Madison Hemings: Confirming the Illegitimate Link

By Watson Sweat

[1] The 1873 memoirs of Madison Hemings have been the subject of much debate throughout history since they serve as evidence to validate the claims of the scandalous relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. The explosive nature of the information in Madison’s memoir is clear. The real question that has gone unanswered is how did Madison feel about recalling these memories. Did they continue to torment him throughout his life? Did he feel any hate towards his father? In other words, the context of Madison’s memoirs and their publication is the question left unanswered. The 1995 film Jefferson in Paris delves into many topics concerning Jefferson’s stay in Paris, including his adulterous relationship with the married Maria Cosway, the strained and odd one with his daughter Patsy, and, of course, the budding relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings. But the film also highlights two small scenes that describe how Madison’s memoirs came to be (0:02:56, 1:06:30). A young, nervous reporter visits Madison and his wife in the winter of 1873 in rural Ohio to obtain firsthand knowledge of the Jefferson-Hemings relationship.

[2] What do we see when we compare Madison’s “real” memoirs with the “reel” depiction of his character by James Earl Jones in Jefferson in Paris. In his memoirs, Madison goes through his family lineage in a relatively even manner, but, after revealing his mother’s pregnancy and the agreement with Jefferson, there seem to be a few blips on the radar of his even-keeled conduct. The first interruption comes when Madison is describing the lives of his brother and sister, Beverly and Harriet, who both passed for white (the dark-skinned Madison obviously couldn’t). He says that it was never known nor suspected that Beverly or Harriet’s children were “tainted” by African blood “coursing” through their veins. Madison chooses two fairly derogatory words to describe African lineage, giving us insight into his feelings about the manner in which his light-skinned siblings left Monticello. Does this word choice denote a sort of betrayal Madison feels toward his siblings who left as white, abandoning their African heritage for the sole purpose of being able to escape the chains and racism of slavery? Madison’s language suggests that he was not comfortable with the notion of Beverly and Harriet using the deviant inheritance forced upon them by their father as a means of escape from their own heritage and lineage as Africans. Madison suggests that, in the words of the old saying, they sold their souls for gold, that is, they gave up an integral part of their being to boost themselves out of the lowest echelon of society. Madison, by virtue of his subtle yet tellingly subjective diction, values his birthright over the superficial status attained by Beverly and Harriet.

[3] Madison describes Jefferson as “the quietest of men,” since he chose not to share much of his life with those outside of his immediate family at Monticello. In fact, Madison says that “It is only since his death that I have learned much” of Jefferson’s public life. The film’s illustration of this distance between Jefferson and his slave children fits in line accurately with Madison’s memoirs. In the film, Madison presents the interviewing reporter with only such few items linking him to Jefferson as a pair of glasses, a book, and a few other bits and pieces of his life. What Madison elaborates as the greatest memory held by all of Jefferson’s slave children, however, is the promised freedom they were each to receive at age twenty-one. This gift of freedom represents the familial aspect of Thomas Jefferson that all of his children, especially Madison, remember him by, not the powerful public figure revered by the history books. This line of thinking by Madison seems to fall in line with the way that most children think of their fathers; they remember them by what is experienced at home, not what father did in the office that day. In this respect, Madison is no different than the billions of humans who inhabit the earth. But the demonic figure that is slavery continues to cast a long shadow over the Jefferson-Hemings family, one that cannot be shut out of view, not even by a child with a largely positive opinion of Jefferson such as Madison.

[4] In any courtroom in the entire world, any prosecutor worth his or her merit will agree that two witnesses to a crime are better than one. Two witnesses increases credibility by significantly lowering the possibility that one is spinning the story. Madison’s memoirs and his scenes in the film come together to corroborate what might be the most revealing and vital issue brought to light by each: the relationship between Jefferson and his slave children. In his memoirs, Madison sheds light on the impartiality shown to himself and his siblings by their own father: “He was not in the habit of showing partiality or fatherly affection to us [slave] children. We were the only children of his by a slave woman. He was affectionate toward his white grandchildren of whom he had fourteen, twelve of whom lived to manhood and womanhood.”

[5] Is this a clue to the attitude that drove Beverly and Harriet to marry into white families, to shed their African ties? Was the memory too painful for them to bear? What is for certain is that these memories were not easily called upon by Madison, as is observed in the film in a line that epitomizes the entire history, life, and quagmire of the Jefferson-Hemings controversy: “No matter whose blood flows in your veins, you’re either master or slave . . . you’re white, or you’re black. There’s no in between.”

[6] This quote effectively highlights the permanent asterisk that must be placed alongside the mainly favorable opinion Madison holds of Jefferson. A constructive image of a father whom you can only call Master will clearly not only have a glass ceiling, but one made of cement and painted in the color of power: white. Summoning recollections of the treatment of his mother and her children points to the only hole in Madison’s façade of impenetrable sanguinity towards his father and divulges to us Madison Hemings’s genuine innermost emotions recalling these smoldering memories.