Jefferson’s lack of response, Callender once told James Madison that he “might as well addressed a letter to Lot’s wife.”15 While Jefferson generally avoided direct contact with Callender, he continued his occasional charitable gifts for the support of Callender’s young children.

When Jefferson became President in 1801, he called the Sedition Law unconstitutional, pardoned those imprisoned under it (including Callender), and ordered Callender's $200 fine returned. The Federalist sheriff refused to return the money, despite orders from Secretary of State Madison. Unaware of this, Callender wrongly blamed Jefferson for the delay.
Callender, feeling entitled after supporting Jefferson’s party, demanded appointment as Richmond's U.S. Postmaster—a request Jefferson and Madison denied.

Obtaining neither the postal appointment nor his $200, Callender became enraged against Jefferson. After complaining, “Mr. Jefferson has not returned one shilling of my fine. I now begin to know what ingratitude is,”16 he issued an ominous warning—that he was no man “to be oppressed or plundered with impunity.”17 The disgruntled Callender, who had previously written only for Anti-Federalist newspapers, sought a job with a Federalist newspaper in Richmond highly critical of President Jefferson.

Callender launched a series of harsh attacks on Jefferson in articles published during 1801 to 1803. He accused Jefferson, among other things, of “dishonesty, cowardice, and gross personal immorality,”18 and even charged Jefferson with fathering several children by Sally Hemings.

Callender died less than a year after accusing Jefferson, frequently intoxicated during that period. He ultimately drowned in three feet of water in the James River; a coroner's jury ruled his accidental death was due to intoxication. Significantly, however, before his death, Callender acknowledged that his attacks against Jefferson had been motivated by his belief that Jefferson had refused to repay his $200 fine.19

Although Jefferson could have sued Callender for libel, he chose not to. Instead, he left judgment to a higher power, 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.”20
He later told Abigail Adams he was unconcerned about Callender’s accusations damaging his reputation, explaining why:
“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.”21

Jefferson maintained his innocence and stated that he was willing to have God as judge regarding the truth of Callender’s accusations.
Given Callender’s questionable motives and history of inaccuracies, historians have dismissed his accusations against Jefferson as unfounded. For instance, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James Truslow Adams stated:
“Almost every scandalous story about Jefferson which is still whispered or believed can be traced to the lies in Callender’s [writings].”22
Others, including Merrill Peterson, Professor of History at the University of Virginia, hold the same opinion.23

John C. Miller, a Stanford University historian, describes Callender as “the most unscrupulous scandalmonger of the day … a journalist who stopped at nothing and stooped to anything.”24 He explains:
“Callender made his charges against Jefferson without fear and without research. He had never visited Monticello; he had never spoken to Sally Hemings; he had 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.”25

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Dumas Malone, after describing Callender as “one of the most notorious scandalmongers and character assassins in American history,”26 accurately observed of Callender that “The evil that he did was not buried with him: some of it has lasted through the generations.”27

Moreover, historian Benjamin Ellis Martin, a well-known nineteenth-century critic of Jefferson, also found no substantive evidence to support Callender’s allegations, despite his critical stance toward Jefferson.

In fact, Martin 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).28 Martin concluded:
“I am unable to find one good word to speak of this man.… He was a journalistic janizary, his pen always for sale on any side, a hardened and habitual liar, a traitorous and truculent scoundrel; and the world went better when he sank out of sight beneath the waters of the James River.”29

Many of Callender’s accusations against Jefferson have been shown to be false, as with his similar claims about Washington, Adams, and Madison, which were mostly disregarded at the time. These allegations might have faded entirely if not for three feminist writers—Fawn Brodie, Barbara Chase-Riboud, and Annette Gordon-Reed—who revived them in recent books alleging Jefferson’s affair with Hemings.

As eminent Jeffersonian historian Virginius Dabney observed, “Had it not been for Callender, recently revived charges to the same effect probably would never have come to national attention.”30

In short, neither films, recent scientific claims, old oral traditions, nor tabloid journalism provide proof that Thomas Jefferson had a relationship with Sally Hemings. Stronger evidence is needed to substantiate these allegations.

The Jefferson-Hemings Scholars Commission published a 565-page report on the Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings controversy. Its

Executive Summary states:
“The question of whether Thomas Jefferson fathered one or more children by his slave Sally Hemings is an issue about which honorable people can and do disagree. After a careful review of all of the evidence, the commission agrees unanimously that the allegation is by no means proven; and we find it regrettable that public confusion about the 1998 DNA testing and other evidence has misled many people. With the exception of one member, whose views are set forth both below and in his more detailed appended dissent, our individual conclusions range from serious skepticism about the charge to a conviction that it is almost certainly false.”

The Jefferson-Hemings Scholars Commission was made up of eminent historians and scholars; they released their report on April 12, 2001.
 
FOOTNOTES

1 Eric S. Lander and Joseph J. Ellis, “Founding Father,” Nature, November 5, 1998.
2 Dinitia Smith and Nicholas Wade, “DNA Tests Offer Evidence that Jefferson Fathered A Child With His Slave,” New York Times on the Web, November 1, 1998; see also Barbra Murray and Brian Duffy, “Jefferson’s Secret Life,” U.S. News & World Report, November 9, 1998; see also Dennis Cauchon, “Jefferson Affair No Longer Rumor,” USA Today, November 2, 1998; see also Malcolm Ritter, “Was It Thomas Jefferson?” Buffalo News, November 1, 1998; see also Lucian K. Truscott IV, “Time for Monticello to Open the Gate and Stop Making Excuses,” San Jose Mercury News, November 8, 1998; see also Donna Britt, “A Slaveholder’s Hypocrisy was Inevitable,” Washington Post, November 6, 1998.
3 Christopher Hitchens, “Jefferson-Clinton,” Nation, November 30, 1998.
4 Richard Cohen, “Grand Illusion,” Washington Post, December 13, 1998; see also Clarence Page, “New Disclosure Shows Two Thomas Jeffersons,” Chicago Tribune, November 5, 1998; see also Dinitia Smith and Nicholas wade, “DNA Tests Offer Evidence that Jefferson Fathered A Child With His Slave,” New York Times on the Web, November 1, 1998.
5 Dr. Eugene A Foster, et al, “Jefferson fathered slave’s last child,” Nature, November 5, 1998.
6 Gene Edward Veith, “Founder’s DNA revisited,” World, February 20, 1999; see also Dinitia Smith and Nicholas Wade, “DNA Tests Offer Evidence that Jefferson Fathered A Child With His Slave,” New York Times on the Web, November 1, 1998.
8 Press release by Jefferson family historian and genealogist, Herbert Barger, on January 2, 1999.
9 The Truth About The Thomas Jefferson DNA Study as told by Herbert Barger, Jefferson Family Historian, February 12, 1999.
10 Dr. Eugene A. Foster, et al, “The Thomas Jefferson paternity case,” Nature, January 7, 1999.
11 “Founding Fatherhood,” Wall Street Journal, February 26, 1999, sec. W, p. 15.
12 Gene Edward Veith, “Founder’s DNA revisited,” World, February 20, 1999.
15 Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President, First Term, 1801–1805 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970), p. 209 (Volume IV of a six volume series Jefferson and His Time), in a letter from James Callender to James Madison on April 27, 1801 after Jefferson failed to respond to a Callender letter of April 12, 1801.
16 Id.
17 Id.
18 Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. “Callender, James Thomson.”
19 Malone, Jefferson the President, First Term, p. 208, quoting the Richmond Recorder, May 28, 1803.
20 Thomas Jefferson, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Ellery Bergh, editor (Washington, D.C.: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), Vol. X, p. 171, to Uriah McGregory on August 13, 1800.
21 Jefferson, Writings (1904), Vol. XI, p. 44, to Abigail Adams on July 22, 1804.
22 James Truslow Adams, The Living Jefferson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), p. 315.
23 Virginus Dabney, The Jefferson Scandals: A Rebuttal (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1981), p. 15.
24 John Chester Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery (New York: The Free Press, 1977), p. 153.
25 Miller, p. 154.
26 Malone, Jefferson the President, First Term, p. 212.
28 Benjamin Ellis Martin, “Transition Period of the American Press,” Magazine of American History, Vol. XVII, No. 4, April 1887, published in Vol. XVII of Magazine of American History, Martha J. Lamb, editor (New York City: A.S. Barnes & Company, 1887), p. 285.
29 Martin, pp. 285–286.
30 Dabney, p. 6.