The Jefferson - Hemings Controversy

Episodes

Bartlett, W.H. History of the United States from the Discovery of the Western World to the Present Day. New York: G. Virtue & co, 1856.
Brown, William Wells. Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States. London, 1853. 60, 64, 154, 155, 206, 218.: http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/brown/brown.html; This first novel by an African America begins with "a negro sale, at which two daughters of Thomas Jefferson, the writer of the Declaration of American Independence, and one of the presidents of the great republic, were disposed of to the highest bidder!" And it ends with Clotel's suicide by drowning, the only freedom for this "tragic mulatto" who is literally hounded by packs of white pursuers: "She clasped her hands convulsively, and raised them, as she at the same time raised her eyes towards heaven, and begged for that mercy and compassion there, which had been denied her on earth; and then, with a single bound, she vaulted over the railings of the bridge, and sunk for ever beneath the waves of the river! Thus dies Clotel, the daughter of Thomas Jefferson, a president of the United States; a man distinguished as the author of the Declaration of American Independence, and one of the first statesmen of that country."
Brown, William Wells. "Jefferson's Daughter." The Anti-Slavery Harp: A Collection of Songs for Anti-Slavery Meetings. Boston, 1848. 23-24. [Poem first appeared in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine July 1839.]: http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/absowwba22t.html; The headnote reads: "'It is asserted, on the authority of an American Newspaper, that the daughter of Thomas Jefferson, late President of the United States, was sold at New Orleans for $1,000.'â€”Morning Chronicle." Americans should not boast of being the land of the free while "Jefferson's child has been bartered for gold!" Probable source for Brown was not the English newspaper but William Garrison's abolitionist newspaper The Liberator (26 May 1848: 84).
Brown, William Wells. Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself. Boston: The Anti-slavery office, 1847.: http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/brown47/menu.html
Communipaw. "The Black News-Vender." Letter to the Editor under title of Communications "'Heads of the Colored People,' Done with a Whitewash Brush." North Star 25 March 1852: 2.: The sad story in Frederick Douglass's newspaper of a paraplegic black news vendor who might be "the incontestable descendent [sic] of Thomas Jefferson and Black Sal" yields the comment that it is well known that Jefferson sought "the dalliance of black women as often as he could . . . leaving so many descendants of mixed blood, that they are to be found as widely scattered as his own writings throughout the world. One at least, a grand daughter, is a shouting Methodist, in Liberia."
Douglass, Frederick, et al. "Is the Constitution Pro-Slavery?" The Frederick Douglass Papers. Vol. 2. Ed. John W. Blassingame. New Haven: Yale UP, 1976. 217-26.
Gaylord, Dr. Levi. Letter. "Sale of a Daughter of Thomas Jefferson." The Friend of Man 22 August 1838.: Gaylord's informant in abolitionist William Goodell's Utica newspaper was an Otis Reynolds, "a practical, as well as a theoretical supporter of slavery," a "sober" man of "unquestioned" credibility, who saw in New Orleans a Jefferson daughter sold for $1,000. Such "astounding facts" need to be publicized to awaken us to "utter disregard to the claims of consanguinity" and the "repulsive workings" of slavery. [Gaylord's letter was reprinted in the The Liberator (21 September 1838: 152), the Emancipator (25 October 1838), and can be found in Robert S. Levine, ed. Clotel, or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States by William Wells Brown. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000.]
Goodell, William. Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A History of the Great Struggle in Both Hemispheres: with a view of the Slavery Question in the United States. New York, 1852: 142.: http://books.google.com/books?id=RjleIniiDl4C&pg=PA142; Abolitionist Goodell proclaims the slave question "the grand problem of the present age": "The question whether such a nation, at such a period of the world's progress, shall continue to tolerate human chattelhood, becomes, of necessity, a world's question. Universal human nature is knocking vehemently at our doors, and cannot be silenced. As well might we attempt to hush the thunders of our own Niagara, or annul the laws by which the elements are governed." Jefferson is mentioned in a section deriding the "stupid prejudice against color" for "the enslavement of our own children."
Grimke, Angelina. Letters to Catherine Beecher in Reply to An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism. Boston, 1838: 10.: http://books.google.com/books?id=KSWzlG7UHnsC&pg=PA10; Beecher's work is meant to counter Grimke's advocacy of public activism by women by presenting "some reasons why it seems unwise and inexpedient for ladies of the non-slave-holding States to unite themselves in Abolition Societies" and so forth. Grimke's answer contains this memorable response to a slaveholder who says, "the best blood in Virginia flows in the veins of slaves!": "Yes," says Grimke, "even the blood of a Jefferson. And every southerner knows, that it is a common thing for the posterity of our forefathers to be sold on the vendue tables of the South."
Hildreth, Richard. Despotism in America; or, An Inquiry into the Nature and Results of the Slave-holding System in the United States. Boston, 1840.: http://books.google.com/books?id=gp6OZweKwasC&pg=PA1
"Jefferson Injured in the Person of His Descendants." The Liberator 19 December 1845: 202.: Several brief news clippings about "a natural son of Jefferson by the celebrated 'Black Sal'" now living in Ohio and who can't vote.
Levine, Robert S., ed. Clotel, or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States by William Wells Brown. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000.: This edition of Brownâ€™s work has a substantial introduction as well as a rich collection of selections to contextualize Brownâ€™s narrative.
Lincoln, Abraham. Letter to Anson G. Chester, Sept. 5, 1860. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Vol. IV. Ed. Roy P. Basler. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1953. 111-12. [Chicago Times and Herald 4 September 1860; Illinois State Journal 6 September 1860]: Anson sent Lincoln an article from the Chicago newspaper containing an anti-Jefferson comment Lincoln made in an 1844 speech taken from the Macomb Eagle. Lincoln replies that the extract is a "base forgery," and the Illinois paper, in an article that may have been written by Lincoln, denounced it as such. The anti-Jefferson quote, though Basler doesn't say so, is from Thomas Hamilton's Men and Manners in America, perhaps from the edition recently published in 1843. The Illinois paper article praises Jefferson.
Parker, Theodore. "Thomas Jefferson." Historic Americans. Boston, 1870. 285.: http://books.google.com/books?id=oJ1BAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA285; Essays on Franklin, Washington, Adams, and Jefferson "prepared at a time when the antislavery agitation was at its height; when, in Mr. Parker's judgment, it distinctly menaced war": "[Parker's] design was to trace back to their sources, in the creative minds of the nation, the principles that have exerted a controlling influence in the nation's history, and are still active in the institutions and the politics of the hour." In a blunt description of Jefferson's character, Parker states that "the charge that he was father of some of his own slaves is but too well founded."
Parker, Theodore. "William Ellery Channing." The American Scholar. Ed. G. W. Cooke. Boston, 1907. 156; 510.: http://books.google.com/books?id=2FQpAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA156; Parker excoriates a time when religion, the state, the press, etc., refused to defend the negro, making Channing's activist work on slavery "at least a little out of season" -- for instance, it was a time "when the state, which had had but one president [Jefferson] who spoke against slavery, and he a man who sold the children of his own body, riveted the fetters still closer on the slave's limbs." In an endnote, Parker states that though "often asserted" that Jefferson had children by his negro slaves, "The proof has not been furnished, though the gossip has been persistent," and he provides a long extract from William Elory Curtis's biography on the controversy, including Curtis's (unique?) claim that, in his "single instance" of public denial, Jefferson, in the campaign of 1804, produced meticulous "vital statistics at Monticello" as "alibi" for a claim by "a respectable mulatto living in Ohio, named Madison Jennings, [who] boasted that he was a son of the president and Sally Jennings."
Ross, Alexander Milton. Memoirs of a Reformer, 1832-1892. Toronto: Hunter Rose 1893. 31-32.: http://books.google.com/books?id=m6kSAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA31; An abolitionist looks back. After describing slave depots, the hunt for fugitive slaves using bloodhounds, the laws regarding recapturing slaves, the attendant brutality including the sexual vulnerability of females, Ross describes the fate of two of Jefferson's "unfortunate children" auctioned off in New Orleans for "unmentionable purposes," which sounds as if it was taken from William Wells Brown's Clotel: "Both were highly educated and accomplished. The youngest daughter escaped from her master and committed suicide by drowning herself to escape the horrors of her position." The laws seem to be at blame, for Ross implies that legally Jefferson "could not bequeath liberty to his own children," and Ross invokes Jefferson's own words about the eventual heavy-handed involvement of the "God of Justice" to emphasize the immorality.
Tucker, George. Letter XI. Letters from Virginia. Baltimore, 1816. 73-103.: A collection of translated letters purported to be by a young Frenchman of ancient family who, disenchanted with Bonaparte, moved to England and then on to America. Letter XI examines and criticizes Jefferson's negative view of blacks in Notes on the State of Virginia and contains a few innuendos regarding sexual relationships. For instance, the author is surprised, "after the stories I have heard of him," at Jefferson's aspersions on negro beauty. Nor, "whatever Mr. J's own experience may have been," is the "supposed preference" by negroes for whites in "their amours" universal.
Walker, David. Walker's Appeal, In Four Articles: Together With A Preamble To The Coloured Citizens Of The World, But In Particular, And Very Expressly, To Those Of The United States Of America. Boston, 1829.: http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/menu.html; From the Documenting the American South web site: "Walker was an outspoken black abolitionist, and he put his fiery thoughts to paper in his famous Appeal (1829). Walker targeted his emotional tract most specifically to free black northerners and southern slaves, but he also addressed northern whites and slave masters who would likely read the subversive pamphlet out of curiosity. Walker pushed for immediate emancipation rather than the gradualist approaches or colonization schemes of white anti-slavery groups such as the North Carolina Manumission Society. Walker saved his most incendiary rhetoric, however, for his southern audience. He urged slaves to rebel en masse, posing the question: â€˜had you not rather be killed than to be slave to a tyrant?' (p. 30). Walker's publication terrified already paranoid white masters, and about them Walker notes â€˜if they do not have enough to be frightened for yet, it will be' (p. 37)." Walker repeatedly targets Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia for specific attack. Jefferson is the man African Americans must refute if they would be "MEN."