Honestly dismantled the narrative around the Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson’s relationship.

My second time reading this.

The wonders of modern science in the form of DNA have proven the theory of this book into a reality. Unfortunately, the same climate change science deniers are still around. Gordon-Reed’s introduction was written two years after the original publishing date of the book. Blood tests of descendents of Thomas Jefferson proved a familial connection with the founding father. T.J. was in Paris in 1789 when Sally Hemings, a slave girl, arrived with her brother James. The first piece of the puzzle was provided by Madison Hemings in 1873. An Ohio newspaper ran a story in which Madison claimed to be Jefferson’s son. Thomas’s supporters called it lies by enemies. Today it might be termed “fake news” by some. Madison was told by his mother that after two years in France with TJ, she came back to America pregnant with his child. She was 15 or 16, and he was 46. These days, it is called statutory rape. I am surprised that Reed, an attorney, does not point this out. Sally’s children were promised their freedom at age 21; while Jefferson’s other slaves were held in servitude for the rest of their lives. TJ was deep in debt and kept his slaves as valuable property. James Callender was the first journalist to spread the rumors of Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings. Like any good lawyer, Reed argues with repetition the fact that all four of their offspring were freed at the age of 21. Fawn Brodie is used as a source for a possible fifth child, a son named Tom who was raised by the Woodson family. Tom remains an unsolved mystery. Reed played detective to shoot down easily proven time lines regarding conceptions and births. Jefferson’s detailed journals proved that he was at Monticello the six times Hemings conceived over the course of fifteen years. TJ was at home nine months prior to the birth of each child. Even when presented with this evidence, detractor’s still insist that the president’s nephews, the Carr brothers, were the baby daddy’s. Bull****. The line of power hungry, entitled, alpha-males continues, right on through JFK, LBJ, Bill Clinton, and D.J. Trump. Some things never change. Sally never conceived at any of the times that Tommy was away as secretary of state, on through his presidency. He was absent for as long as six months, and, miraculously, Hemings was never once impregnated during T.J.’s road trips. Gordon-Reed, as a black woman, has an obvious horse in this race. She points out that most historians have denigrated Madison Hemings as a liar; only an ex-slave who was not to be believed, while the “legitimate” white Jefferson offspring had no reason to revise history. Miscegenation was illegal in Virginia until the 1960’s (ask Clarence Thomas), a pretty good reason to whitewash Thomas Jefferson. Even so, Reed remains in awe of the author of the Declaration of Independence. Reed further examines the beginning of the relationship in France when Sally was 14. Fawn Brodie speculated that the couple fell in love during that 2 year period, while historian Gary Wills called Sally “a healthy and obliging prostitute.” Ouch, just another black “ho”, right Gary? Reed returns once again to the timeline analysis and shows a precise correlation between T.J.’s presence at Monticello and Sally’s child bearing nine months late. This is the author-lawyer’s strongest argument. Hemings and her children were the only slaves released from Jefferson’s estate. Sally died nine years after her lover. Her status as a footnote of American history changed radically with DNA tests of the 20th century. Reed reinforces her strongest evidence with the diary of John Hartwell Cocke, a cofounder of the University of Virginia with Jefferson. He wrote in it of T.J.’s “slave mistress” in the 1850’s. All three sons of the happy couple played the violin, and the boys were said to have an uncanny resemblance to their slave master. With apologies to Colin Powell, this is a slam dunk. Although an important book, the author is more a lawyer than she is a writer. It reads like a trial transcript, with redundant details. In the hands of a true storyteller; John Grisham, for instance, it could have been much better.

Fascinating, but not surprising.

With the development of DNA a lot of answers. Thomas Jefferson was not a saint, but a mere man. He did great things with the help of God.

In Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, author Annette Gordon-Reed sets out to discover the truth behind whether or not Thomas Jefferson had a 38 year relationship with one of his enslaved women named Sally Hemings, a controversy in his own lifetime, and one that remains so. The book is split into five parts with a chapter for each of the main players involved in this story: Madison Hemings, James Callender, The Randolphs and Carrs, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.

Annette Gordon-Reed was a Professor of Law at New York Law School (and now a Professor of History at Harvard), and her arguments here read like how a lawyer would present their case in court. She relays in each chapter the arguments against a Jefferson-Hemings relationship from all of the popular historians who have commented on it over the decades, and then refutes their arguments strongly and with passion. There were multiple mic drop moments throughout this book and her arguments all make sense. It never feels like she is grasping at straws or twisting facts.

However, this is not just a stale and scholarly look at all the angles of this controversy. It reads as a personal and meaningful endeavor for the author as her ultimate stated aim is to not prove one way or the other if this relationship happened or didn’t happen, but really to criticize the way scholars have talked about it in the past. There is a mission here against the larger issue of white supremacy and racism that has been a part of the commentary on this subject in the past. She’s trying to have a bigger conversation here.

While this book is excellent in its research and very convincing in its arguments, it can be a bit long winded and repetitive at times. I’m not sure that someone who wasn’t fascinated by American history and/or Thomas Jefferson would find it fascinating throughout. But if you are interested in those subjects, I think you will find this highly interesting. If you are deeply familiar with Thomas Jefferson’s life, you may still learn some new things about him here that aren’t often talked about in other works.

The book opens with a new author’s note talking about the DNA evidence that was found after this book was first published. The DNA evidence did not prove that the descendent of Eston Hemings (a son of Sally Hemings) was a direct descendent of Thomas Jefferson. But it does establish this descendent is genetically linked to the Jefferson family and not to the Carr family (who were the main men historians have traditionally linked with fathering Sally Hemings children). This, along with the entirety of the arguments presented here in this book make me almost 100% sure that Thomas Jefferson did have a 38-year relationship with Sally Hemings. There is still that slight doubt in the back of my mind (why though I’m not sure). I’d recommend this to anyone who is interested to see what they think about it all!

Written before DNA proved the Hemings-Jefferson link, this book makes a case for why most of Jefferson's biographers were wrong in not considering the possibilities. By the way, as her "new" introduction pointed out, DNA has not proven that Jefferson was the father of Heming's children, only that a Jefferson was. But...

Couldn't get past the first chapter.

Usually, Annette Gordon-Reed writes super-smart person circles around history because she is a genius writing about geniuses. In Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controvery, Gordon-Reed does the opposite and w r i t e s v e r y s l o w l y. Her goal for us is to very deliberately dissect every single piece of evidence about Jefferson and Hemings' relationship in minutest detail while looking at the motivations of other Jefferson biographers (hi, racism!) and why they would negate the testimony of Jefferson children while grabbing at red herrings left by Jefferson descendants. But, as Gordon-Reed says in the forward, this is all sort of pointless because the technology became available after she wrote this book to Maury Povich some surviving Jefferson, Hemings, and Jefferson nephew descendants, and... he is the father. Still interesting, but I had to listen to this book at 1.5 speed because so much tiny detail.

This was fascinating and truly well done. When Gordon-Reed wrote this book, she was pushing back against accepted beliefs and she made her argument so convincing that it is hard to see how it could have been otherwise. We now, of course, have the DNA evidence to back her research but it is impressive that this was done before that information was available. This book is pure academic smack-down and Gordon-Reed came to win.

This is the first of Annette Gordon-Reed's two books on Thomas Jefferson and his mistress Sally Hemings (the other being the excellent The Hemingses of Monticello, published eleven years after this volume). In it, Gordon-Reed launches an extended critique of the historical consensus that had existed against Jefferson's paternity of Sally Hemings' children. This is a great book on the ways that historians have periodically betrayed their craft, blinded consciously and unconsciously by their own prejudices, assumptions and hopes about both the past and present.

While she claimed in the introduction that her goal was neither to prove nor disprove the allegations, I think she doth protest too much, and her leanings are strongly in the Jefferson-as-father camp, but that may be influenced by having read her other book, in which she's much more direct, perhaps as a result of the intervening Y-DNA study. I do think she's right that this book is more about the historical failings of Dumas Malone, Douglas Adair and others; this book will appeal most to those interested in the historiography , as opposed to her later book, which I think is more about the history itself.

Along the way, she demonstrates her trademark brilliance in historical reasoning and use of evidence, as well as an ability to write cogently about the past and its chroniclers with tongue planted firmly in cheek. This was a great book.

Gordon-Reed removed the cloak hiding the ineptitude, bigotry and prejudice of Jeffersonian historians.