Thomas Jefferson on slavery

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Most of the northern Founding Fathers, like John Adams, didn’t own slaves. Many of them were actively against slavery.

In fact, John’s son, John Quincy, was an active abolitionist.

Obviously it was not "most" Kraftie. Slavery persisted till 1865 (long after it was outlawed in Britain) and then you had Jim Crow till 1965. Since then over the last 50 years you still have
- segregation in housing and schools and higher education
- employment discrimination
- police harassment
- white supremacy

All of these are a legacy

Read carefully. I’m talking about the NORTHERN Founding Fathers. Those who lived north of Maryland.

Obviously, most of the SOUTHERN Founding Fathers owned slaves.

We weren’t talking about Jim Crow, etc. I’ve studied this extensively; I understand very well the discrimination African-Americans and other “minorities” faced.

That's not quite true. Hemmings was a legally-free French resident living in Paris at that age, and the genetic study you're referring to never claimed a link between Hemmings' children and Jefferson. It also only analyzed patrilineal genealogy, which is generally considered unreliable beyond 3-4 generations due to the ~10% misassigned paternity rate in Western cultures. In this case that unreliability is accumulated over more than 10 generations.

I'll have to fish out my sources but it was established that black descendants of Sally Hemmings carried Jefferson's DNA. What can't be 100% established is whether the children she bore were Thomas Jefferson or his brothers?

The general consensus is that Sally worked in the household so it's highly unlikely the Jefferson's brothers could access her at nighttime. In addition at least one of the children was conceived when she was overseas with the Washington family which from a forensic perspective points the finger squarely at Thomas Jefferson.

The Jefferson family descendants have spent 50 years trying to a) debunk the story of Sally Hemmings and b) have actively been involved in blocking the black descendants of Jefferson from accessing any credibility in their lineage as their very existence besmirches Jefferson's legacy. It seems segregation in America exists even when you have a common ancestor

I was not aware Sally Hemmings was a free person? every source I have read refers to her as a slave/property. Her ,mother was actually raped by her slave owner which is how Sally was born. It's not a particularly pleasant story how Sally came into this world.

The study authors had to retract that claim:


The background is that Foster compared Y-chromosome DNA from a person claiming to be descended from Sally Hemings' youngest son Eston to Y-DNA from several people claiming to be descended from Field Jefferson (recorded as having been Thomas Jefferson's uncle). A perfect match between those samples would mean that the DNA donors shared a male-line ancestor at some point in the last several hundred years. Beyond that you have to use circumstantial evidence to find the most likely shared ancestor.


Or quite a few others. Foster's retraction mentioned Randolph Jefferson and his five sons, all of whom lived within 20 miles of Monticello. Randolph in particular was invited to Monticello nine months before Eston Hemings was born, and he would very likely have been there nine months before Madison Hemings' birth due to Mary Jefferson's funeral being held at Monticello in April of 1804.


The only mention I can find of a child conceived overseas is attributed to Madison Hemings, who doesn't appear to have mentioned a name or gender. There's no DNA evidence linking that child (or any of Hemings' first five recorded children) to any of Thomas Jefferson's relatives. Are you assuming that all of Sally Hemings' children had the same father?


There are two conflicting assumptions here: One is that rape of slaves was common on multiple plantations near Monticello, and the other is that only someone born 'legitimately' into the Jefferson family could have fathered Eston Hemings. If the first premise is correct, then one would expect to find Y-DNA matching the Jefferson family among the slaves (contradicting the second premise). Thomas Jefferson's father lived 35 miles from Monticello and was a slave trader. His grandfather owned a plantation with slaves at the same location.

Jefferson did bring some of the male slaves from Monticello to Paris with him, although the only one I've found mentioned by name is Hemings' brother James.


Given that it had already been spread for 140 years by partisans with scant evidence or scruples, I think they were justified in being skeptical.


Most of Sally Hemings descendants have identified as white since the time of the Civil War. This really isn't a case of white segregationists beating up on downtrodden people of color. (Eston's eldest son John was a light-skinned, redheaded high-ranking officer in the Union army.)


Most sources discussing the Jefferson-Hemings controversy don't mention it, but every source I've found covering Hemings' time in Paris does. Her son Madison wrote that she considered remaining in France, and used the leverage afforded by French law to negotiate more favorable terms from Jefferson.

Ok in reconciling myself with cultural moral relativity, I accept Jefferson's cultural legacy outweighs his personal flaws. Much like people who listen to Michael Jackson's music or mentioning Mohammed in prayers.

Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson's slave-his property.

For two years she stopped being his slave, and was free, and was his paid employee, while they both lived in Paris France where slavery was illegal.

And THEN...she went back to being his slave, and his property, for the rest of both their lives, when the two returned to Monticello Virginia.

So the statement that she was "his slave and property" is hundred percent correct. There was only that one 26 month hiatus when she was a high school aged teen in Paris when she was not his slave.

But she did strike a deal in order to agree to return to slave status...that deal included the promise that any and children she had would be automatically free at age 21.

It's probably relevant that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation which is made up all the white descendants of Thomas jefferson and his wife officially recognise that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemmings' children.
https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jeffe ... y-hemings/

If you read the statement the Jefferson family took both the DNA and historical evidence into consideration before making that official declaration. The historical accounts shows that Jefferson himself acknowledges he was the father in official records. Taken in combination it's very hard to refute the evidence or that Jefferson would volunteer to sign his own name or make arrangements to free the children when they were 21 given there was no reason in the context of the time to cover for anybody as the law back then permitted the slave owner to treat their slaves in any way they wanted.

I don't find any mention of that on their website, nor did googling their board of directors turn up anything. Could you be thinking of the Monticello Society, which administers the Jefferson family cemetery on the Monticello grounds?


Regarding the bullet points in your link:

• The first and third are redundant; they refer to identical claims made by the same person (and also recorded by the same intermediary, S. F. Wetmore). Additionally, those claims conflict* with the birth records cited by the report, yet it inexplicably treats both sources as reliable.

(*Basic facts like the number of siblings Madison had don't match.)

• The second misrepresents the study. Foster only took DNA from a single purported descendant of Eston Hemings.

• Number 7 is a bit of a straw man. None of the Moneicello records claimed that Sally Hemings' children all had the same father, nor is there DNA evidence suggesting that.

I'm also perplexed by their footnote; are they really treating visitors to Monticello as random actors (like dice or Brownian particles)?

• Number 8: The oral history of Thomas Woodson's descendants was just as consistent as that of the Hemings line, yet the Y-DNA evidence shows that they're not descended from a male-line relative of Field Jefferson. (It exonerates all of the Jeffersons.)

• Number 9: It's unclear what they were trying to establish, since Jefferson made a similar deal with James Hemings. To my knowledge nobody has ever suggested that he was having affairs with both of them.


I've never seen that mentioned before. Could you point to a source?

https://www.ajc.com/news/national/sally ... 4i6x2NHJM/