Henry
I was surprised you took a gratuitous swipe at the Scholars Commission (“so-called”?). Are not the “slave studies” academics you would have added to the Commission still supporters of the Woodson family myth? There seems to be a definite nostalgia for it on the Monticello webpage. And are they not the same group that rely on the testimony of Madison Hemings? Now that they know there was no “Tom Woodson,” do they now support the Madison Hemings tale of the “baby who died.”? Or was that one of his “errors.”? Without a “Tom,” without a Paris child and without any sources for the Callender articles, there is only the slim connection of the Jefferson DNA. That doesn't sound like the stuff of “lofty theorizing,” but just the willingness to try and  connect the factual dots. 


Richard E. Dixon
Editor, Jefferson Notes 
Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society
703-691-0770
fax 703-691-0978



> [Original Message]
> From: Henry Wiencek <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 8/28/2007 7:41:46 PM
> Subject: [VA-HIST] Hemings/Jefferson debate
>
> I don't want to re-open the whole Hemings question here. For my book on
> Jefferson I have gone over the documents inch by inch and I'm going to
> re-argue the whole case. It is extremely murky, and I won't give away the
> surprise ending. 
>
> From the day James Callender published his first article alleging the
> Hemings / Jefferson relationship, this issue has been political and it
> remains so today. Merrill Peterson's research shows how British commentators
> in the 19th century tried to use the Hemings story to discredit not just
> Thomas Jefferson but American democracy. Thus, for some 200 years it has
> been "unpatriotic" to accept the Hemings story as fact. If you believe it,
> you must be one of those people who hate America. Indeed, the UVA Magazine
> article runs a quote from someone saying that defending Thomas Jefferson,
> "has come to mean defending what America means, and we feel compelled to
> rise to that defense." Recently a new element has been injected into the
> equation: if you don't believe the Hemings story, you must be a racist. It
> is very difficult for a historian to navigate these waters while dodging
> shells from two sides. 
>
> I think that Jefferson's defenders have done some excellent research (hats
> off to C. Burton and the McMurrys) and have made some strong arguments but a
> number of bad ones. Peterson and Dumas Malone set a very unfortunate tone by
> attempting to discredit Madison Hemings and his editor, SF Wetmore, as
> biased without actually reading Hemings's statement very carefully. Malone's
> assertion that Hemings's statement in Wetmore's newspaper was abolitionist
> propaganda is absurd and it gave me a headache to see it trotted out yet
> again in the UVA Magazine piece. Peterson is a superlative scholar but the
> Hemings story drove him crazy and I think he lost his objectivity in those
> pages. The article quotes the so-called "Scholars Commission"; well, I wish
> the "Scholars" had recruited a few members who actually know something about
> slavery, plantations, plantation families, and the daily life at Monticello.
> They are professors of history, government, law, and economics, used to
> operating at lofty levels of theorizing. None of them is an expert on
> Monticello or Jefferson's family. On the other hand, the Hemings partisans
> have overlooked the many errors in Madison Hemings's statement and the
> outrageous fabrications in Callender's articles. One of the core assertions
> in Fawn Brodie's book--that Jefferson was the father of "President Tom"
> Woodson--has been blasted by DNA, and as far as I know no one has come to
> terms with that. 
>
> The bickering and name-calling over the Hemings question actually serves a
> useful purpose--it re-creates the vicious partisan atmosphere of Jefferson's
> own time and has helped me get a sense of the waters Jefferson was navigating.  
>
> Henry Wiencek