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Bernstein, R. B. Thomas Jefferson. New York: Oxford UP, 2003.

Boles John B., and Randal L. Hall, eds. Seeing Jefferson Anew: In His Time and Ours. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2010.

Contains chapters on slavery, women, and Jefferson's sexuality. Butterfield's review notes the growing centrality of Hemings.

Burstein, Andrew. "Jefferson in the Flesh." Seeing Jefferson Anew: In His Time and Ours. Ed. John B. Boles and Randal L. Hall. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2010.

Burstein, Andrew. "Jefferson's Rationalizations." William and Mary Quarterly 57.1 (2000): 183-97.

DNA proves the relationship, but was it a romance, or was Sally his concubine? There is an emotional gap that remains unexplained despite the recent scientific finding. Historians continue to fill in the pieces from the 20th century, playing on universal emotions. But Burstein draws stark comparisons between the two time periods and suggests that we cannot hold one more highly than the other. Was Jefferson considered a moral man of his time, a period that allowed a country to found a nation on the backs of slaves?

Burstein, Andrew. "The Continuing Debate: Jefferson and Slavery." Jefferson's Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

Burstein, Andrew. "The New Debate: Sex with a Servant." Jefferson's Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

Burstein, Andrew. "The Seductions of Thomas Jefferson." Journal of the Early Republic 19 (1999): 499-509.

Burstein, Andrew. "Thomas Jefferson's Sexual Imagination." History Compass 3 (2005) NA 178: 1-8.

Burstein, Andrew. Jefferson's Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

Burstein, Andrew. The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1995.

Cogliano, Francis D. “Sally Hemings.” Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2006.

Ellis, Joseph J. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. 2nd ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.

New edition after the DNA announcement updates the appendix on the controversy to include Ellis’s belief now in a Jefferson-Hemings relationship.

Ellis, Joseph J. “Jefferson: Post-DNA.” William and Mary Quarterly 57.1 (2000): 125-38.

American icon Jefferson is examined more closely after the DNA results of his suggestive paternity were published. Historians scramble to look at his mysterious character, habitual denial, and living paradoxes in an effort to find meaning for this new piece of information. But Jefferson’s ability to transcend his living time period and matter more to us now suggests that our study of him tells more about us than it does about him. Our culture in the 20th century still, more than ever, is passionate about resolving the issues of gender equality, race relations, and interracial sexual relationships. Ellis suggests that “he is more of a sphinx than ever before.” What the historians interpret is a mere reflection of our cultural views today on hot topic issues.

Forum: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings Redux. William and Mary Quarterly 57.1 (2000): 121-210.

Special issue section, with essays by Andrew Burstein, Joseph Ellis, Annette Gordon-Reed, Jan Lewis, Fraser Neiman, Peter Onuf, and Lucia Stanton.

Gordon-Reed, Annette. "Engaging Jefferson: Blacks and the Founding Father." William and Mary Quarterly 57.1 (2000): 171-82.

Reed analyzes the controversy in black and white terms, literally. She examines how white historians and black historians differ in their research findings and interpretations. The DNA evidence only furthers this cold war of information, making Jefferson a man more real than imagined, while both sides of the story are not any closer to a resolution.

Gordon-Reed, Annette. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. 2nd. ed. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1998.

New edition after the DNA announcement contains a new introductory "Author's Note" in which the author is now stronger about what her argument showed and its larger significance for American history and life.

Gordon-Reed, Annette. "'The memories of a Few Negroes': Rescuing America's Future at Monticello." Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.

Want to get inside the mind of a historian who has dedicated her life to studying the Jefferson-Hemings relationship? Gordon-Reed takes you there as she talks about her points of view before, during, and after the DNA evidence is released. This missing piece to the puzzle shifts the arguments historians have believed and built upon for decades. She reflects upon her position in this tangled web of evidence in addition to commenting on the arguments of her fellow historians. This essay provides a great insight into the minds of one of the most prominent figures trying to make sense of the controversy.

Gordon-Reed, Annette. "'The memories of a Few Negroes': Rescuing America's Future at Monticello." Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.

Gordon-Reed, Annette. "Thomas Jefferson: Was the Sage a Hypocrite?" Time 5 July 2004.

Halliday, E. M. Understanding Thomas Jefferson. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001.

Hayes, Kevin J. The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Oxford UP, 2008.

Hitchens, Christopher. Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2005.

Horton, Lois E. "Avoiding History: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the Uncomfortable Public Conversation on Slavery." Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory. Ed. James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton. New York: New Press, 2006.

Research project focusing on the staff and visitors at Monticello regarding the history and the presentation of the controversy there.

Isaac, Rhys. "Monticello Stories Old and New." Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.

What was life like on the mountain top? How were the Hemingses treated at Monticello, and what kind of life did they live in its enslaved quarters? The environment that Jefferson designed and created was very much suitable to his own needs and desires, including taking up Sally Hemings as his "plantation wife," as Isaac suggests. There are stories to be told about Monticello by the very people who inhabited it. Their insight and knowledge deserves to be rediscovered and heard.

Jordan, Winthrop D. "Hemings and Jefferson: Redux." Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.

This controversy matters! Jordan discusses the importance of an American people in today’s day and age having a passion for getting to the bottom of this relationship. It has less to do with the two people involved and more to do with how we use the current information we have, which pieces we deem as vital and others that we discard. If historians are discarding James Callender’s accusations, why? Is it because Callender himself wasn’t a reliable source, or is it because historians are trying to mold the evidence to fit their claim? Every time historians look at the controversy a little bit closer, they are realizing how much of themselves they are seeing.

Lewis, Jan Ellen, and Peter S. Onuf. “Introduction.” Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.

Lewis, Jan Ellen, and Peter S. Onuf. Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.

Lewis, Jan Ellen. “Jefferson and Women.” Seeing Jefferson Anew: In His Time and Ours. Ed. John B. Boles and Randal L. Hall. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2010.

Lewis, Jan. "Introduction." William and Mary Quarterly 57.1 (2000): 121-24.

This collection of six essays (Burstein, Gordon-Reed, Ellis, Neiman, Onuf, and Stanton) entitled "Forum: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings Redux" was gathered and published a little over a year after the DNA evidence was revealed. The range of knowledge each historian provides is just one small piece of the puzzle that provides a different scope of seeing and a different model of thinking. When put together the way this collection is, it is easy to understand the full realm of complexities that exist in the Jefferson-Hemings scandal. It is informative and will guarantee to make the reader think about the possible explanations that just may never get resolved.

Mapp, Alf J., Jr. Thomas Jefferson: A Strange Case of Mistaken Identity. New York: Madison Books, 1987.

Morgan, Philip D. “Interracial Sex in the Chesapeake and the British Atlantic World, c. 1700-1820.” Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.

The context of the Jefferson-Hemings suspected relationship is a crucial part in understanding the dynamics of the relationship itself. What were the social norms of that time? Were other prominent men having promiscuous affairs with women they weren’t supposed to? The Chesapeake area has a history of interracial sex, and Morgan takes a look at both the point of view of the slaveholding white men and the enslaved black women in order to get a better understanding of the motivations and strategies behind each.

Neiman, Fraser D. “Coincidence or Causal Connection? The Relationship between Thomas Jefferson's Visits to Monticello and Sally Hemings's Conceptions.” William and Mary Quarterly 57.1 (2000): 198-210.

Neiman provides extensive analytical theories and statistics about the timing of Jefferson’s visits to Monticello and the seemingly coincidental conceptions of Sally Hemings. This finding complements the DNA results well, finally giving more than a hunch of human intuition about the truth of the Hemings’s children. For all five of Sally’s conceptions (not including her pregnancy in Paris) Jefferson was noted and recorded as being present at Monticello nine months prior to their births. However, it is important to note that Neiman’s theories are independent from the DNA research and are only a matter of probability than a certainty.

Nicolaisen, Peter. "Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the Question of Race: An Ongoing Debate." Journal of American Studies 37.1 (2003): 99-118.

Lots of references to articles and newspaper accounts. Comprehensive account of the controversy from Brodie through the DNA to the situation in 2002, which he characterizes in this way: "The questions addressed today primarily concern the implications of the affair. What does the liaison between Jefferson and Sally Hemings mean for our understanding of the man Thomas Jefferson, and how does it affect the accomplishments he has generally been credited with? Given the little we know about her, how do we view Sally Hemings’s role in the relationship, and how do we come to understand her as an individual living out her life in bondage? What, if any, are the consequences the affair has for an evaluation of interracial relationships as they existed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Finally, does the story and the way in which it has been transmitted have any bearing on the problem of race as it is perceived today?"

O'Brien, Conor Cruise. “Thomas Jefferson: Radical and Racist.” Atlantic Monthly October 1996: 53-74.

O'Brien, Conor Cruise. The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.

Onuf, Peter S. “Every Generation Is an ‘Independant Nation’: Colonization, Miscegenation, and the Fate of Jefferson's Children.” William and Mary Quarterly 57.1 (2000): 153-70.

The fate of Jefferson’s children clashed against the colonization proposal that he was determined to put into action. His decision to not acknowledge them and cut ties altogether enabled him to free himself of the guilt of his actions as a slave owner and a father. Furthermore, colonization was a scapegoat for all of Virginia and slaveholding southerners who also had sexual relations with their slave women. Jefferson reasoned that the only way to prevent future temptation was a $900 million colonization effort in Haiti. Onuf presents readers with the question of how, not in the context of logics, but in reason, as a father of his children and of America.

Rakove, Jack N. "Our Jefferson." Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.

Thomas Jefferson’s morals are something modern-day Americans are having a hard time with. Rakove takes a closer look into the historical times in which Jefferson lived and offers insight as to why our culture today can never seem to be satisfied with his thoughts and actions regarding slavery, his relationship with Sally Hemings, and his approach to politics. Like many historians in the post-DNA era, Rakove suggests that our interpretations of "our Jefferson" are reflections of our culture today. What does the DNA evidence prove other than our increasingly curiosity to find black and white absolutes in a gray society?

Randall, Willard Sterne. Thomas Jefferson: A Life. New York: Henry Holt, 1993.

Rothman, Adam. “Jefferson and Slavery.” Seeing Jefferson Anew: In His Time and Ours. Ed. John B. Boles and Randal L. Hall. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2010.

Rothman, Joshua D. “James Callender and Social Knowledge of Interracial Sex in Antebellum Virginia.” Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.

Southern communities knew more about their people than the newspapers did. Social gatherings, conversations, and gossip were the means of communicating in the antebellum states. James Callender was one to publish this hearsay knowledge, but it is amazing how much of the story remained intact. Was he closer to the truth than his scandalous persona led most people to imagine? The passing of news from community to community seems not much different from the way history is passed from generation to generation. In the Jefferson-Hemings case, the means of handling such a story has very much remained the same, from Callender to historians today.

Rothman, Joshua D. Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2003.

Sollors, Werner. “Presidents, Race, and Sex.” Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.

Sollors, Werner. “Presidents, Race, and Sex.” Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.

Gossip is nothing new. It is a way to fill in the blanks for the partial stories that we are told and have known to be true. It also doesn’t care about a person’s social or political status, for gossip has been involved in many past presidents’ lives. The issues of race and sex have also been in contention. James Callender was the first to publicize the Jefferson-Hemings scandal, but he certainly hasn’t been the last when it comes to political controversies throughout our history. Sollors takes a closer look at people who held positions representing America’s power and compares them to the age-old and unresolved relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.

Stanton, Lucia, and Dianne Swann-Wright. "Bonds of Memory: Identity and the Hemings Family." Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.

Lucia Stanton, a white woman, and Dianne Swann-Wright, a black woman, created the Getting Word project, an effort to reconnect the descendants of Jefferson at Monticello. They interviewed families and looked at photographs and heard stories passed down from previous generations. This extensive study of the modern-day Jeffersons illustrates the dynamic of a family whose history is disrupted by their skin color as society remains skeptical of their race. The different ways that brothers Madison and Eston chose to accept their heritage is telling in the paths they chose later in their lives and, furthermore, by the decisions their descendants chose to either continue or discard family traditions.

Stanton, Lucia. “’The Other End of the Telescope’: Jefferson through the Eyes of His Slaves.” William and Mary Quarterly 57.1 (2000): 139-52.

Jefferson could not have been great without his slaves. They did everything for him. A number of slave stories recount the way Jefferson was in their eyes, including his habits and routines, specific moments on Monticello, and how he treated his 200 slaves. Though none of the stories can be confirmed by another, there is no recollection of Jefferson being a mean slave owner. For the most part, his slaves loved and admired him, and they would do anything for such a great man. It is unfortunate that this same man records in his various journals how much of an increasing burden the slaves have become. At the end of the day, they are property, and he treats them as such.

Strout, Cushing. "The Case of the One-Eyed Pundits and Jefferson DNA." Sewanee Review 108.2 (2000): 248-54.

"Is it time to eat crow? let the reader decide. . . . All history is an interim report."

Valiunas, Algis. "Paying for Jefferson's Sins." Commentary November 2000: 36-43.

Walker, Clarence. “Denial is Not a River in Egypt.” Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.

This essay sheds light on the historian denials surrounding the Jefferson legacy. It gets to the root of the issues surrounding this controversy, sex relations between the races, and provides an interesting case for why Americans today care so much about the Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson relationship. Walker illustrates the history of denial in American culture through the variety of platforms and issues, but none highlight our habit of closing our ears and eyes to controversy as the Jefferson-Hemings case does.

Wood, Gordon S. "The Ghosts of Monticello." Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999.

The DNA results have created a great enthusiasm among historians and Jefferson scholars. The argument has shifted and is no longer about whether or not there was a relationship between Jefferson and Sally, but what kind of relationship this was. Not only does Wood examine the sexual side of the argument but also the race identity as well. There is history in our American culture that is blurred, and it tells something not only for the Jefferson descendants, but for all of Americans too. How historians interpret the race relations in the early 1800s is indicative of our current race relations today.