The Jefferson - Hemings Controversy

Episodes

Banner, Lois W. Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie. American Historical Review 80.5 (1975): 1390.: Brodieâ€™s psychological analysis is highly speculative, often brilliant, but leads to many questions.
Bellof, Max. "The Sally Hemings Affair." Encounter September 1974: 53. Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie.
Berwanger, Eugene. Review of Wolf by the Ears, by John Chester Miller. Journal of American History 65.2 (1978): 438-39.: Miller's work becomes "more compelling and vivid with his refutation of the Sally Hemings story," based on two points: Jefferson "consciously avoided sexual relationships outside of marriage" and held a "personal repugnance toward miscegenation."
Boller, Paul. â€œTwo Democrats: Aristocratic and Democratic.â€ Southwest Review 59 (1974): 321-26.: A review of Brodieâ€™s Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History: â€œFawn M. Brodieâ€™s â€˜intimate historyâ€™ of Thomas Jefferson is likely to be the most controversial book of the year.â€ Brodie overpsychologizes, but making Jefferson a more warm and interesting character is a considerable accomplishment. She makes the strongest case for Jeffersonâ€™s illicit love life, but we are free to accept her interpretation or not.
Bragdon, Henry. Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie. Christian Science Monitor 21 May 1974.
Bringhurst, Newell G. "Fawn Brodie's Thomas Jefferson: The Making of a Popular and Controversial Biography." Pacific Historical Review 62.4 (1993): 433-54.: A general timeline and discussion of Brodie's journey while writing her Jefferson biography. Bringhurst details how Brodie went from being "favored" by the "Jefferson Establishment" to being condemned, saying "the three reviewers I most dread are Dumas Malone, Merrill Peterson, and Julian Boyd." Brodie's presentations allowed her to get some feedback on what she would be putting in her biography, and at these presentations she often had a "divided audience." Despite the many controversies she encountered, including her break with the Jefferson Establishment, many discrepancies in her work that the copy editor at Norton found, difficulties obtaining primary material, and naysayers, Brodie's biography "still enjoys brisk sales, even in the book store at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, where it outsells the works of such scholars as Dumas Malone and Merrill Peterson."
Bringhurst, Newell G. Fawn McKay Brodie: A Biographer's Life. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1999.: The chapter on the Jefferson period gives such contextual details as sales of her book, interactions with her publisher, her teaching situation, her relationship with the Jefferson Establishment, her relationship with her husband at this time, public reception of the book, plans for a film, and so forth.
Clemons, Walter. Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie. Newsweek 15 April 1974.
Conkin, Paul K. Review of Wolf by the Ears, by John Chester Miller. Journal of Southern History 44.3 (1978): 455-56.: Miller "demonstrates the overwhelming improbabilities that confront those who choose, despite a lack of evidence, to believe in Jefferson's alleged sexual liaison with Sally Hemings."
Cunningham, Noble E., Jr. In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Ballantine, 1987.: "The pieces of historical evidence seized upon by Fawn Brodie in her Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History to indicate a passionate relationship between Jefferson and Sally in Paris fail the test of objective analysis.
Davis, David Brion. "Self-Evident Truths." New York Times Book Review 13 November 1977: 9.: Review of Wolf by the Ears, by John Chester Miller. Miller lapses into "strained argument" when he "contemptuously dismisses" Brodie without even giving a "fair summary" of her work. His "indignant defense of Jefferson's sexual probity is at least as conjectural as Brodie's case for the prosecution."
Dawidoff, Robert . "The Fox in the Henhouse: Jefferson and Slavery." Reviews in American History 6.4 (1978): 503-11.: Review of Wolf by the Ears, by John Chester Miller: "One suspects that Miller wrote this book in part out of an irritation with Fawn Brodie. He is surely hostile to her Intimate History."
Demarest, Michael. "Books: Founding Father in Love." Time 29 April 1974.: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,911257,00.html; A review of Brodie's Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History: "[Brodie] sets out to relate the canonized public Jefferson to the passionate, guilt-ridden private man whose sensual adventures have been glossed over by generations of sanctifying historians."
Donald, David. â€œBy Sex Obsessed.â€ Commentary 58.1 (July 1974).
Douglas, Carlyle. "The Dilemma of Thomas Jefferson." Ebony August 1975: 60-66.: Occasioned by Brodie's book. Jefferson's dilemma is that he wrote the declaration of independence but failed to practice its tenets: "At once hero and fool, the third president of the United States emerges as both framer and victim of his own times." In regard to Sally, "it seems clear that his relationship . . . was closer in nature to a love affair than the casual debauchery of slave by master. She was, after all, his sister-in-law."
"Editor's Choice." New York Times 28 April 1974:: "A fascinating, and generally convincing, speculative study focusing on Jefferson's inner life, especially his tragic irresolution about slavery."
Egan, Clifford. "How Not to Wrote a Biography: A Critical Look at Fawn Brodie's Thomas Jefferson." Social Science Journal 14 (1977): 129-36.: A critique of Brodie's Jefferson biography, focusing on many factual errors and speculations present in her work. Egan cites a few instances in which Brodie's dates are wrong, discrepancies in her accounts of the trip to and from France, and unsupported speculation. He also notes "the injection of contemporary issues into evaluating the past." Though Egan does commend Brodie on being "on target" with Jefferson's agrarian philosophy, his "thinking on Great Britain and France," and her "sometimes superb" writing, he considers Brodie's work "too unbalanced to be an acceptable biography. As history, Brodie's work fails because of her carelessness with sources; conventional scholars expect more than page after page of speculation in lieu of solidly documented material."
Felzenberg, Alvin Stephen. Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie. American Political Science Review 71.1 (1977): 339-40.: Felzenberg commends Brodie for investigating other aspects of Jefferson's life other historians have been hesitant about, but major flaws include a disproportionate amount of time spent on the alleged Jefferson-Hemings relationship, "absence of new and reliable evidence on this topic, and the lack of attention paid to forces other than personality that could account for Jefferson's behavior." Felzenberg also criticizes Brodie's "haste to draw comparisons between Erikson's Luther and her Jefferson," noting that her application of Eriksonian analyses were not particularly appropriate for analyzing Jefferson.
Fuller, Edmund. Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie. Wall Street Journal 17 April 1974.
Gordon-Reed, Annette. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1997.
Green, Alan. "The Inner Man of Monticello." Saturday Review/World 6 April 1974: 23.: Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie.
Hamilton, Holman. Review of Wolf by the Ears, by John Chester Miller. American Historical Review 83.3 (1978): 803.
Hamilton, Holman. Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie. Journal of Southern History 41.1 (1975): 107-9.
Hay, Robert P. Review of Wolf by the Ears, by John Chester Miller. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 439 (1978): 176-77.: Miller is too preoccupied with combating the Brodie thesis on the basis of the "character" defense and subscribes to the "fallacious premise" that Jefferson's reputation depends on resolution of the Jefferson-Hemings debate.
Hettinger, Glen J. "A Hard Day for Professor Midgely: An Essay for Fawn McKay Brodie." Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 32.1 (1999): 91-101.: https://dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V32N01_101.pdf; Recounts the Mormon scholar Louis Midgley's vendetta against Brodie based on her biography of Joseph Smith and invigorated by the criticism of her biography of Jefferson. See the articles by Midgley in this bibliography. Because of the nature of Midgley's work, this article contains a handy compilation of negative criticism of Brodie.
Homer, Francis X. J. Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie. 4 May 1974.
Honey, Emily. "Taking the Wolf by the Ears: Ann Rinaldi and the Cultural Work of Sally Hemings." Journal of Popular Culture 41.1 (2008): 71-90.: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2008.00493.x/abstract; Honey finds that Hemings is still "relegated to the background in favor of Jefferson. Her story is being silenced even as it is coming to light," and therefore "We need to follow Rinaldi [whose novel is about Harriet Hemings] into those "dusky" areas of Sally's life, and into the dusky areas of slave families, miscegenation, and continued racism and segregation in order to understand our current cultural problems, and bring them to light on the page."
Kazin, Alfred. Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie. New York Times 7 April 1974: 365.: Kazin gives a brief background of Jefferson's life with regards to Sally Hemings and applauds, for the most part, Brodie's biography. His only complaint against Brodie is that "she is better on Jefferson's sensitivities than on the compulsions of his philosophy." Kazin classifies Brodie's work as "a fascinating and responsible book, except for a few rhetorical exclamations over what Jefferson-on-the-couch really meant to say here and there in his letters." He considers the book to be the "most suggestive account we have of whatever there is to know about [Sally Hemings], who belonged to Thomas Jefferson in all senses of the word," and commends Brodie on her interpretation of Jefferson's "psychological as well as economic predicament as a slaveholder."
Klein, Jeffrey. "Politics and the Self-Serving Imagination." North American Review 259. 2 (1974): 57-61.: Review of Burr by Gore Vidal.
Knudson, Jerry. "Jefferson the Father of Slave Children? One View of the Book Reviewers." Journalism History 3 (summer 1976): 56-60.: Reviews Brodie's reviewers "to see what standards are used today in the popular press in reviewing new history books." Contains a response from Brodie filled with positive comments to rebut what she felt was the negativity of Knudson's sample.
Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. "A Psychohistory of Jefferson." New York Times 8 April 1974: 33.
MacLeod, Duncan J. Review of Wolf by the Ears, by John Chester Miller. William and Mary Quarterly 35. 4 (1978): 777-79.: "Although Miller is unable to prove his own case, it is certainly more plausible than that offered by Brodie."
Manning, Margaret. Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie. Boston Globe 30 May 1974.
Mazlish, Bruce. Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie. Journal of American History 61.4 (1975): 1090-1.: A somewhat neutral review critiquing Brodie's use of data that is not actually new but interpreted in a different way. Mazlish commends Brodie on portraying Jefferson in a new psychological light yet notes that her lack of support for some of Jefferson's moral dilemmas, like reconciling private and political life and constantly impregnating his wife when each childbirth "threatened her life and finally took it." Brodie seems to want to model herself after Eriksonian thought, yet Mazlish comments that she does this ineffectively. Overall, Brodie's is "a serious and often convincing account of Jefferson, psychologically viewed; only in terms of one's higher expectations for the author and the subject is the book a disappointment."
McColley, Robert. Review of Wolf by the Ears, by John Chester Miller. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 102.2 (1978): 256-58.: Miller "loses his balance" when he gets to the Jefferson-Hemings story, otherwise he is "as judicious as historian can be."
Midgely, Louis C. "F. M. Brodie -- â€˜The Fasting Saint and the Very Saint of Ignorance': A Biographer and her Legend." Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 8.2 (1996): 147-230.
Midgely, Louis C. "The Brodie Connection: Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Smith." BYU Studies 20.1 (1979): 59-67.
Mintz, Max M. Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie. New Republic 13 April 1974.
Morris, Richard B. "The Very Private Jefferson." New Leader 27 May 1974: 25.: Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie.
"Notes on People: Commons Is Cool to M.P. Who Disappeared." New York Times 14 October 1975: 27.: This compilation of short notes contains a fragment of an interview with Dumas Malone at 83 -- no reference to Hemings.
"Opinion: Defending the Founders." Time 17 February 1975.: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,912857,00.html; News story on Virginius Dabney's speech at William and Mary gives wide distribution to his attack on Brodie.
Pickett, Calder M. Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie. Journalism Quarterly Winter 1974: 733.
Polakoff, Keith Ian. Review of Wolf by the Ears, by John Chester Miller. History Teacher 11.3 (1978): 457-59.: "Miller reserves his most impassioned writing for chastising biographer Fawn Brodie."
Shackelford, George Green. Review of Wolf by the Ears, by John Chester Miller. Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 85.4 (1977): 500-2.: "Miller deals ably with the Sally Hemings story."
Taylor, Gordon. "Teaching History Students to Read: The Jefferson Scandal." History Teacher 22.4 (1989): 357-74.: Uses the question recently stirred again by Brodie "Was Thomas Jefferson the father of his slave Sally Hemings's illegitimate children?" and related writings by Malone, Dabney, and others as the basis for an exercise in close reading.
Wallach, Jennifer Jensen. "The Vindication of Fawn Brodie." Massachusetts Review 43.2 (2002): 277-95.: Wallach criticizes the Jefferson Establishment's staunch denial of Brodie as a credible source, driven by racist undertones and the perception of Jefferson as a saint. Wallach walks readers through the arguments the Jefferson Establishment made against Brodie and refutes each argument with an equally valid one of Brodie's or her own, substantiated by DNA evidence placing Jefferson as the biological father of at least one of Hemings's children. She strongly ends her essay saying "ironically enough, when the Jefferson Establishment tries to explain an historical agent's actions in terms of something as subject to interpretation as â€˜character,' they are borrowing from the psychohistorian's bag of tricks, and they begin to sound just a bit like Fawn Brodie, although without the virtue of her belief that â€˜the truth [is] more important than the defense of the white race.'"
Wendel, Thomas. Review of Wolf by the Ears, by John Chester Miller. New England Quarterly 52.1 (1979): 132-34.: Surprisingly, nothing on Miller's treatment of the Jefferson-Hemings relationship. How can that be?
Wiencek, Henry. Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012.
Williams, Murat. â€œBeyond the Story of Sally Hemings.â€ Daily Progress (Charlottesville, Va.) 11 May 1975.
Williams, T. Harry. "On the Couch at Monticello." Reviews in American History 2 (1974): 524.: Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie. Williams examines Brodie's treatment of the Hemings story in some detail and finds, as in other instances, that she abuses psychohistory in arriving at her interpretation. Brodie has "badly set back the calling of psychobiography."
Wills, Garry. "Uncle Thomas's Cabin." New York Review of Books 18 April 1974: 26-28.: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1974/apr/18/uncle-thomass-cabin/; Wills' review criticizes what he perceives as the fundamental flaws of Brodie's Thomas Jefferson, her frequent misinterpretation of Jefferson's writings, saying she "constantly finds double meanings in colonial language, basing her argument on the present usage of key words." He brings up numerous instances in which she does this, and after each instance provides Jefferson's intended meaning (in accordance with the OED), invalidating much of her argument. Willis goes on to criticize "Brodie's hint-and-run methodâ€”to ask a rhetorical question, and then proceed on the assumption that it has been settled in her favor, making the first surmise a basis for second and third ones, in a towering rickety structure of unsupported conjecture." His critique centers mainly on her ignorance, lack of historical support, and negligence of consulting with the OED.
Wills, Garry. Interview. Washington Post 28 August 1975.
Wright, Benjamin F. Review of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie. Social Science Quarterly 56 (1975): 157.
Yoder, Edwin M. "An Unshaken Hero." National Review 10 May 1974: 542.: A review of Brodie's Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. Jefferson's stature is so secure that "a bit of chipping around the edges of the alabaster [as happens in Brodie] isn't likely to be noticed. Jefferson's amours are the "prurient centerpiece" of a "not unaffectionate portrait." Jefferson, "the cerebral philosophe," was really "a sensual creature governed, if not indeed enslaved by carnal passions."