Dear Mr. Barger:

Because you do not hesitate to pepper this list with a surfeit of  
repetitive messages expressing your vehement and intransigent  
judgment of facts, probabilities, and persons (living and dead) in  
the Jefferson-Hemings matter, I trust that you will not begrudge a  
note of respectful admonition to yourself.  Please allow me,  
therefore, to invite your consideration of the following points,  
attention to any one of which might enable some of your readers to  
view your messages as more than noisy and predictable nuisances, as  
you surely do not intend them to be.

(1.) A more adequate and consistent understanding of oral history.

On the one hand, you repeatedly dismiss and disparage the study of  
oral history--sneering at Dr. Dianne Swann-Wright, the scholar who  
headed the Monticello commission that examined the Jefferson-Hemings  
history in light of the DNA evidence, as "an oral slave historian" (a  
message of April 30);  discounting the census record listing Madison  
Hemings as TJ's son as "just another attempt to use oral history" (a  
message of April 29); and mocking the now-disproved  Woodson oral  
history of descent from TJ as "the old long false ORAL family  
claim" (a message of May 5).  On the other hand, you repeatedly  
trumpet the claim that "Eston Hemings['s] . . . family oral history  
had ALWAYS been that they descended from 'a Jefferson uncle'" (a  
message of April 30) and insist that accordingly the 1998 DNA tests  
"proved that Eston's family oral history was correct and that Eston's  
DNA was that of 'a' Jefferson, Randolph, as they had always claimed,  
NOT Thomas" (a message of April 29).

May I suggest that as a matter of intellectual consistency you cannot  
have it both ways?  And that in any case both judgments betray an  
ignorance of the dynamics and appropriate uses of oral history?   
Historians and folklorists since the mid-twentieth century have  
devoted a great deal of thought to understanding how oral histories  
and traditions can--and cannot--be used to shed valuable light on  
both the past and the present, and to establishing standards for  
scholarship accordingly.  There is an extensive literature available  
on this topic should you care to peruse it before continuing to fling  
your own judgments on the subject incontinently about the Internet,  
as you do both on this list and on Amazon.com.

I will not here attempt to review the records you cite in light of  
those standards, except to draw your attention to the following well- 
established facts.  (a) Oral history tells us at least as much about  
the present in which it is voiced as about the past which it claims  
to convey.   (b) Oral history is not inherently more or less truthful  
or accurate than written history: accounts of both types must be  
carefully evaluated for their sources, circumstances of production,  
biases, probable effects of knowledge or ignorance, degree of  
correlation with established fact, and other human filters before  
their veracity can be assessed for its factual utility in any given  
instance.   (c) Because oral history is by definition unwritten, and  
therefore unfixed in historical time, we cannot assume its  
transhistorical consistency.  In other words, as you will doubtless  
be gratified to learn, we cannot be certain that the facts of his  
parentage that Madison Hemings committed to print in 1873 were the  
same as those he might have recounted in, say, 1838.  But by the same  
token, we also have no evidence that Eston Hemings's descendants  
"ALWAYS" (as you repeatedly put it) claimed descent from "a Jefferson  
uncle" rather than from Thomas himself, inasmuch as we have no means  
of documenting their oral tradition for any period older than that  
recalled by the inevitably imperfect memories of those who first  
submitted it to be recorded in writing in the late twentieth century.

(2.)  A more careful attention to the biases inherent in your own  
language.

You claim to be interested in "truth" (or, if you would prefer,  
"TRUTH"), insisting that (as you put it in a message of May 1), "I  
find nothing objectionable about the 'possibility' that TJ had a  
sexual relationship with Sally. . . .  I am not biased other than  
trying to see the truth revealed to the public."

I am sorry, sir, but your constant, harshly juridical language belies  
this claim.  You repeatedly accuse--I use the term advisedly--others  
of deeming TJ "guilty" of a relationship with SH (e.g., in messages  
of April 29, May 1, May 3, May 5, etc.), or of "accusing him" of such  
(e.g., in a message of May 3), and you express  the wish that TJ  
could "defend himself" (e.g., in a message of May 5).  You repeatedly  
accuse assorted historical actors whose accounts of the subject  
contradict yours of "lying" or of being "liars" (examples too  
numerous to mention, and much remarked in previous threads).  You  
refer to other possible candidates for the paternity of SH's children  
as "suspects" (e.g., in messages of April 29 and May 3).  A  
genealogist whose work you doubtless value discloses a similar  
outlook when she titles her book on the relationship "Jefferson  
Vindicated`" (it is difficult to believe that a book bearing such a  
title represents anything other than a sustained attempt to reach a  
foreordained conclusion, which is not how persuasive historical  
analysis is made).

It seems clear, therefore, that whether or not you acknowledge it,  
you and at least some of those who share your viewpoint regard any  
possible TJ-SH sexual relationship as a crime.  Because TJ is someone  
you claim to admire, may I suggest that so long as you continue to  
maintain this view of his possible connection with SH, it will be  
impossible for you to approach the known facts in the case, and to  
attempt their plausible interpretation, in anything remotely  
resembling an unbiased manner?--much less to begin to understand TJ's  
own understanding of his actions should they somehow prove beyond  
even your doubts to have taken place?  At the very least, your use of  
such language is likely to make your arguments appear inherently  
biased to those very readers you wish most to persuade.
`
(3.)  A minimal courtesy to those who disagree with you.

If you are familiar with TJ's correspondence, you may perhaps have  
relished, as have I, his ability to be courteous--unfailingly, if  
sometimes chillily or even freezingly, courteous--to all his  
correspondents, even those he profoundly disliked or who proffered  
arguments he deemed contemptible.  I do wish you could emulate him in  
this matter; it is a wise strategy in debate as well as a humanely  
elegant style.

Specifically, you do your own argument great injury when you  
continually dismiss all those who disagree with you about the  
possibility or probability of a TJ-SH sexual relationship-- 
historians, biographers, genealogists, archaeologists, geneticists,  
descendants of assorted historical actors, members of the news media  
and of the general public--as mere shills for "political correctness"  
and "historical revisionism," or as gullible dupes of the same (as in  
your messages of April 30, May 3, May 5, etc.).  As a mere matter of  
strategy, how do you expect to persuade anyone whom you begin by  
insulting?  And as a matter of fact, your portrayal of those you  
disagree with is demonstrably inaccurate (note that I do not accuse  
you of lying; simply of being inaccurate--a courtesy you refuse to  
extend to others).  You are not going to win an argument whose  
inherent legitimacy you refuse to accept.  And you are not going to  
persuade either the scholars or the broad public you desire to  
influence if you cannot recognize what is obvious to any fair-minded  
person: that many of those who disagree with you evince a commitment  
to accuracy and a capacity for discerning judgment at least equal to  
your own.

As a scholar who has followed the arguments and counter-arguments on  
the subject of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings since my  
adolescence, more than three decades ago, changing my own best guess  
about the likelihood of the relationship from skepticism to  
probability as new facts have come to light, I am viscerally  
disinclined to take seriously the arguments of someone who deems me a  
priori guilty (sic) of bad faith.  Please consider this letter an  
attempt to overcome my aversion to conversation with you on that  
ground alone, and--more importantly--consider that I may well speak  
also for any number of others whose intellectual honesty and  
professional integrity you are so blithely and unfoundedly eager to  
impugn. You might wish to consider why your historical conclusions  
cannot stand on their own merits without requiring that you traduce  
those who disagree with them.  If there are biases and fixed agendas  
to be fairly acknowledged, dear sir, are they not your own?

--Jurretta J. Heckscher

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