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1) John Quincy Adams uses Othello to support his views that it is impossible for true love to exist between two people of different races. Adams claims that "Shakespeare could not have intended to present Desdemona as an example of feminine virtue" because of the nature of her relationship with Othello. He also states "the intermarriage of black and white blood is a violation of the law of nature" (368). He attributed this to African American's inability to reach the level of emotional connection required to be involved in a "white" relationship. Earlier this semester, when we read Jefferson's Notes on The State of Virginia, he presented similar views on the difference between the races. It was more than common during this time to believe this way, but I am still holding on to the idea that it could have been real.
Samantha Christal, Lehigh University

2) To comprehend the nature and existence of Annette Gordon-Reed's much heralded, exquisitely crafted, triumphant history of Sally Hemings and her family, it helps to look back a decade, to a set of developments in public history and scholarship that Gordon-Reed herself helped initiate.
David Waldstreicher

3) In terms of why Sally decided to return to the US, I think whatever promises Thomas Jefferson made to Sally are not necessarily at the forefront of her decision. Perhaps the promises of eventual freedom for the children and of a romantic relationship were persuasive, but when push comes to shove, had Sally stayed in France, she would not have had an easy life. In my opinion, Sally would have been of a higher class people, simply based on the fact that she did associate with the highest class of Americans in the US President. So while she might have at least survived in France, she is still a foreigner. She has only experience with slave/manual labor, she is a minority, she doesn't speak the language, and she has essentially no family there. At least her support system in the US would offset the fact that she would be alienated if she were to move to France. What kind of freedom would that make for? Especially in a culture where slaves are so submissive, to be thrust into a life of complete, absolute self-dependency (more than normal because of the cultural differences), would seem in my opinion to be the greatest deterrent.
Brian Cohen, Lehigh University

4) Annette Gordon-Reed's collective biography of the Hemingses of Monticello is an epic tale capturing (on the head of a pin, as it were) the enormous tragedy that was American slavery, the staggering complexity of the human heart, the sometimes brutal intersections in our lives of race and sex and power, the string of unrequited longing to be acknowledged that comes with every instance of denial, the lure of fame, the terror of history, the shame of rank transgressions, the risks (and rewards) involved in dredging it all up anew.
John Lauritz Larson

5) I just finished listening to your song about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. I don't know what to call it other than offensive trash. If this what you find entertaining and funny, you've clearly gone senile. Maybe you've always been that way. I wouldn't know since I don't listen to your broadcast. After this taste of what you find entertaining, I'm glad you'll be off the air soon. They should pull your show today if they had any sense. You make Rush Limbaugh look sensitive.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

6) I think that Chapter 15 [Hemingses of Monticello] really made me reevaluate my opinion on the Jefferson-Hemings relationship. Even with works like the movie Sally Hemings: An American Scandal and other literature that give Sally a strong, independent personality, I find it hard to see a consensual relationship working between a slave and an American President. In a way, this chapter strengthened my argument. It discussed how prevalent rape was for African American women, how huge the power dynamic was between slaves and masters, and how society believed black women could not be raped since "they were so promiscuous." With points like that, it is very difficult to see Jefferson and Hemings as any different.
Elizabeth Guzzo, Lehigh University

7) Gordon-Reed writes with the nuance and confidence of having fully immersed herself in every part of the Hemingses' world. She has achieved an extraordinary mastery of eighteenth-century sources and scholarly writing about that era.
Lorri Glover

8) The law of slavery meant that every facet of the Hemingses' lives that might come to public notice was controlled by a legal system that was "a racket designed for the protection of whites." "How," Gordon-Reed asks, "does one begin to get at what was ‘real' or ‘true' in such a context."
Edmund S. Morgan and Marie Morgan

9) Chapter 15 [Hemingses of Monticello] also made me realize that I need to see Sally, and Jefferson for that matter, as individuals. Yes, many masters raped slaves, but not all masters. Maybe TJ was different. And maybe I should give Sally more credit. Maybe Sally was independent or mature enough to make her own decisions about sex (as my classmates have mentioned, there is a long discussion on how age was seen very differently back then). I'm not saying I believe this for fact, it is just one of the first times I've even truly contemplated some sort of loving relationship between them. From the beginning of this class, it has seemed impossible to me.
Elizabeth Guzzo, Lehigh University

10) The song is literature, a stab at the truth, a speculation, designed to provoke thought and discussion. It succeeds in that. It offends some because it mentions that which is unmentionable in the South (and MUCH is indeed unmentionable in the South). It is the elephant in the room, the unclothed emperor of slavery. Here in the South, we ignore the obvious with practiced skill, and nothing offends more deeply that mention of the unmentionable.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

11) Did they or didn't they? . . . yet although Annette Gordon-Reed applies her incisive legal mind and brilliant powers of historical imagination to that question, she tells a much more expansive story. In her study of three generations of Hemingses, Gordon-Reed fastens our attention upon them as "fully formed persons with innate worth and equal humanity that links them directly to us all."
Catherine Kerrison

12) I found this chapter [15: Hemingses of Monticello] to be a bit more confusing than what I've read from AGR before. Her opening, which discussed the context of age and relationship eligibility during that time period, was clear and concise as usual. While I agree with Alexandra about the curious and wide-ranging tastes of Jefferson (based on his relationships with Maria Cosway and his wife), this section actually clarifies to me that Jefferson may have had a genuine interest in Sally as a woman and not as a slave. He continuously supports the growing relationship between his friend Madison and Floyd, encouraging Madison to pursue his affections. Because Madison's object of affection is a white teenager, it seems that Jefferson was open to, and approved of, relationships with large age gaps. This, for me, provides evidence showing that his relationship with Sally is more likely to have been true attraction for a young woman rather than a power-play of dominance over a slave.
Katie Prosswimmer, Lehigh University

13) [This book] promises to transform not only the study of Thomas Jefferson's life but also the very notion of how historians and ordinary Americans look at racial identity.
Calvin Reid

14) For Gordon-Reed, a legal scholar, the real scandal wasn't what happened between Jefferson and Hemings but how willing earlier generations of Jefferson biographers had been to ignore the implications of evidence right in front of them, even documents like Jefferson's "Farm Book," but, especially, testimony about things said and done by the Hemingses themselves.
Jill Lepore 87

15) Great song. The disgruntled soul should grow up and put on her big girl panties.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

16) Conceding that "there is something strange" about Sally Hemings's "near-invisibility in Jefferson family exchanges," [Gordon-Reed] has had to rely a great deal on conjecture and "reasonable inferences"â€"and on what she refers to as "connect the dots."
Gordon Wood 36

17) It [his book] comprises all the letters known to have been exchanged between the two men during the years 1807 to 1815, and for these years gives a fairly complete picture of the relations which existed between Thomas and his brother [Randolph] and neighbor, whose plantation of Snowden was but twenty miles from Monticello.
Bernard Mayo 7

18) Chapter 15 [Hemingses of Monticello] begins with AGR explaining that women were married off at a younger age than they are today. Patsy became a married woman shortly after her 17th birthday. "That attitude made sense in an era when higher education and career, the reasons for postponing marriage and childbearing in modern times, did not compete with what were thought to be a woman's most basic functions in life: to be a wife and a mother" (309). Perhaps this was true, but it seems strange that TJ was interested in courting women who were of an older age and would seem more suitable in regards to a more equivalent age. AGR suggests that TJ was influenced by Madison's interest in a fifteen-year-old girl named Catherine Floyd. When examining correspondences between Madison and TJ, AGR found that TJ "treated the fifteen-year-old girl as a free agent in matters of male-female courtship" (310). AGR uses other examples to support her claim that TJ was perfectly in the right at that time to pursue Sally despite what we may consider her young age. Other examples include John Marshall wanting to marry his future wife when he was twenty-five and she was fourteen and fifty-year-old Thomas Mann marrying seventeen-year-old Gabriella Harvie. AGR states, "Legal marriage made sex between much older males and sometimes unwilling teenage girls perfectly acceptable in the eyes of society. This was not pedophilia, ephebophilia, or rape" (312).
Alexandra Neumann, Lehigh University

19) In focusing on black and white in this essay, I do not mean to give the impression that race in America has always been reducible to that binarism. Quite the opposite. But historically the central tension in American history has been between these two groups. The Jefferson-Hemings liaison is one of the issues that sits at the heart of what I refer to as the racial tension between black and white Americans.
Gordon Wood 7

20) My wife and I were at the show, and were intrigued by your reference before the broadcast to something possibly controversial you might do regarding Jefferson. When the song came, we found it troubling, ambiguous, touching, ultimately very thought-provoking. In that, it is like Jefferson, and like the country itself in its complex relationship with the notion of human freedom. It was also one of your more beautiful compositions (and I'm a longtime fan of your songwriting). You and the incomparable Jearlyn sang beautifully, with real (if necessarily ambivalent) feeling. Thank you.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

21) The argument I found most interesting [Hemingses of Monticello] was AGR's confidence in Sally's ability to make decisions in her own best interest. If Jefferson really was raping her in Paris, she was perfectly capable of making the executive decision to stay in France with James. AGR points out assuming she wasn't capable of making that rationalization is assuming she had nearly no brains or willpower. I think this is made especially poignant when AGR points out that women ran away from plantations at the risk of far greater ramifications to escape their raping masters with great frequency during slavery. Why wouldn't Sally do the same if Jefferson was, in fact, raping her? With all these points combined, I think AGR makes a very strong argument for Sally and Jefferson having had a caring and emotional relationship -- one that was not just based on sex or even rape.
Mary O'Reilly, Lehigh University

22) Clarence E. Walker likewise inverts the accusation leveled by the minority dissenters, instead recognizing political correctness as a weapon of dismissal against any "decentering of white Americans as the central agents of American history."
Martha Hodes 437

23) This book could only have been successfully written by an expert in the field such as Walker. His wide-ranging compilation -- beyond regional and chronological boundaries -- of the historical and theoretical underpinnings touched on by the Jefferson-Hemings relationship results in a creative tour of race, memory, and mythmaking. Moreover, Mongrel Nation convincingly demonstrates how denying the multicultural history of the United States has created a misguided notion of exceptionalism, allowing the nation to segregate itself from other racially mixed colonial and postcolonial societies.
Sharon Block 708

24) Among the many things that Thomas Jefferson was, it's important to remember that he was a politician. And that is at the forefront of his remembrance. Smoothing-talking Thomas was bound to make the worst situations sound somewhat appealing, i.e. slavery. It is no surprise, then, that Sally was convinced to return to Monticello, giving up her freedom, her child's future, and other "extraordinary privileges" that France may or may not have offered given the height of the French Revolution.
Kristen Dalton, Lehigh University

25) GK, One reason I enjoy your show is I am always taken to a place I can never get to by myself. Your works are always woven with the thread of love. When I read your stories and hear your songs I am amazed at your ability to communicate the deepest human emotions which enables me to consider people in ways that I have never thought about before. I am often left with a hearty warm laugh.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

26) Not the least of Gordon-Reed's achievements is that her intertwining of the lives of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings makes them both more human than we have previously known them to be. At last, Jefferson is a man with a body as well as a mind, and Hemings is a woman with a mind as well as a body.
Roderick A. McDonald

27) Chapter 14 [Hemingses of Monticello] argues that Sally saw Jefferson as father figure, in particular while she was in Paris. Gordon-Reed begins by talking about how important family figures are for enslaved persons and how Sally never had a father. She talks about how Monticello "was a place of stable two-parent families" (292), and Sally never had that "stability" in her life. The only other male figure who could have been a father figure to her in Paris was James. However, Gordon-Reed dismisses James's ability to be a father figure because she would not view him as much older because he was not the eldest in her family. She concludes that because the two were in such a tight space and spent so much time together in France, where the issue of slavery is not the same as in the South, Jefferson played the role of father (and lover).
Elaina Kelly, Lehigh University

28) There was a rumor during these years that Annette Gordon-Reed herself was working on a biography of Jefferson. What she has achieved is something elseâ€"something more necessary. The post-DNA takedowns of Jefferson shared something very significant with the old defenses. They showed no interest in the Hemingses themselves. They did not really consider slaves and the master as inhabiting the same house, much less the same histories. By refashioning the story as a family history with the Hemingses at the center, Gordon-Reed has found a way to make the most of the salient not-so-new fact: that Hemingses and Jeffersons were kin.
David Waldstreicher

29) …"Story of Sally and Tom"â€"and it is here; but as the title correctly insists, Gordon- Reed's book is about the slave family who lived their lives constrained by nested boxes of ownership, race, sex, exploitation, law, love, and loyalty.
John Lauritz Larson

30) Jefferson made extraordinary contributions to this Country... so those who are a pure as the driven snow . . . Stand up . . . and measure your contributions to the country . . .
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

31) Lengthy, humane, thoughtful, gripping in its prose, compelling in its rich, sensitive argument, Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello is garnering praise and honor as I write.
Edward Countryman 434

32) The text reveals how the patterns uncovered by historians such as these played out in individuals' lives. Moreover, Gordon-Reed shows how fully interwoven the lives of these slaves and slaveowners were.
Lorri Glover

33) Hyland: The Hemingses would have you believe that the absence of any letters to or from Sally in any Jefferson correspondence is evidence of a "family" cover up. This is one of the many examples of authorial presumption: to use the total lack of information as 'proof' of their sordid allegation. It merely shows that some ardent Hemings believers will 'fill in the blanks' to convert innocent information into incriminating evidence (170). I find this point to be a bit pointless. The fact that there are no letters to or from Sally to Jefferson is not proof one way or another about the reality of the affair. History is man-made; humans, particularly white men, chose which documents and records to preserve and include in the storybook that is our national history. Therefore, if one considers it carefully, the existence or absence of any physical documentation is merely a consequence of man's efforts. Ironically, by faulting Hemings believers for using the lack of evidence to their advantage, Hyland seems to do the same. He is using the lack of 'proof' as a means to defend Jefferson. Essentially, his own argument works against him.
Erica Prosser, Lehigh University

34) Jefferson kept the cruelty of slavery out of sight, down the hill, but he was nothing if not self-indulgent.
Edmund S. Morgan and Marie Morgan

35) When women and men are free to love one another without obligation, duress or shame is when we will have truly liberated ourselves from our self-imposed shackles.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

36) Hyland's second argument, that Jefferson was "inclined to produce only female children," when the child that matched Jefferson's DNA was male, is unfounded. There is no such thing as an inclination to produce a certain gender of children, despite what chance has shown beforehand. Eston alone is not the only factor contributing the DNA matches, as he is only one person. He, then, does not preclude Jefferson from being the father of any other children with Sally.
Brian Cohen, Lehigh University

37) Gordon-Reed illuminates the depth of human experience that lies behind Jefferson's cryptic notations.
Catherine Kerrison

38) In Gordon-Reed's new book, "The Hemingses of Monticello," her single most revealing source is the memoir of Madison Hemings, printed by a newspaperman named S.F. Wetmore in an obscure Ohio paper called the Pike County Republican in 1873. (Wetmore likely first heard about Hemings from a census-taker in a neighboring county who, in the 1870 census, noted next to Madison Hemings' name, "This man is the son of Thomas Jefferson.") Four months after Wetmore published Hemings's story, a Jefferson biographer named James Parton, writing in The Atlantic Monthly, summarily dismissed it: "Mr. Hemings has been misinformed."
Jill Lepore 88

39) Hyland's eighth argument, as we've seen before, states that a Jefferson was the father of one of Heming's children. According to the argument, it could be one of eight men. The problem with this is if Hemings was first pregnant in Paris, it would be Jefferson's child. I think she also had more opportunity to engage in a sexual relationship with TJ, since she lived at Monticello with him, than the other men. Finally, there is a lot more evidence indicating she would be TJ's concubine than any other member of his family.
Elizabeth Guzzo, Lehigh University

40) I agree, the purpose of art is to "shake the tree" off and on so we don't get to thinking there is only one way to explain the inconsistencies of life. I think it was brave and very appropriate for GK and JS to do this as a duet. what a way to present history!! the cultural circumstances at the time made it necessary for secrecy and role playing, maybe more a comment on the positive aspects of the relationship than anything else. Was she a victim? of course, but her victim-hood started before she was born (half sister to Martha, so her children were double related to Martha and Toms offspring). I hope this relationship provided some solace, as the best one of a lot of uglier options for an otherwise powerless person. Kudos to GK and JS for causing us to THINK. this was a very powerful reminder of the legacy of injustice that we have a responsibility to not repeat, in ways large or small.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

41) The letters treat of family and agricultural matters, and in some degree enlarge one's knowledge of Jefferson's domestic life. But they are primarily interesting because they reveal Thomas Jefferson's affection, patient kindness, and desire to help a brother [Randolph] strikingly his inferior.
Bernard Mayo 7

42) While it is speculated that eventually the two saw each other as lovers, according to Annette Gordon-Reed several factors led to this relationship. The most important was the father-daughter relationship that was inevitable between them. Since Thomas Jefferson was the master of Monticello and had a reputation of forming more friendly relationships with his slaves than other slave owners, he was seen as a father-like figure to all of them. For Sally especially, who lost her father shortly after her birth, would be seeking a father figure to fill the void. When Sally went to Paris, Jefferson was able to fill that role. He was her mentor, guardian and protector. "The role that primarily fit the realities of Jefferson's life as the owner of Sally Hemings -- at least as he would have understood it-- was that of patriarch, with everything that attended that designation" (294). Their close living quarters and daily exposure to each other allowed this relationship to develop.
Sarah Freeman, Lehigh University

43) Mongrel Nation is a deliberately provocative book. It ranges widely across two centuries of history, historiography, and literature. It argues powerfully that race is central to American identity and that the battles within and over American history are often about contemporary questions concerning race and national identity.
Francis Cogliano 629

44) The problem of Sally Hemings in American history comes intertwined with the problems of slavery and freedom; race and racism; and race, sex, and love. [Clarence] Walker takes up all of these challenges, ultimately offering a revised story of national origins: the United States, he contends, was a "mixed race" nation from the start, "in which Jefferson and Hemings, as a mixed-race couple, rather than George and Martha Washington, should be considered the founding parents." Revising the founding myth is no longer an original enterprise, of course, and, like others, Walker wants to place slavery squarely into the master narrative. But more than that, Walker wants to place sex between people of European descent and people of African descent at the heart of the republic's creation
Martha Hodes 437-38

45) I, too, found the song a little disturbing, but then, I find Thomas Jefferson a bit disturbing because of this relationship. I would have to have heard almost anything else in that time slot. Like TJ, you, too are profoundly gifted, a veritable genius. However, I think this one cut too close to the bone. Thomas Jefferson's relationship with his slave was very incestuous, and people who have been wounded in this manner may have found the refrain disturbing for that reason. I, for one, found it to be painful. In fact, it colored and stained the whole show for me.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

46) This [Mongrel Nation] is a book that will engage experts, surprise generalists, and raise fundamental questions about coming to terms with the nation's multicultural history.
Sharon Block 710

47) To the extent that The Hemingses of Monticello is about him, in fact, Jefferson appears more human than he does as a bloodless icon of the American pantheon, but he is not necessarily more likable. Gordon-Reed presents him as a brilliant, quirky, charming, and passionate man but also as an immensely insecure, conflict-averse, and emotionally demanding one who expected those close to him to cater to his wishes. Such a combination made him at once vulnerable, sensitive, guarded, and not infrequently self-absorbed, controlling, manipulative, and capable of being mean-spirited and unsympathetic to the needs and desires of those around him.
Joshua D Rothman, "An Extraordinary Family" 407

48) Hyland argues in point 12 that Jefferson's health was too poor to "engage in a vibrant sexual relationship with a fourteen-year-old girl." To start, Sally was not fourteen when Jefferson was in "the last two decades of his life." Therefore, to start, Hyland's facts are stated incorrectly. He then presumes to say that Jefferson suffered from "migraine headaches, diarrhea, rheumatoid arthritis, and emotional distress over his finances and the death of his wife and daughter." However, what does this information have to do with Jefferson's fertility? Are we to assume that a man in his sixties loses all interest in sexual activity? Who isn't to say that perhaps Jefferson found solace from such maladies in Sally's arms? Hyland insinuates that Jefferson was incapable of producing children in his late age, however, it seems extremely dubious that Hyland would have any scientific proof of Jefferson's infertility to support such a claim. Anyway, reading Hyland's arguments were entertaining.
Alexandra Neumann, Lehigh University

49) Where others see extreme hypocrisy, taking Jefferson's famously negrophobic comments in Notes on the State of Virginia as a reflection of his unchanging, unambiguous racial "thought," Gordon-Reed sees shades of meaning. Were the Hemingses in a special category because of their Wayles genes and their lighter skin? Certainly. Does this make Jefferson more of a racist? Perhaps. But there is much more to the story. Gordon-Reed presents a compelling picture of a devastated Jefferson who clung all the more to the family: not only his daughters, but the Hemingses who were themselves Wayles kin.
David Waldstreicher

50) This song made me curious. I have now read more about Sally Hemings and her family and the times in which they lived. In the process I have come to feel even more deeply the shame, humiliation, and pain of being a slave. We in America still have a very long way to travel to get to social justice, but I think we have also walked some distance since Sally Hemings lived. I'm glad this song prompted me to read, think, and pledge to do more toward justice and equality for everybody.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

51) Well, much like everyone else, I found Hyland's approach to disproving the claim that Jefferson fathered Sally Heming's children to be both immensely frustrating (infuriating, in fact) as well as poorly executed. In point #13, Hyland claims that Annette Gordon-Reed essentially plays the "race card" throughout her entire approach to the controversy and that she foments a "hostile environment in the academic world in which scholars feel pressured to accept the Hemings myth as historical truth." It seems to me like Hyland simply has a personal vendetta against AGR both because of her race and gender and the fact that she so effectively disproved all of his defenses. If he feels that the environment she creates in her book is hostile -- when I would say many agree it is written extremely rationally -- perhaps it is because he feels anxious and on the defense because of her acute points, not because AGR is inherently hostile. He refuses to recognize that the approach previous historians have taken towards the controversy were, perhaps, biased and even insists that "bias has [no] place in this court of law" -- while consistently espousing biased statement after statement (i.e. -- "the sexual allegation is preposterously out of character for Jefferson").
Mary O'Reilly, Lehigh University

52) To avoid Jefferson without blotting him out seems akin to the task of imaging an extrasolar planet; the glare of the neighboring star is overwhelming. Yet in the same manner of recent astronomers, Gordon-Reed shifts attention and perspective away from him.
Edward Countryman 434

53) Gordon-Reed is forthright about the evidentiary limitations, and she invites her reader to reason with her, to imagine what sources cannot tell us definitely.
Lorri Glover

54) The jump from father figure to lover figure is a bit more confusing. However, Jefferson's compassionate nature may have pushed the limits of the relationship. Another factor that contributed to the shift in the relationship was the lack of blood bonds between the two. If Hemings were Jefferson's actual daughter, it would be taboo to have sexual feelings for her, but since she was just a member of the opposite sex there were no such constrains. Hemings too had the same problem maintaining her distance from Jefferson, both physically and emotionally, because of their circumstances in Paris.
Sarah Freeman, Lehigh University

55) Can anyone actually believe Jeralyn would have sung this song if she thought it offensive? As the mother of a bi-racial woman I have learned that I don't get to make the call on topics racial that involve African Americans. What is more, none of us gets to judge others' relationships.
Thanks for a new point of view. It giveth the imagination mightily to exercise.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

56) Privacy is very much worth respecting, but not when one man's desire for it destroys another man's credibility. This isn't just about Jefferson and Hemings. It's about Parton's assumption that Randolph, a white man, must have been telling the truth while Hemingsâ€"listed on that census as "mulatto"â€"was, at best, "misinformed."
Jill Lepore 88

57) The fact that Dianne Swan-Wright, the Chairwoman of the Monticello Report, was friends with AGR by no means discounts the conclusions drawn by the Monticello Report -- such as Hyland attempts to claim. Dianne Swan-Wright is an individual of her own who has the ability to independently think, form opinions, and draw conclusions. Just because she was friends with someone who shared similar opinions doesn't mean that AGR strong-armed her into accepting Jefferson as the father. To assume so not only belittles Swannson's ability to think and reason, but also demonizes AGR as some sort of vicious racist trying to "trick" people into agreeing with her. Hyland seems incredibly delusional as to how many people still believe that Thomas Jefferson DIDN'T father Sally Heming's children -- evidently deciding to think that AGR is the only one.
Mary O'Reilly, Lehigh University

58) She has thrown an extraordinary amount of light on what she calls "the shadow world of slavery," and has revealed a complex reality of white-black relations that one does not usually find in history books.
Gordon Wood 39

59) An item in Jefferson's account book of May 3, 1774, reveals that Randolph [Jefferson's brother] took violin lessons from Francis Alberti and suggests that in some degree he shared his brother's passion for music. This is but one of many brief financial items in Jefferson's account book concerning Randolph, his education, his lands, the sale of his tobacco crops, and varied business transactions, all of which indicate the deep interest Thomas took in his brother's affairs both before and after Randolph came of age in 1776.
Bernard Mayo 8

60) My understanding of the Jefferson-Hemings story is that he was devastated after the death of his wife, Martha. Sally Hemings was Martha's half-sister, and her resemblance to his wife is probably what caught Jefferson's eye. Perhaps that resemblance seemed reassuring to him. Whatever the case, there are so many stories of liaisons between slaves and members of their owners' families that this one is not unusual. What is hard to understand is not Jefferson's private life so much as his public one. He felt that slavery was inconsistent with the Declaration of Independence, but was shouted down by his fellow slave-owners. Later he wrote that the existence of slavery in a nation dedicated to freedom was a "fire-bell in the night," and history proved him right.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

61) As the book is more importantly about the Hemingses than it is about Jefferson, though, how Jefferson thought about his relationship with Sally Hemings is less significant than how Hemings herself thought about it and how we might understand its meaning for her. Gordon-Reed devotes the better part of four chapters to these matters.
Joshua D Rothman, "An Extraordinary Family" 407

62) Gordon-Reed argues for Sally's agencyâ€"or can we just say, human perspective?â€"and sets the stage for it by positing a liberating Parisian experience.
David Waldstreicher

63) Though I liked Hyland's lead up to his points against the relationship, once I began reading his points I was immediately put off. Kristen noted his condescending tone and I completely agree -- it's almost out of line. I don't think it does a good job of trying to persuade people to agree with him. He plays the card of the appeal to common sense but goes overboard with it, essentially saying "you're stupid if you don't see this," when it isn't even all that convincing in the first place. They're valid arguments, but because they're stated with such venom and almost defensiveness, I think he loses some credibility.
Samantha Feinberg, Lehigh University

64) With rare patience Gordon-Reed conducts a running seminar on research methods, historiography, law and process, formal logic, human psychology, race relations, and the pain of memory as she turns evidence cards face up, one by one, building her case, testing hypotheses, casting about for the next expository move.
John Lauritz Larson

65) I thought the song was an interesting exploration of a very unusual and complex man and his intimate personal relationship with a loving woman who happened to be a slave. It got me thinking about the unnatural and often uncomfortable dynamics of relationships between masters and slaves in pre-Civil War America. My thanks to Garrison for daring to cast Jefferson in a more honest light than he had previously been revealed in our history. Garrison's song put some life and emotion into the enigmatic person of history we call Thomas Jefferson.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

66) I understand Gordon-Reed's argument [Hemingses of Monticello] but find it almost counter-intuitive. If Jefferson saw Hemings as a daughter and Hemings saw Jefferson as a father, wouldn't they be repulsed at the idea of having a pseudo-incest relationship?
Sarah Freeman, Lehigh University

67) The Hemingses of Monticello is a brilliant book. It marks the author as one of the most astute, insightful, and forthright historians of this generation.
Edmund S. Morgan and Marie Morgan

68) It is a storyâ€"deeply rooted in historiography, reliant on a sophisticated reading of evidence and written by as serious a scholar as one can findâ€"but still, a story.
Lorri Glover

69) Jefferson's moral character. As we have seen before, William Hyland says, "the accusation of an affair lacks not only credibility, but would be utterly outside the moral character of Jefferson" (168). He also goes on to say this about Fawn Brodie: "I'm afraid that Professor Fawn Brodie, despite her admirable qualities, is the worst thing to happen to Jefferson since James Callender" (168). I really have to say that what Hyland fails to mention is that there has been cold, hard facts that this has happened. There has been DNA evidence for the affair. It is to the point at which by denying the entire affair completely, he has discredited his entire argument because it is completely wrong. Even if some of what Fawn Brodie said is fictional or is not based on solid fact, there are so many other points of evidence that prove that the relationship occurred. Also, as I have said before, I think that you really cannot use Jefferson's "moral character" as an point of evidence. How could anyone know Jefferson's true "moral character"?
Abigail Harris-Shea, Lehigh University

70) I, for one, thought the song was good and thought-provoking. I do not think it diminishes Jefferson's role as a Founding Father. His relationship with Sally Hemings only adds to the complexity of a man with many contradictions in his life. When we place people on pedestals, then we shouldn't complain when they fall from them and crush us. There are many things in Jefferson's life that make me pause, but in the end, he was still a remarkable person. Your song was a creative way to make that point. It also lifted Sally Hemings out of the shadows and by presenting her perspective on the relationship, it truly made her Jefferson's equal.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

71) She [Annette Gordon-Reed] has done far more than put together a convincing case for the Jefferson-Hemings relationship. She has also reconstructed the complicated and intimate relations between black and white families in Jefferson's household over several generations. And perhaps most important, she has uncovered the many expressions of humanity by both blacks and whites existing within a fundamentally inhumane institution.
Gordon Wood 36

72) Hyland: The confusing testimony of Madison Hemings has been discredited and amounts to nothing more than scripted hearsay, gossip, and speculation. Moreover, his capacity to observe events that occurred some thirty to forty years earlier lacks certainty, clarity, and veracity (166). Though I liked the construction of Hyland's arguments in the frame of a trial, I did not like the arguments whatsoever. His condescending tone was not appreciated, calling forth the 200-year-old evidence as common sense that any "reasonable" person would clearly understand. And most upsetting, was that he provided no alternative to the claims he discredited. He just seemed satisfied with discrediting them.
Kristen Dalton, Lehigh University

73) For easy-going Randolph was a poor manager. From boyhood he was often in debt, and his second wife was an extravagant and determined woman who ran up large bills against him.
Bernard Mayo 10

74) In many ways, Gordon-Reed's take on Jefferson and Hemings is both credible and rooted in discerning, nuanced readings of the sources. It is one in which the possibility of achieving freedom and remaining in France gave Hemings leverage over Jefferson that she never would have had in Virginia, putting her in a position to make some demands if he wanted her to return to America and continue being his sexual partner. She determined that what she wanted even more than freedom in a foreign country was a secure and stable life in the company of her family and for her children to have the opportunity to live as free people, so she extracted Jefferson's promise to provide all those things. Nothing ensured that Jefferson would keep his word, which made Hemings's gambit risky. But her own dealings with Jefferson and the experience of her family convinced her that she could trust him. If hers seems a foolish choice, Gordon-Reed contends it had its own wisdom.
Joshua D Rothman, "An Extraordinary Family" 408

75) Garrison, I happened to be in my car and listening on Saturday afternoon when you sang that song. I must confess it certainly challenged my sometimes all too prim and proper sensibilities, but on retrospection it occurred to me that to have possibly fathered several children with her that there was most likely something other than sexual gratification to the Jefferson-Hemings relationship. At any rate I appreciated your take on the ramifications of that relationship. It made me think.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

76) Did they love each other? This was the happy "multicultural fantasy" put forward by Fawn Brodie and novelist Barbara Chase-Riboud and broadcast in the television miniseries Sally Hemings: An American Scandal . Gordon-Reed has an answer. The idea of their love does not change the basic inhumanity of slavery: "the romance is in thinking that it makes any difference if they did." It was all about the property.
David Waldstreicher

77) Gordon Reed realizes that to understand this American family we must understand American slavery. But she also realizes (and argues powerfully) that we do the Hemingses a huge injustice if we reduce them to mere exemplars of some supposedly general pattern.
Edward Countryman 435

78) Chapter 14 [Hemingses of Monticello] focused on how Jefferson might have been a sort of father figure for Sally, and AGR discusses why this role led to a romantic relationship between the two. I love her style of arguing--she leaves basically no room to consider any other explanation. I thought it was really interesting how she based much of her argument off the fact that, in close quarters, it's difficult to keep the "quasi father-daughter" dynamic in any situation, because it almost naturally happens. AGR also uses the character card with Jefferson to her advantage; she talks about how he was charming to all whom he met, and how he wanted to be loved by most. She almost poses it in a way that it would be strange if Sally wasn't into TJ. In order to strengthen her argument, AGR continuously brings up the fact that most arrangements like theirs end up the same way--romantically. She says "throughout history . . . there is always great danger of their sliding out of the quasi-father/daughter configuration into the role of lovers or potential spouses. Jefferson and Hemings, locked in the patriarch and erstwhile "child" paradigm in Paris, were from the start at risk of doing just that" (296).
Samantha Feinberg, Lehigh University

79) If DNA evidence did not do it, Gordon-Reed's 662 pages (not counting notes) will not convince the naysayers. And some readers will not be persuaded by her assessment of the romantic tenor of the Jefferson-Hemings relationship. More important, the narrative imposes a subtle but nonetheless powerful moral arc to the story of life at Monticello: the resolve and nobility of the Hemingses.
Lorri Glover

80) I thought it was a beautiful and touching song. It spoke directly yet gently to the basic reality of being human. I was reminded (again)that one of the hardest things we are faced with is recognizing that what we think is true may not be so. Things are not, and likely never were, the way we imagine them.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

81) Furthermore, if Hyland believes that Madison's account of Jefferson was troublesome (though he doesn't explain why, so I'm going guess) because of his race and youth and former slave status, then it is also very possible that he feels this way towards AGR based on gender, race, and intellect. He could be discriminatory towards anyone who is just plain different from the white male superior that he may feel he justly represents (as TJ was the perfect model for everything great). As if this is common sense. Hyland also seemed far more interested in convincing the imaginary jury than in presenting his case. It was almost as if he used peer pressure to say that the evidence provided for the TJ-SH relationship was so absolutely ridiculous that of course it couldn't be true. Duh. #notwinning.
Kristen Dalton, Lehigh University

82) Most of Gordon-Reed's assumptions about human nature are commonsensical and not jarring, though her repeated reliance on them does occasionally make one uneasy.
Gordon Wood 37

83) Achieving freedom in France was no small thing to think about. However, if she wished to return to Virginia, to see her children live in freedom, and perhaps most important, to spend her life among her family, only one man had the authority to make that possible. Because that man owned her family, only one course of action allowed the pieces of the puzzle to fit together just so. For Sally Hemings to get what she wanted, she had to agree to becomeâ€"as Madison Hemings later described his mother's relationship to his fatherâ€"Thomas Jefferson's "concubine." That may not amount to rape, but it certainly amounts in some measure to coercion. It hardly demeans Hemings or deprives her of dignity to say so. It neither denies that she made an entirely rational and even courageous choice given her options nor excludes the possibility that she cared for Jefferson. It is simply to recognize that the power of slavery (and, for that matter, of patriarchy) was so profound that it was implicated whenever masters and their slaves had sex. Gordon-Reed is absolutely right that "[t]he profanity of slavery does not define the entirety of the lives of enslaved people so that everything any one of them ever did, felt, or thoughtâ€"everyone they touched, every situation in which they were involved, every connection they madeâ€"was degraded": (p. 324). Yet the profanity remains.
Joshua D Rothman, "An Extraordinary Family" 410

84) Hyland's first argument consists of him using the "other man" defense by claiming that it was in fact Randolph Jefferson who entertained a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings and possessed the same Y chromosome, which suggested a match between Eston and Randolph. I think what strikes me most about this is the assumption made within this short paragraph. Hyland supports his point by saying that "Randolph had a reputation for socializing with Jefferson's slaves and he was expected at Monticello approximately nine months before the birth of Eston." This quote really just made me want to rip the page into pieces. Haven't we all understood that one of the pieces of evidence that comes through in favor of the relationship between TJ and SH that she never conceived a child when TJ was not present? Haven't historians supporting the "white" side of things, if you will, explained this as being totally the opposite of corroborating evidence? We could just as easily say the same thing for Thomas Jefferson. Also, the way this text was written makes it clear that Hyland was hiding the fact that the evidence was faulty by italicizing the words that would be the most convincing to ignorant "jurors." What should have been italicized was the word "expected." It does not say anywhere that Randolph was even actually present when he was "supposed" to be.
Samantha Christal, Lehigh University

85) I believe the vast majority of PHC listeners appreciate GK's ability to shake the tree of life from time to time. That is one of the things which keeps the show fresh and entertaining. Where else would you find the originality and creativity he gives us week after week? Considering the times of Jefferson and Hemings, this interpretation is totally logical and to my mind, in no way insensitive to anyone. In all probability, it was an accurate depiction of the relationship. Most historians accept it as fact. If I remember correctly, Jefferson's family long ago accepted the reality of the relationship with Hemings. (This comment is coming from a long time lover of all things Jeffersonian.) And it was not an uncommon situation by any means. . . . And if this song offended you, hope you're not reading Mark Twain.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

86) Much has been made of the master's distaste for scenes, of his shrinking from conflict. But Gordon-Reed, like biographers before her, points out how possessive and controlling Jefferson was.
Edmund S. Morgan and Marie Morgan

87) In his opening pages, Hyland expresses to his audience that he is "confident that when you weigh all the evidence, and apply your good common sense, your verdict will speak the truth: and that truth is that Mr. Jefferson is innocent of slander and libel." He makes it seem as though this historical debate that has lasted over two centuries can be quickly solved by common sense. I had to laugh at this because if anyone was to believe that by looking at faulty evidence we could come up with an answer, then this would have all been solved a very long time ago. Hyland also points out that one piece of support for Jefferson's innocence is "the unreliable documentation of Jefferson's physical presence at the time of conception of Sally's children." Isn't this exactly the position he puts Randolph into by stating that he was "expected" to be at Monticello? How would we, or anyone, ever know for certain that he was? I was not convinced by point #1 at all.
Samantha Christal, Lehigh University

88) Gordon-Reed never states explicitly that the Jefferson-Hemings association was consensual. She notes repeatedly throughout The Hemingses of Monticello that slavery severely "perverted" human relationships and that Jefferson's control over those he held in bondage was always fundamental in their lives (p. 651). She reminds the reader, for example that "[n]o matter how ‘close' the Hemingses were to Jefferson, no matter that he viewed some of them in a different light and did not subject them to certain hardships, their family remained a commodity that could be sold or exchanged at his will" (p. 519). Still, Gordon-Reed takes such pains to stress the agency and individuality possessed by Sally Hemings that the reader losses sight of those baseline issues of power and privilege in the sections of the book centered on her.
Joshua D Rothman, "An Extraordinary Family" 411

89) The government and economy of Monticello was slavery, but it was conceived as an ameliorated form of slavery. It was a system intended to allow a degree of autonomy and self-respect, a freedom of movement and occupation, and other aspects of a nonenslaved existence.
Edmund S. Morgan and Marie Morgan

90) While I'm willing to believe it's possible for there to have be some reciprocal romantic feelings in this complicated relationship, I simply don't think we can realistically discuss it without acknowledging the fact that one party owned the other. Casting these two as a sort of colonial Romeo and Juliet who cling to each other in spite of the forbidden nature of their love is absurd.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

91) James Hemings's story, of all those in The Hemingses of Monticello, is arguably the most powerful. For a person of his time, no matter what race, he lived an amazing and magnificent life, and he achieved so much against tremendous odds. To read Gordon-Reed's account of him driven to such despair is haunting and almost unbearably sad. James Hemings was no symbol. He was only a man. One wonders what he would have made of himself in a more just society.
Joshua D Rothman, "An Extraordinary Family" 414

92) When she does finally get to the matter of whether or not their relationship was a loving one, I think AGR [Hemingses of Monticello] made really good points -- so much so that I almost conclusively do believe that their relationship was not one of rape or pure sex. AGR points out that all the Hemings maintained a positive relationship with Jefferson throughout the rest of theirs and his life -- a relationship that could have easily turned sour had they heard of his raping their daughter/sister. AGR also points out that if Jefferson had been raping Sally and impregnated her because of it, then he probably would have been eager to leave her in Paris than to have her come back to Monticello and serve as all-too-visible proof of his misdeeds. The fact that he insisted on her return to Virginia implies an earnest caring for her and their child. She similarly points out that even if it was just a matter of wanting to continually have sex with Sally, Jefferson could have housed her in some remote corner of the plantation where he could discreetly seek her out when he was "in the mood." The fact that he put her in the very house with him where their interactions were daily and public similarly suggests an element of caring for her.
Mary O'Reilly, Lehigh University

93) In Hyland's last argument, he focuses on the fact that the absence of the Jefferson-Hemings letters is just believers in the relationship trying to "fill in the blanks" in order to "convert innocent information into incriminating evidence" (Gordon-Reed 170.) This one is tough, because I understand his argument in the sense that if you really want to believe something you will make all the evidence prove your point. This is something that I myself have done before. It does not seem like a completely outlandish idea. On the other hand, the two portrayals of Martha that we have seen on film have created an unpleasant impression of her in my mind. It does not seem outlandish that this Martha would've done something like burn the letters or tell Sally that the memory of her father would not be tarnished by such accusations. I am leaning towards the fact that the letters were destroyed, only because other artifacts like the bell have been found. If this was the only piece of evidence that the relationship rested on, it might seem more shaky; however, taken as a piece of supporting evidence it makes sense. All of the facts we have learned which point to the existence of the relationship are quite hard to ignore when taken together.
Kimbrilee Weber, Lehigh University

94) This post probably belongs in a different section, but it's something I've been thinking about for a while. Last week I found myself announcing rather abruptly that I was "not interested in being objective anymore" -- and I have been wondering ever since how it happens I've been drawn into this controversy on such an intense emotional level. Part of it is that I've become attached to Jefferson and Hemings as real people -- as a couple I sincerely wish DID enjoy a loving bond between them. I want them to have had that experience. Another part is certainly that as a woman I closely identity with Sally and her struggles on a number of levels. But more than this, I realize I honestly hope the couple really could have triumphed over the restrictions of sexism, racism, classism, ageism -- all the societal pressures that would have generally prevented their being in a long-term, loving relationship or even having admitted to having one. It is the wish that we all could be free of these prejudices -- a rebirth of the 1960's conviction in which we all honestly believed -- that if we could only treat each other with love and kindness and respect, honoring our shared human condition, we could all change the world.
Vivien Steele, Lehigh University

95) I've been a listener since 1984 and your duet with Jerelyn made me feel angry and sad. It made my skin crawl. Clearly you and she have the sort of relationship that makes a song like that comfortable for you to sing together but I think it shows very questionable judgment on your part to ask a black female guest to participate in such a musical fiction.
Response to Garrison Keillor "Tom and Sally" song

96) Hyland's argument style is interesting. I liked the way that he pieced together a trial. I found his opening statement well-written, and he definitely slanted the facts in his favor so that if you knew nothing of the relationship before reading his book, you might believe his side. However, knowing what I know, I can't buy into what he is arguing. Though it is well-written, the writings of Fawn Brodie and Anette Gordon-Reed are in the back of my mind, and this persuasive piece is not enough to sway me back in the other direction.
Kimbrilee Weber, Lehigh University

97) I find myself a bit overwhelmed after reading this chapter [Hemingses of Monticello] because Gordon-Reed throws a lot onto the table. There are many potential reasons or explanations for why Sally decided to return to Jefferson. In my mind, the most legitimate explanation is the idea that Sally knew about Jefferson from her own experiences and those of her family, and she simply trusted him. From a young age, people are conditioned to stay away from those they don't trust, and I cannot believe that if Sally did not truly think Jefferson was going to stay true to his promise she would've returned with him. I find myself really agreeing with Gordon-Reed's point here. The basis of any relationship is trust, and Sally surely trusted Jefferson enough to leave the future of her children in his hands.
Kimbrilee Weber, Lehigh University

98) Though Sally was black and free in France, she was also associated with THE Thomas Jefferson. She was somebody's nobody. It would be incredibly different if he was not present. And maybe this is why she couldn't imagine a life in France without him. So maybe it had nothing to do with the relationship and everything to do with all the privileges that would be leaving her when he left for America.
Kristen Dalton, Lehigh University

99) I like the idea of [Hyland's] piece, structuring the argument like a trial. I feel like it is fitting for our class, like we have the Jefferson-Hemings case on trial and our trying to get to a decision as members of a jury. His number 10, however, is hardly strong evidence supporting his claim. Hyland is using the character defense to claim that Jefferson did not get involved with Sally. This claim is among 15 other claims, which could help his argument, but this one does not. He refers to Jefferson's actions as "being unthinkable in a man of his standards and habitual conduct" (168). And continues saying that his "major weaknesses" would not have been of this kind. What "sort" were his weaknesses then? Clearly he had some issues with slavery and mixed opinions. How could this not have been a part of his "weaknesses"? I think, as many people in the class would probably agree, the character defense of a man that has been dead for hundreds of years is not a good defense at all.
Elaina Kelly, Lehigh University

100) Ch. 16 [Hemingses of Monticello] discusses many reasons why Sally trusted Jefferson and decided to return to Virginia instead of staying in Paris. One idea which we have somewhat discussed previously in class is the notion that Jefferson had the status to free Sally's children. Given his high class and the amount of power he wielded, Gordon-Reed argues, if any man was in the position to do this for Sally, it was Jefferson. Gordon-Reed also notes that "[Sally] did not see Jefferson as the same type of man as her father, who had left his children in slavery, or she would never have trusted him" (342.) She was also simply young and willing to take a chance. Further, France was hot with revolution and this was not a good place to build a new life (so Gordon-Reed argues) . If they stayed, Sally and James would've "joined the ranks of people of all races and cultures who throughout human history have braved unknown territory and built lives for themselves amid hostile, isolated, and barred wildernesses--as well as forbidding, cramped, and chaotic urban environments" (352).
Kimbrilee Weber, Lehigh University

101) AGR really does show some very valid points. After reading this chapter [Hemingses of Monticello], I have to say that I had a similar feeling to the one I had when we read her previous book. Her evidence is so strong, that you after you finish reading, you are overwhelmingly convinced by her rational. She does a very impressive job of combining strong facts with a good perception into individuals character.
Abigail Harris-Shea, Lehigh University

102) Among other things, what stuck out to me the most in Chapter 17 [Hemingses of Monticello] was the way that marriage was treated like much more of a business arrangement than a relationship founded on the true love between two individuals. Because I myself am a romantic and want to believe that there was really something there between TJ and SH, I found this chapter to be slightly unsettling. On page 356, there is an extensive discussion as to what exactly the law of marriage entails. It lists everything from never having to worry about the children being taken care of to the idea of never having to "wonder whether they were going to have sex, because that was part of the legal understanding." The relationship between Jefferson and Sally did not have the luxury of the rules of marriage, so it had to survive on it's own "treaty," as AGR explains. I just kept asking myself while reading this, ‘where is the love??' I also have to wonder what happened to the Jefferson we had seen who loved his wife Martha dearly and was extremely sad when she passed. I had never pictured the marriage between Thomas and Martha as being loveless and task-driven. Additionally, for the liaison between TJ and SH to have lasted for 38 years and for Sally to have agreed to come back to Monticello, we can only believe that she did so because she felt strongly for him and that the relationship was consensual.
Samantha Christal, Lehigh University

103) Chapter 15 [Hemingses of Monticello] discusses the nature of their relationship, whether it was love or rape. The chapter starts off explaining that unlike today, sexual relations between a young woman and a much older man were common in that time. Gordon-Reed states "Relations between the sexes in those days seem equally far away from our modern understanding of what constitutes civilized behavior. Much as it may assault present-day sensibilities, fifteen-and sixteen-year-old-girls were in Hemings's time thought eligible to become seriously involved with men, even men who were substantially older. Jefferson's daughter Patsy became a married woman... just several months after her seventeenth birthday" (309). This to me was very interesting because when I was that age I couldn't imagine being a mother let alone a wife, but I guess in those times girls were more mature at a younger age!
Samantha Gerstein, Lehigh University

104) AGR [Hemingses of Monticello] asserts that there are two possible conclusions in regards to how Sally's and TJ's relationship began in Paris, but either way you look at it, it's rape. I thought it was interesting how AGR points out that we picture Sally as an enslaved women since she is a slave. The concept of rape works in tandem with this idea, and it's an easy conclusion to draw. Why would a black slave ever want to have sex with her white master? "Whether Jefferson used violence or employed his well-known charming manner with women to win Hemings over, his power was such that one could never be sure of her true desires" (315). There is no possible way for a black woman to consent to having sex with her master. AGR refers to this as the "no-possible-consent rule." "White supremacy, a force strong enough to have survived slavery, gave even white men who were the legal owners of enslaved women wildly disproportionate amounts of power over them -- far more than enough to force sex upon them without real consequence" (315).
Alexandra Neumann, Lehigh University

105) In chapter 17 [Hemingses of Monticello], AGR debates whether or not Jefferson and Sally actually loved each other or whether their relationship was purely sexual. To begin this analysis, she considers the "treaty" they agreed upon while in France and debates if that sheds any light on the nature of the relationship. Before she goes into too much detail about this, however, she sort of shifts her focus to the relationship between Jefferson and his wife, Martha. She talks at length about how for a white woman and a white man to get married, "marriage" itself includes that treaty implicitly -- that the man will provide for the woman and her children, that their sex will be consensual, et cetera. AGR goes on to say how slave women didn't have this right, and that is why it was so imperative that Sally and Jefferson agreed on a treaty. She also discusses how we assume that simply because Thomas and Martha got married, that that means they definitely loved each other.
Samantha Christal, Lehigh University

106) I personally found myself a little frustrated with AGR [Hemingses of Monticello] this time around. This line of argument makes up about half the chapter that is purportedly on the subject of whether or not Sally and Jefferson loved each other. This lengthy and at times uninteresting discussion of his relationship with his wife felt somewhat irrelevant to me, like she was grasping at straws.
Mary O'Reilly, Lehigh University

107) Gordon-Reed also makes a new argument , [Hemingses of Monticello] which is that "her behavior suggests something of Hemings's own confidence--or vanity--that she believed she could hold Jefferson to his promnises over what would be a very long period" (Gordon-Reed, 339.) Hemings had the benefit of oral tradition as well as first hand experience to consider in deciding whether to trust Jefferson or not. She probably noted things similar to those that we have noted in class--he was benevolent to his slaves (comparatively speaking). Also, as the mini-series depicts, maybe Jefferson took Sally under his wing and began to taught her. Gordon-Reed attributes these such positive experiences (and I'm sure as a class we could come up with more) to bolster the claim that Sally had personal experiences with which to judge Jefferson's character from and she was not making a rash or hasty decision. She knew that she held the power here.
Kimbrilee Weber, Lehigh University

108) "Tom and Sally" chorus: It was love though no one could understand, / It was love between a woman and man, / In the dark, forbidden, condemned as wrong, / But love will sing its song.
Garrison Keillor

109) Some might object that Gordon-Reed has constructed a huge book with a very complex argument out of very limited direct evidence. But she demonstrates two important points. First, history in any meaningful sense requires not "facts" but context. Second, the rules and assumptions that the historian uses to establish context need to be clear, much like the rules of evidence in law.
Edward Countryman 436

110) An anonymous American artist produced an arresting painting entitled "Virginian Luxuries." It depicts a slave owner exercising two kinds of power over his human property. On the right, a white man raises his arm to whip a black man's bare back. On the left, he lasciviously caresses a black woman. . . . No one embodied this contradiction more strikingly than Thomas Jefferson.
Eric Foner

111) The part where AGR [Hemingses of Monticello] begins to discuss the nature of Jefferson and Hemings's relationship is where it got a little confusing. She refuses to fully commit to stating that their relationship is rape and spends much of her time supplying various examples with different contexts that imply a likelihood of rape because of the position of black slave women. As Alexandra said, she puts forth the idea of a "no-possible-consent rule," which basically states that, because of female slaves' positions in society and the restrictions of their freedom that accompanied this, they were never in a position to give consent. The legal contingencies surrounding the situations completely prevented them from having the ability to give consent. Because AGR fluctuates back and forth and dances around the admission of stating her belief that it was rape, the section wavers back and forth and becomes a bit muddled. I can't say that I fully agree with her, based on the interpretations we've seen that imagine the power that Sally may have had over Jefferson. Based on the information (or lack thereof) that is provided and the heavy reliance on assuming and surmising, I find myself completely unable to categorize their relationship.
Katie Prosswimmer, Lehigh University

112) Mongrel Nation is a slim volumeâ€"99 pages of textâ€"that raises and addresses some very large issues: the intersection of race, sexuality, and national identity. Walker considers why previous historians either ignored or denied the relationship and what its recent acceptance says about the contemporary United States.
Francis Cogliano 628

113) Given Jefferson's towering presence in American history and culture, this focus is not entirely unreasonable. It is no necessary criticism of such work that very different goals animate Annette Gordon-Reed's National Book Award-winning The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. Rather than seeing the Hemingses essentially as supporting characters in the life of a famous man, Gordon-Reed appraises them on their own terms as fully formed human beings. In and of itself, this effort to shift completely our angle of vision would be a considerable contribution to the historiography of African American life under slavery. But there is more to The Hemingses of Monticello than the already formidable endeavor of relating how members of one immensely complicated family crafted and maintained coherent, meaningful identities amid the contingencies of enslavement. The book is also a meditation on race and history. As it considers whose stories are perpetuated long after the hierarchies sustaining them would appear to have crumbled, and ponders the contemporary consequences of those realities, the book is ultimately about what it means to privilege the deathbed narrative of Martha Jefferson's daughter over that of her slaves.
Joshua D Rothman, "An Extraordinary Family" 400-1

114) Ch. 16 [Hemingses of Monticello] does a great job of providing in-depth analysis, as AGR always does, and I found myself convinced of her arguments. Sally was dependent on Jefferson in more ways than one. Even if love wasn't present, would she still be able to survive? Especially given her age. She didn't know anything else. She didn't know what life was like without Thomas Jefferson. Maybe she was afraid to find out.
Kristen Dalton, Lehigh University

115) Engrossing and suggestive, it [Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello] is also repetitive (we are frequently reminded that the law does not necessarily reflect social reality) and filled with unnecessary pronouncements about human nature. . . . Readers will find it absorbing, but many will wish it had been a shorter, more focused book.
Eric Foner

116) Gordon-Reed explores Jefferson's relationship to Sally Hemings and the rest of his household slaves with a degree of detail and intimacy never before achieved. If anyone had any doubts about whether Sally Hemings was Jefferson's concubine, The Hemingses of Monticello should put them to rest.
Gordon Wood 36

117) Hyland's 15th argument states that many people who believe Jefferson to be the father of Hemings's children also believed him to be a cruel, "rapist" slaveholder, but accounts of an overly warm reception by his slaves upon returning to Monticello on day demonstrates his kindness and gentility as a master. I think we have all read enough primary and secondary sources to know that this argument can be easily flipped around to support Hyland's opponents. Jefferson's kindness to his slaves could show that he was more open to welcoming blacks as real people, rather than as the lowly race he describes in Notes on Virginia. This could mean he was more receptive to a relationship with one of his slaves that may not have necessarily been rape, but was most definitely sexual. Unfortunately for Hyland, his attempt at logic-based arguing seems weak in comparison to the compelling work of Anette Gordon-Reed. After reading her work, I find myself nodding along in agreement subconsciously. After reading Hyland's work, I find myself furrowing my eyebrows in doubt and reluctance to accept his arguments.
Katie Prosswimmer, Lehigh University

118) [Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello] focuses not on the famous man who owned the mountain . . . but on persons Jefferson labored all his life to erase from the record.
John Lauritz Larson

119) Sally Hemings's foremothers also gave her another legacy. They bequeathed to her a set of stories to be used as weapons against enslavement, and against the lacerations of race. Sally, in turn, passed those stories on to her children, and we know them because her son, James Madison Hemings, preserved them through slavery and freedom, through secession, war, and reunion, and told them to a newspaperman named S.F. Wetmore, the editor of the Pike County (Ohio) Republican, in 1873.
Virginia Scharff 159

120) Gordon-Reed presents an equally powerful and rich picture. She achieves it not in the manner of a "fraction" mingling the made-up with the verifiable, or by resorting to theory-driven psychosexual speculation but rather by putting her sources together, taking all of her characters seriously, and constructing the richest, most explanatory account of them that the evidence permits her to make.
Edward Countryman 437

121) Generations of Hemingses stubbornly preserved the story of their British progenitor and their kinship with Wayleses and Eppeses, Jeffersons and Randolphs. Most importantly, they linked themselves to Thomas Jefferson. The linchpin of this celestial connection was Sally Hemings, one of the most famous, least known women in American history. She was not the first, or the last, Hemings woman to have a long relationship and children with a white man. She was the middle woman in a multigenerational dual lineage, granddaughter, daughter, mother, aunt, sister, and niece to women who lived as partners of white men.
Virginia Scharff 162

122) I did not see the value in [Hyland] saying that Madison Hemings was an unreliable source who provided "scripted hearsay, gossip, and speculation." Sure, these things under a normal context would be unreliable, but without providing evidence as to why Madison deserves these adjectives, his argument seems immature. I got the sense that he was a stubborn man who was bested by Gordon-Reed, a female African American, and he simply did not want to admit this. His arguments on the whole, seem desperate and emotionally, whereas the arguments that we've read of AGR seem far more intellectual and complete, covering the range of possibilities. Hyland seems as insignificant as his arguments.
Kristen Dalton, Lehigh University

123) Thomas Jefferson was thirty years older than Sally Hemings. His conduct toward her was predatory and exploitative. This young woman without her own means or home, living in a foreign country far away from nearly all her family, depended upon Jefferson for her life and livelihood. As a slave, she possessed neither the right to consent to nor to refuse his attention, no matter how she felt about him. She was unspeakably vulnerable. When Thomas Jefferson took Sally Hemings to his bed, he made her his victim. But in doing so, he was, as they used to say, no worse than he should have been. In Jefferson's universe, men and women never met as equals. Of course, as a slave, Sally could not hope to aspire to the title her half-sister had held, that of Mrs. Jefferson.
Virginia Scharff 218

124) If Jefferson is only a hypocrite and a racist, the Hemingses will likely be only victimsâ€"or stooges. Moreover, if Jefferson's words or the absence of them are read as the main evidence of his ideas and feelings, and not contextualized in relation to both public and private actions, the result is inevitably superficial as both biography and history. Rethinking both Jeffersons and Hemingses as members of a family, each deeply shaped by gender roles, the rules of property, and the changing politics of slavery on two continents adds an unforeseen depth and complexity to the Monticello drama.
David Waldstreicher

125) We have two particularly strong reasons to assume that Sally was pregnant, and that Jefferson was the father of her child: the fact that Sally Hemings chose slavery in Virginia over freedom in France, and the fact that Thomas Jefferson freed her children. Jefferson wanted to take Sally back to Virginia. He must have understood the overwhelming advantages he possessed in making his case. As a young, unwed pregnant woman "just beginning to understand the French language well," Sally's prospects for supporting herself in Paris were anything but bright. She had been dealt a very weak hand. But she played her best card with skill. Whatever else she knew about Thomas Jefferson, she understood that they were doing something together that they should not have been doing.
Virginia Scharff 219

126) I think this is a very plausible argument, especially since he was also her master and she was forced to look up to him. Because Jefferson was known to have been kind to his slaves I think Sally would have had more respect than fear for Jefferson. I think him being a fatherly figure to her would have won her affection over. I never thought about how it would be to Jefferson's advantage to make this courtship one of love, something she claims he craved from everyone. Even though that point is obvious I think AGR does a good job making readers believe that through Jefferson's need to make "peace" with every one and Sally's need for a father, a relationship between the two blossomed. I like the conclusion of this chapter [Hemingses of Monticello] when she acknowledges that Sally's "particular circumstances in Paris" were ideal for Jefferson to take advantage of.
Elaina Kelly, Lehigh University

127) As ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson's job was to make treaties. Calling this agreement a treaty had the ring of Jefferson's joking with Anne Bingham about calling an Assembly of Notables to pick out her clothes. But the language, in this case, belonged to Sally Hemings. When she told her children that she had made a treaty with Thomas Jefferson, it carried the inflection of an inside joke between a woman who knew the position and the power of the man she was dealing with, and a man who was willing to be made fun of by a serving girl, a young female of mixed racial ancestry, a woman even then surrendering her freedom. There was something teasing and flirtatious and affectionate, and sardonic and ironic, in the tale Sally Hemings told, something that gives us a glimpse of a woman some called "Dashing Sally."
Virginia Scharff 220

128) Sometimes the most skilled researcher comes up empty. At that point, the better part of valor may be simply to state that a question is unanswerable. . . . Gordon-Reed, however, refuses to acknowledge this possibility.
Eric Foner

129) Still, we are talking about Thomas Jefferson, a man to whom liberty was a cause worth pledging one's life, fortune, and sacred honor, who had fumed as the Continental Congress eviscerated the antislavery passages from his immortal Declaration. Why wouldn't Sally's insistence on her freedom make sense to him, help him see her as a woman and not simply a slave? Jefferson was, as Joseph Ellis has so eloquently explained, a brilliant rationalizer. Surely no one was in better position to protect Sally Hemings than he was, and he owed her that much. Having brought her across the sea into a gathering revolution and then debauched her, he could not abandon her, even if he was leaving her a free woman. As he saw it, his honor lay not in letting her go, but rather in keeping her, in taking care of a woman to whom he had made a solemn vow. Recollecting the presence of Betty Hemings and her daughter alongside his own children at his wife's deathbed, he might even have told himself that Martha would have wanted it that way. And now we come to the heart of the matter. Sally could not have known, as she stood her ground in Paris and made the fateful decision to return to America, whether Thomas Jefferson would keep his word. White men lied to slave women. Trusting Thomas Jefferson, and agreeing to go home with him, was not an entirely rational decision on her part. Why would she do so?
Virginia Scharff 221

130) This is not a book whose primary aim is to recreate Sally Hemings through direct or indirect testimony. Gordon-Reed's book is about both the family to which she belonged and the fabled place that they helped to build. Making that home was intensely satisfying to its owner, who wasn't afraid of hard work. For the rest of its builders, it was labor on a scale that can only be called monumental.
Edmund S. Morgan and Marie Morgan

131) And finally, of course, at that momentous instant in her life, Sally Hemings faced a lover and antagonist who was not just any American man, not just any Virginia slaveholder, but Thomas Jefferson. Arguably the most revered, vexing, contradictory, complicated figure in American history, a man just ascending to the peak of his power. She was thirty years younger than he was, a girl just becoming a woman, raised slavery, though in relatively protected circumstances. She told her son that his father had beseeched her and made big promises. Jefferson was a person of rare charm, warm and kind, devoted to his children, with seemingly infinite prospects in the world. Few women in America or in France, slave or free, had a chance at such an offer. Maybe she should have been more skeptical of his intentions, less vulnerable to his pleas and promises. We may, in the way of our Puritan and Victorian forebears, disapprove of women who become mistresses without any hope of marriage, even as our society steeps itself in sex for sale, and even though most women of Sally's time had to treat marriage as a practical, rather than romantic, matter. But who could blame a woman like Sally Hemings, under the circumstances, for hoping to claim such a man's loyalty or protection, or perhaps his affection, or even his love?
Virginia Scharff 224

132) The argument here [Hyland] is that Jefferson and Heming were not in close enough proximity to each other to be in a relationship. The key witnesses are Martha Jefferson, his daughter, Ellen Coolidge and Jeff Randolph, his grandchildren. According to them Jefferson was not even in proximity to Sally within months of when some of her children had to be conceived. And there was never "cohabitation" or intimacy between the two. The problem here is that these witnesses are extremely biased. This proximity defense might as well be the character defense, because they would refuse to see such a relationship, and even if they did they would refuse to believe it because of its nature.
Sarah Freeman, Lehigh University

133) Gordon-Reed rested her case. Then she set about writing history. In ‘"The Hemingses of Monticello," she uses Madison Hemings's memoir as the foundation for an elaborate reconstruction of an American epic, a century-long saga of the Hemings family, in slavery and freedom. She reasons from analogy. She speculates. She asks her reader to trust her knowledge of human nature.
Jill Lepore 89

134) Aside from the argument that their romance was almost inevitable, AGR [Hemingses of Monticello] uses the character card to strengthen her argument. She kind of implies that Sally has something of a "daddy complex," since she did not know her father and that Jefferson had the qualities of a father figure --protective, kind, and in a position of authoritative power. A very interesting point that AGR touches on is that they began this relationship in Paris, where Jefferson was much less an owner than he was back in Virginia, as Sally technically could have left and been free at any time. "French law, a check on his Virginia-based power over her, also helped shaped her view of Jefferson in this setting" (303). Though Jefferson was famously very kind to his slaves, he still was an owner, which would already put up a barrier between him and Sally. However, being in Paris, this barrier was let down, at least a little, to make way for him to be more of a patriarchal figure to her than an owner.
Samantha Feinberg, Lehigh University

135) But Thomas Jefferson stood by the woman who had given up her freedom to follow him home. Sally was not sold. She was not even sent off the mountain. Even at the height of the controversy, Jefferson was unwilling to concede anything more to public opinion, or to his white daughter's embarrassment, than to ask Sally and her children to move temporarily into her mother's house, a short distance from his own, on the pretext that they might have the measles. Sally had lived at Monticello most of her life. He revealed his devotion to her when he refused to make her leave then. And he never did.
Virginia Scharff 305

136) A vitally important piece of information had been obscured by the architecture of this book. When I looked at the paragraph describing Randolph's visits to a slave quarter in the 1951 edition, I could clearly see that it was in a section where Granger describes family activities and events that took place away from Monticello. The blacksmith was talking about Randolph's frolics not along Monticello's Mulberry Row but in the slave quarter at Randolph's own plantation in the next county. He knew about Randolph's activities because Monticello slaves, including members of Granger's own family, often visited his plantation. Everyone relies on the newer edition with all its useful scholarly apparatus, but when I examined the original book, the strongest evidence for "Uncle Randolph's" paternity vanished.
Henry Wiencek 206

137) Sally Hemings retains her hold on the American imagination not just as an irritant to Jefferson's admirers but as a profoundly subversive figure. Like an American Cassandra, cursed never to be believed, she has kept alive the fear that there may be parts of our past we do not know, or do not want to know, but that never go awayâ€"a whole secret history. Her story suggests the unsettling, painful truth that the gulf between masters and slaves was an illusion, that it had been fabricated, then laboriously sustained even as the idea of race became blurred, obsolete and then unsustainable, as it did at Monticello, that in slavery time the country developed a system to generate power and wealth that was not just oppressive but insane.
Henry Wiencek 206-7