Herbert,

When one newspaper gets a "scoop" in a small city or town, the opposition 
paper is sure to declaim it. It is the ways newspapers go. I remember it 
that way from my childhood in a small city in PA, where the afternoon and 
the morning papers competed, as did the Times and the Dispatch in Richmond 
when I first got here. There is still the same old warfare between the Post 
and the Times in NY. I'm not sure that there are any other cities that still 
support two newspapers that compete.

Your scenario of Dolley hearing YEARS before of the possible birth of a 
(disdain heard) male slave child.... is just plain silly and shows how 
little respect you have for the other people in this story other than your 
great, saintly hero.

Maybe you can cite the Jan 19th even that Dolley was definitely hostessing 
in Washington on that date. Otherwise, I'm inclined to believe there is 
story here, and you/we are not yet tuned in to it. Go with the presumption 
that there was some exchange between Sally and Dolley over the naming of the 
forthcoming baby, and let your imagination fill in the details. If Dolley 
made the promise several months before the birth, it would likely confirm 
the fact that she forgot about promising a gift. That is consistent with the 
history of how white people did treat those "inhuman" slaves that they did 
not realize were the bedmates of their host!

Knowing that his "urges" led him down the dark path he had declared in his 
principles that one should not go, it is not surprising that Jefferson swept 
as much proof as he could under the rug. That the minimal proof exists is 
that much more informative considering the dark privacy Jefferson wrapped 
around his "personal affairs". In today's world a person who hid their 
personal affairs so carefully from the public would never make it to the 
highest office in the country. He'd be consigned perhaps to be a 
dog-catcher...

Anne

Anne Pemberton
[log in to unmask]
http://www.erols.com/apembert
http://www.educationalsynthesis.org 

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