| Episodes |
Pushing the Envelope Too Far
Samantha Feinberg
[1] History often has a bias, and when there are factual discrepancies in certain aspects or events of history, it's even more difficult to keep a bias out when trying to understand them. When it comes to whether or not a romantic relationship between third President Thomas Jefferson and his young mulatto slave Sally Hemings occurred, there is a huge gaping hole. Until recently, that is, before the DNA evidence, it was extremely difficult to prove either way if the relationship actually happened. The controversy started with a notoriously slanderous journalist James T. Callender accusing Jefferson of having a relationship and offspring with slave Hemings, and until 1974 almost all historians (primarily white) outrightly dismissed--or fervently denied--the allegation.
[2] However, in Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History Fawn Brodie opposed the so-called Jefferson Establishment composed of such well known scholars as Dumas Malone, Merrill Peterson, and Julian Boyd, contending that the founding father and slave did, in fact, have a relationship, and not only an intimate one but a romantic one. Both the Jefferson Establishment and Brodie try to fill the holes of the controversy with different interpretations and usage of the evidence at hand. Taking a look at just two of the points on which each side contends--the interpretation of Jefferson's use of the word "mulatto" in his diary and whether or not Jefferson had an intimate relationship with Maria Cosway--it's clear how emotional bias comes into play.
[3] Brodie's method of analyzing Jefferson's life is psychobiography, or Jefferson-on-the-couch, with which she tries to understand Jefferson through psychological theory and research. This method is central to her biography and is effective in many places, as it appeals to human logic and emotion. One controversial piece of evidence Brodie uses to support the fact that Jefferson and Hemings had a relationship is her analysis of how many times Jefferson used the word "mulatto" in his diary before and after Sally arrived in Paris. Brodie considers the use of this word one of the "most subtly illuminating of all his writings" in portraying his fascination with Hemings. She notes about the diary writings of 1789 and 1790 that "anyone who reads with care these twenty-five pages must find it singular that in describing the countryside between these cities [on a tour of Germany] Jefferson used the world ‘mulatto' eight times" (229). This is after Sally's arrival in Paris, in contrast to beforehand, when in forty-eight pages, Jefferson only uses the word "mulatto" twice, "otherwise describing the hills, plains, and earth as dark, reddish-brown, gray, dark brown, and black" (230). Since Hemings was a mulatto, Jefferson's increased use of the word after her arrival is, for Brodie, a significant piece of evidence that he was attracted to her or in a relationship with her.
[4] As much as I want to believe Brodie about Jefferson's use of "mulatto," it's hard to back her up. Critic Garry Wills feels similarly, and in his review of Thomas Jefferson, he does not spare Brodie. Not only is this interpretation far-fetched, in that Jefferson is describing the agrarian conditions of the countryside and, in turn, observing the workers, he says, but according to the OED, "mulatto" was frequently used in eighteenth-century America in agrarian contexts. Wills criticizes Brodie for continuously finding double meanings in colonial language, as she does here, without taking into consideration the fact that words still presently used may have had different meanings in the 1800s. A few excerpts from Jefferson's diary demonstrate the purely agrarian use of the word mulatto:
"The road goes thro' the plains of the Maine, which are mulatto and very fine….
It has good Southern aspect, the soil a barren mulatto clay….
It is of South Western aspect, very poor, sometimes gray, sometimes mulatto….
These plains are sometimes black, sometimes mulatto, always rich…." (229)
[5] Wills explains that the number of times the word "mulatto" is used in Jefferson's agrarian diary is not evidence of his interest in Sally, as "all these references are to the color of the soil, and the OED gives that use of the word as peculiarly American and eighteenth-century." "Given that mode of classification," Wills says, "the repetition of mulatto in the twenty-five pages [Brodie] refers to means no more than the repetition of red . . . -- unless we are to assume that Jefferson deliberately falsified his own records just to relieve his psyche from the strain of not repeating ‘mulatto' for the sixth or seventh or eighth time, in obscure tribute to Sally." It's difficult to refute Wills, regardless of how much we believe the relationship happened. Brodie's psychobiographic technique throughout Thomas Jefferson entails a great deal of analysis and subjective interpretation. When hard evidence is subjectively interpreted, clearly emotions will play a part, and here Brodie's emotions may have gotten the best of her. Score one for the Jefferson Establishment.
[6] A second controversial piece of evidence that Brodie uses to support her theory that Jefferson and Hemings had a romantic relationship is his relationship with Englishwoman Maria Cosway [who will be featured in episode 11]. Though other Jefferson biographers acknowledge that the couple had a flirtation, they insist it was only that -- Brodie, on the other hand, believes it was actually an intimate relationship. Her support for this contention is very compelling, and it's actually difficult to refute her interpretation. If Cosway and Jefferson had a physical and loving relationship the way that Brodie believes -- demonstrating that the death of his beloved wife Martha did not result in sexual atrophy, as other historians claimed -- this gives further support for the fact that Jefferson could love Hemings.
[7] Though Brodie may have been far off in her interpretation of Jefferson's writings in his diary about agrarian conditions, she seems pretty warm in her first line of argument, her analysis of what poems he chose to read and write down. Brodie logically reasons that "the poems a man chooses to copy or memorize usually speak to him in some special fashion," and she goes on to cite the many lines he recorded during his courtship of Cosway (205). Most were centered on being in love, and Brodie intuitively notices that the end of his compilation of poems, "as Maria Cosway's return to London became certain, included . . . melancholy lines" dealing with heartbreak, mourning, and general sadness (206).
[8] Brodie goes on to note as her second line of argument that Jefferson kept copies of the correspondence between him and Cosway, and why else would he do this if not with the intention of sharing it with history? Or, at the very least, to reread in private -- which he would not do if there were not a love between them. If these (very logical) interpretations aren't enough, Brodie also deftly notes that the fact that Cosway and Jefferson "were actually often alone in Jefferson's home is evident from a cryptic postscript she added to one of her notes to him in Paris, this on December 1, 1787: ‘I hope Mr. Short will not be out as his usual when I have the pleasure to come to you'" (223). Clearly, Cosway frequented Jefferson's home in Paris alone. The two were engaged in a flirtation, and in looking at their correspondence, they both very obviously felt strongly about each other, so what would stop the two of them -- if they were completely alone -- from becoming physically intimate? The passage below is an excerpt from one of Jefferson's letters to Cosway:
But I am born to lose everything I love. Why were you not with me? So many enchanting scenes which only wanted your pencil to consecrate them. . . . Come then, my dear Madam, and we will breakfast every day à l'Angloise, hie away to the Desert, dine under the bowers of Marly, and forget that we are ever to part again. (215)
The grief in this letter is more than evident, giving further support to Brodie's contention that Jefferson and Cosway's relationship was more than just a flirtation.
[9] On the other hand, the Jefferson Establishment has considered the Jefferson-Cosway relationship pure flirtation and innocent courtship, but nothing further. Jefferson's famous letter to Cosway, "My Head and My Heart," has been interpreted as an internal debate. The Jefferson Establishment has not looked at this as proof of a loving -- and physical -- relationship between Cosway and Jefferson, but more a rationalizing in which Jefferson explains that his head triumphs over his heart -- and thus evidence for believing the relationship merely an innocent, unconsummated flirtation. Brodie notes, "Julian Boyd sees this letter as proof that ‘reason was not only enthroned as the chief disciplinarian of his life, but also . . . a sovereign to whom the Heart yielded a ready and full allegiance.' Merrill Peterson writes that ‘in the end the head (Jefferson) coolly put the heart (Maria) in its place. Reason and sentiment might divide life between them, yet, for him, one was the master, the other the servant.' To say this is to ignore all the subsequent letters Jefferson wrote to Maria, and to forget their months together in the autumn of 1787" (210).
[10] Brodie, however -- and, in light of her other support, more convincingly -- interprets "My Head and My Heart" as being a testament to a newfound passion Jefferson had, the first one after his wife died. She analyzes the contents of the letter and persuasively demonstrates that even phrases of the Head "in their totality became a cry for love, for reassurance, for the promise of renewal. And his heart spoke with even greater anguish":
I am indeed the most wretched of all earthly beings. Overwhelmed with grief, every fibre of my frame distended beyond its natural powers to bear, I would willingly meet whatever catastrophe should leave me no more to feel or to fear. . . . I feel more fit for death than life. When I look back on the pleasures of which it is the consequence, I am conscious they were worth the price I am paying. . . . Hope is sweeter than despair, and they were too good to mean to deceive me. In the summer said the gentleman; but in the spring, said the lady: and I should love her forever, were it only for that! (211)
[11] Scholar Clifford Egan states "Brodie offers no proof whatsoever to substantiate her speculation about the Jefferson-Cosway affair." Other biographers unite in describing the Jefferson-Cosway episode as a flirtation. Insisting that Jefferson's devotion to his late wife never fizzled, the Jefferson Establishment cannot fathom the fact that he may have loved another and thus dismiss both the Cosway and Hemings charges. However, after reading the passionate lines of Jefferson's angst-ridden letter to Cosway above, it is difficult to entertain the idea that the two were involved in a mere flirtation. Score one for Brodie.
[12] The evidence available to determine whether or not Thomas Jefferson had a relationship with his slave Sally Hemings is ambiguous and is thus difficult to evaluate objectively. Clearly, the historians who study this issue become emotionally invested, and it is with these emotions that they interpret the evidence at hand -- sometimes this works in their favor, and their interpretation is enlightening, while other times, their emotions get in the way of seeing the truth. Both Brodie and the Jefferson Establishment subjectively look at the evidence and disagree on many aspects of the controversy. Each side pushes the envelope a little too far in their interpretations, and as readers of the argument ourselves, we, too, become invested and want to see something proved one way or the other.
