| Episodes |
Answer the following questions from your reading of Callender's articles about the scandal in the Richmond Recorder from September 1802 through July 1803. Use your answers as the basis for class discussion and as preparation for your essays.
Selected articles from the Recorder are available here on the JHC website and in Rebecca L. McMurry and James F. McMurry, Jr., Jefferson, Callender and the Sally Story: The Scandalmonger and the Newspaper War of 1802 (Toms Brook: Old Virginia Books, 2002).
1) Who is Callender?
2) What is the complete "story" about Jefferson he tells?
3) What are his sources?
4) What are his motives?
5) What does he charge Jefferson with?
6) How does he describe Sally Hemings?
7) How would you characterize his style or his rhetorical strategies?
8) What effect does he say that his charges have on others?
9) How does he characterize Jefferson's defense and defenders?
10) How strong does he feel his case is?
11) Do his content, style, strategies change over time?
12) What kind of success does he think he he's having?
13) At what point is his campaign when he dies?
14) Should what we know of him as a person affect how we feel about what he says?
15) Does he remind you of anybody today?
16) Who would you cast to play him in a movie?
17) Are there any contemporary scandal incidents like this that are relevant points of reference?
