| Episodes |
John Chester Miller: Today's Callender
Michelle Juarez
[1] Since its inception over two centuries ago, the Jefferson-Hemings controversy has spawned a series of vicious debates, fiery arguments, and caustic criticism in the historical world. Supporters of Jefferson have remained fervently committed to defending the great Founding Father, while the more "radical" side of the spectrum have made it their mission to dispel his seraphic image. Belonging to the latter group is Fawn Brodie, whose iconoclastic interpretation of the Jefferson-Hemings affair produced nearly as much controversy as the affair itself. In 1974 Brodie published Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, in which she sought to dissolve the archetypal image of Jefferson as a man of formality, politics, and ethereal greatness relished for so long. Brodie advanced the idea that the Jefferson-Hemings relationship was not only plausible but based on passion and love, not the ruthless master-slave relationship that so commonly pervaded eighteenth-century lifestyle. Brodie immediately received heavy criticism, and within three years she was refuted by John Chester Miller, whose The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery sought to dispel "Callender-Brodie" and her "Jefferson-belittling" claims and to provide a different perspective on the Jefferson-Hemings affair.
[2] Miller published The Wolf by the Ears in 1977 as an "addendum to the endless debate which revolves around the paradox that the author of the Declaration of Independence was one of the largest slaveholders of his time" (xii). Miller aimed to deal with only "such aspects of Jefferson's personality, conduct, and ideas which impinge upon the subject of slavery" (xii). While its initial purpose was to analyze and answer some of the ambiguous questions regarding Jefferson and slavery, Miller's work ultimately became a means for him to refute and disprove Brodie's interpretation of the Jefferson-Hemings affair. This ulterior motive is clear from Miller's preface, in which he addresses An Intimate History as a piece that "revived, refurbished" and gave "the gloss of verisimilitude" to the long dismissed "political canard" that was the Sally Hemings story (xi). And in the body of his work Miller presents the clear improbabilities in the Jefferson-Hemings liaison in order to bring Brodie down.
[3] Miller provides clear and objective facts that provide background insight on the scandal before presenting his own interpretation of the affair. He begins his "Jefferson and James Callender" chapter by explaining how Jefferson was Callender's "financial angel," how Jefferson "read large sections of The Prospect Before Us in proof, and supplied Callender with useful information regarding the inner workings of the government" (151). In these first pages Miller neither supports nor opposes Jefferson, remaining relatively impartial as any good historian would. Deeper into his work, however, traces of his bias creep in, first rather subtly and later more conspicuously. For example, Miller subtly defends Jefferson when he describes him as a mere victim who was "warned by his friends not to become intimate with Callender" but was "deceived by the men he sought to manage." He justifies Jefferson's relationship with Callender primarily through character defense, that Jefferson was overly generous in his "estimates of character," and that his motive in subsidizing Callender's works was for the benefit of the nation, not his own. Miller writes that "[Jefferson] overlooked the journalist's unsavory appearance, drunkenness, and dirty habits because he saw in Callender an instrument for bringing down an administration Jefferson believed to be committed to the erection of a monarchy upon the ruins of the American Republic" (150). This statement serves to subtly describe Jefferson as a martyr of sorts who took it upon himself to make friends with a man of detestable stature all for the sake of the nation.
[4] Miller's partiality only deepens as his work progresses, and the reader can see a clear bias towards Jefferson once Miller delves into the actual Jefferson-Hemings scandal. Once Miller establishes Callender as the epicenter of the scandal, he quickly jumps in to defend Jefferson and disprove Callender's accusations. Miller claims that "Callender made his charges without fear and without research," that he had "never visited Monticello, never spoken to Sally Hemings, and never made the slightest effort to verify the ‘facts' he so stridently proclaimed" (154). Miller describes Callender's story as "journalism at its most reckless," and whatever stood in his way of a perfect scandal was "summarily mowed down" (154). Inherently, Miller defends Jefferson by debasing Callender, calling him a "renegade, down-at-heels, villainous looking journalist" and essentially character-assassinating the very character-assassinator himself (157).
[5] It is in the next few pages of the "Jefferson and James Callender" chapter that Miller's hostility toward Brodie and his bias toward Jefferson becomes irrefutably clear. Miller uses the subject of Jefferson's mulatto son "Yellow Tom" as a chance to reference Brodie and ultimately argue against the claims made in her history. Miller notes that Brodie accuses Jefferson of banishing "his only begotten son," that Jefferson "never saw him again simply to conceal the proof of his own guilt and to continue his illicit love affair with Sally without interruption" (156). Miller compares Brodie's lack of evidence and research to Callender's "reckless journalism" when he writes: "Ms. Brodie adduces no evidence for this extraordinary incident; we are back with Callender and his dark surmises." Miller goes so far as to brand Brodie a Callender herself, claiming "the only real difference between Ms. Brodie and Callender is that she dignifies Jefferson's relations as a true love affair." From here on, Brodie is no longer referred to by her real name in Miller's book but as "Callender-Brodie," an ironic characterization by a man who is guilty of character-assassinating himself.
[6] Miller's ad-hominem attack on Brodie reaches its pinnacle in the subsequent chapter "The Sally Hemings Story," when Miller's focus shifts from providing an objective insight of the scandal to direct attack on Brodie and her Intimate History. In this chapter Miller provides his own interpretation of the scandal, but as he does so, he also debases Fawn Brodie and her analysis in the process. Essentially, it is as if Miller is using his analysis to specifically, yet covertly attack Brodie. His main method of attack is character-assassination, ad-hominem attacks, post-hoc fallacies, and footnotes on practically every page that reference Brodie and belittle her. Contrastingly enough, however, Miller's main method of disproving the Jefferson-Hemings affair is through Jefferson character-defense.
[7] Miller begins his Brodie-debasing by providing his own interpretation of the trial. He suggests that the reason why the Hemings' descendants were shown particular partiality was because they were descendants of Colonel Wayles and that Sally was Jefferson's wife's half-sister. Miller claims that "by marrying into the Wayles family and accepting his wife's inheritance of land and slaves, Jefferson involved himself in a web of highly anomalous racial and familial relationships" and that Jefferson "tried to meet the situation by making slavery as easy as possible for the Hemings" (163). Miller essentially gratifies Jefferson here again by making him appear as a martyr who took it upon himself to take care of his family's past. Miller relies heavily on character defense and argues the validity of the affair by saying that "if these were actually his children, the conclusion is inescapable that he must be portrayed as a cold, heartless, and callous man -- the very antitheses of the Thomas Jefferson that emerges from the historical record" (166). This "historical record" that he describes is Jefferson as "domestic" man who "delighted in the company of daughters and twelve grandchildren" and lavished overseeing "every detail of their lives" (165). Miller argues that Jefferson could not have possibly fathered Sally Hemings' children because it was "not in his nature."
[8] While Miller exonerates Jefferson from any paternal evidence Sally may have against him, he also uses this opportunity to reference Brodie and mock her logic. It is in this section that we see Miller's first, of many, footnotes that he uses to belittle Brodie. Miller concedes that "if this version [Brodie's version] of Jefferson's relation with Sally Hemings is true, he risked the loss of the presidency in 1804 by continuing to father her children." Miller makes use of a whole paragraph to reference Brodie and essentially mock her logic. Miller is very satirical in his argument by exaggerating Jefferson's love for Sally and describing it as an "all-consuming love" (165), a description that while depictive of Brodie's analysis seems very deriding. Miller then goes so far as to actually reference Brodie as Callender-Brodie when he says "if the Callender-Brodie thesis is correct, then we are prepared to accept that James Madison was a party to the cover up masterminded by Jefferson" (166). It is clear in this footnote that Miller is working to debase Brodie's argument by mocking and satirizing her logic.
[9] Miller uses Jefferson's character defense to then develop another theory: that Peter Carr and Samuel Carr might actually be the real culprits behind the Hemings affair. Miller claims that both men where similar in physique to that of their paternal grandfather and that the Carr brothers did not permit their "moral sense" to "stand in way of the gratification of sexual desires" that slave women "offered," and "tempted." Miller believes that "Sally may have been truly in love with Samuel or Peter Carr" and that the children who everyone believes Jefferson to have fathered are actually one of the Carr's children. What is Sally's motive behind this? Miller suggests that "as the mistress of Samuel Carr and the mother of his children, she lost the stature bestowed upon her by James Callender" (175). Miller concedes that Sally acquired an "éclat denied every other woman in slave history." He claims that for that reason alone the temptation on her part to confirm Callender's allegations must have been very strong.
[10] As Miller's "Sally Hemings" chapter nears a close, his attacks on Brodie become more hostile. He uses footnotes to reference "Callender-Brodie" and emphasize that her main goal is to "belittle the great men of the past" to the "stature of contemporary politicians" (173). Miller leaves no room for other arguments and posits his own conjectures as doctrinal. Ironically enough, however, Miller's defenses of Jefferson are just as conjectural as Brodie's analysis. Miller does not provide Brodie a fair summary before attacking her work and does not leave room for contrasting ideas. Miller, whose interpretation of the Jefferson-Hemings affair is very similar to Douglass Adair's, symbolizes the consummate Jefferson-defender: a man who relies heavily on character defense and ad-hominem attacks to debase anyone who stands in his way. In short, Miller is a Callender of today's era.
