Anyone who reads Robert Turner's op-ed and his subsequent comments in
the Charlottesville Daily Progress should do so with caution as they
contain a number of errors. It is disheartening to see inaccuracies
get onto the internet. I posted a brief correction of one rather
important factual error and Turner's response was, essentially, it
doesn't matter. On the Hemings-Jefferson question, Turner's mind is
made up and there is no point in arguing, but I will try to correct
some basic errors.

Turner: "throughout much of [Jefferson's] life it was unlawful to free
slaves without permission from the Governor and his council." Turner
is just correct enough to create the impression that Virginia law
prevented Jefferson from freeing slaves when it did not. Jefferson
actually did not want to free his slaves. The last time Jefferson
wrote about freeing a significant number of his slaves was in 1788 and
he rather quickly abandoned the idea. After 1788 he never expressed an
intention to free his slaves. On Turner's point: In 1782 the Virginia
legislature passed a liberalized manumission law allowing slave owners
to manumit slaves at will without the government approval that had
been required previously. Thus, for most of his five and a half
decades as a slave holder, Jefferson could have freed slaves if he
wished. (Absurdly, Turner includes Jefferson's childhood years in his
calculation.) In 1806 the General Assembly passed the odious exile
law, requiring freed African-Americans to leave their home state
within a year unless an exemption was granted, but at-will manumission
remained on the books. At his death Jefferson freed five men and
requested exemptions for them.

Quoting a Jefferson letter from 1790, Turner writes: "This was nearly
a dozen years before the Callender allegation was first published, and
one might have thought that had Sally been Jefferson's "lover" she
would have been among the dozen slaves he regularly took to
Washington."  In the 1790s the capital of the United States was first
in New York, then in Philadelphia, never in Washington (not until
1800). Turner implies that Jefferson had a large staff of Monticello
slaves with him but Jefferson did not take a dozen slaves to
"regularly" reside in any of these places.

Regarding the manumission of James Hemings, Turner writes: "James (a
French-trained chef) quickly became an alcoholic and committed suicide
-- reinforcing Jefferson's often expressed fear that freeing slaves
who had not been raised to care for themselves in a very hostile
Virginia would do them no favor." Turner omits to mention that
Jefferson tried to hire Hemings to be the White House chef--obvious
evidence of Jefferson's great respect for Hemings's talent and
professionalism. James Hemings died in Baltimore, not in Virginia, so
he did not end his life because of his inability to cope with
hostility in Virginia. No evidence exists to show that Jefferson drew
any conclusion about African-American incompetence from James
Hemings's suicide. James Callender, heavily intoxicated, drowned in
Richmond. No one has suggested that Scottish journalists didn't belong
in Virginia as free men. Jefferson's White House maitre d' committed
suicide. No one has suggested that French household servants couldn't
function in America. Turner's baseless supposition about Jefferson's
nonexistent conclusion about African-American men in Virginia is, in
any case, easily refuted by the experience of James's brother: Robert
Hemings prospered as a free man in Richmond. He married, owned land,
and ran a successful business.

It is not correct, as Turner claims, that Jefferson "introduced
legislation to limit and end [slavery] time and again." Jefferson
ceased his political fight against slavery in the 1780s. Nearly all of
his later, oft-quoted anti-slavery statements (from the 1780s to his
death) were in private letters deflecting the pleas of abolitionists
who begged him to lead the emancipation cause. Jefferson called his
replies "soft answers," calculated to maintain his image as a
progressive while he did nothing. As president he signed the enabling
legislation that ended the international slave trade, but he had
little choice--the Constitution required the international trade to
end during his term. President Jefferson's most significant act
regarding slavery was to insert slavery into the Louisiana Territory,
vastly expanding slavery's reach and longevity.

Turner: "The most objective eyewitness observer on [the Hemings] issue
may be overseer Edmund Bacon." It is absurd to call Bacon an
"objective" witness. Anyone who reads Edmund Bacon's recollections,
and James Bear's commentary, will see that the Monticello overseer
adored his boss, greatly exaggerated his closeness to Jefferson, had a
bad memory or a very malleable one, and would be perfectly willing to
bend the truth on Jefferson's behalf.

Turner: "Madison waited nearly 50 years after Jefferson's death before
reportedly claiming to be Thomas Jefferson's son." The date of Madison
Hemings's claim is irrelevant. He may well have said or written the
same thing much earlier, but we just don't have any clear record of
it--Ohio newspapers did report the presence of a mixed-race son of
Thomas Jefferson but did not give a name. It could have been Madison
Hemings.

Turner: "There is no evidence that Sally or her children received
'extraordinary privileges'." Madison Hemings said that his mother was
only required to do light housework and was allowed to keep her
children with her. After two decades as Jefferson's slave, he regarded
these paltry (in our view) privileges as "extraordinary," which tells
us a lot about the harshness of life for Monticello's other enslaved
women.

Henry Wiencek

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