A belated answer to Richard Dixon's query (I have been in Ireland the past
week on a "find my roots" trip, which led me to a remote cemetery in the
rocky fields of Connemara--an extremely emotional experience).  

There is no question that Jefferson's overseer Edmund Bacon was an
"exaggerator." James Bear made that point in his introduction to his edition
of Bacon's memoir (p xiii). I believe that Jeff Randolph tried to refute
some things Bacon said in his memoir, but I don't have Jeff's letter in
front of me.  Bacon despised the Randolphs and mocked them mercilessly in
his memoir. Clearly he had been irritated by the meddling of the in-laws. 
He said the Randolphs were "all strange people" and said (p 89) that Thomas
Mann Randolph, Jefferson's son-in-law, "would often do the most strange and
laughable things." It is also abundantly clear that Bacon adored Jefferson
and would say almost anything to protect and enhance his old boss's
reputation. We must sort through what Bacon said very carefully to extract
the truth from the puffery. There's a lot of truth there, along with many
errors. It's very hard, for example, to verify what Bacon said about his
trips to Washington during Jefferson's presidency. And clearly, Bacon was
not at Monticello when Harriet Hemings was conceived--as Bacon claimed. 
Perhaps he got Harriet mixed up with Eston Hemings; perhaps he made it all up.  

As to inter-racial sex being acceptable--Jefferson and others railed against
it, but Jefferson staffed his household with mixed-race people, so obviously
he easily accepted the results of racial mixing. A great many elite
plantation households had servants who were "mighty near white."  If the
white Virginia elite was so appalled by racial mixing, why didn't they ship
all the mulattoes and their law-breaking parents to the West Indies?  Some
of Jefferson's white workmen had children with enslaved women, and to my
knowledge Jefferson never fired a workman for these illicit relationships. 
He countenanced these relationships.  Slave masters said one thing, did
another, and followed the law when it suited them. 

The UVA Magazine article is a useful summary of the Hemings/Jefferson
debate. All the historical testimony in this matter, on both sides, is full
of holes, biases, deceptions, faulty memories, etc.  One problem with the
article is that it's all "one the one hand, and then on the other hand." 
This is the fundamental fault in all so-called "objective"
reporting--authors give space to dissenting views purely to have "balance."
 Thus the author gives space to the claim that other Jeffersons aside from
Thomas could have fathered Sally's children.  Maybe so, but to my mind no
one has yet advanced any credible evidence that another Jefferson could have
been the father, and that needs to be said. 

Henry Wiencek


On Sat, 18 Aug 2007 17:55:16 -0400, Heritage Society
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>In the current issue of the UVA Magazine, there is an article "Anatomy of a
Mystery" which addresses the issue of Jefferson's alleged paternity of slave
children. In the article, Lucia Stanton is quoted as saying that Edmund
Bacon (the overseer at Monticello who asserted he knew the father of Sally
Hemings' daughter and that it was not Thomas Jefferson) had a reputation
among Jefferson’s grandchildren as "a great tale teller and exaggerator."
Also, in the article, Peter Onuff was quoted as saying that, "What we take
as the big taboo—crossing the racial boundary—was the norm in this period.
What we think is the worst was then probably the most acceptable behavior.
It happened all over the place." Does anyone have any references that Bacon
was known as "a great tale teller and exaggerator"? As to whether
interracial sex was the "norm" I guess depends on how "norm" is defined.
However, there were laws against it, so how was it "acceptable"?
>
>Richard E. Dixon
>Editor, Jefferson Notes
>Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society
>703-691-0770
>fax 703-691-0978