Thanks, Mr. Wiencek. This afternoon I'm reminded that among some or maybe
even many in this forum, patience expires for this general topic, no doubt
for some good reasons. I hope, though, that I may nevertheless respond
briefly to two more things (the first of which might also bear on some of
what Jurretta Heckscher wrote):
First, as far as I know -- and maybe someone can enlighten me, though I've
been asking around for a long time -- no one has ever vetted that
Monticello-approved paternity-candidate headcount of 25, despite what Gary
Davis suggested in his 7 January 1999 letter in Nature. Davis wrote that
"any male ancestor in Thomas Jefferson's line, white or black, could have
fathered Eston Hemings. Plantations were inbred communities, and the mixing
of racial types was probably common. As slave families were passed as
property to the owner's offspring along with land and other property, it is
possible that Thomas Jefferson's father, grandfather or paternal uncles
fathered a male slave whose line later impregnated another slave, in this
case Sally Hemings. Sally herself was a light mulatto, known even at that
time to be Thomas Jefferson's wife's half sister." Davis cited Fawn Brodie
and W. S. Randall. I don't know what he considers proof of the
half-sisterhood.
It's sometimes said that everything that can be debated about Hemings-TJ has
been debated, but I'd still like to hear expert historical opinion about
Davis's conjecture. Again, maybe that already exists and I've just missed
it. But until someone shows that Davis's conjecture lacks merit, it seems to
me that we do not -- and will not ever -- know the headcount.
Second, yes, my terms _pro-_ and _anti-paternityist_ are mega-clunky, as I
said before. I don't offer them as suggestions, certainly not to a wordsmith
who takes your kind of care with his craft. But I do continue to believe
that _Jefferson defender_ and _Hemings partisan_ carry connotative freight
that supplies, and resupplies, a verbal battle that ought to be just a
discussion.
Thanks very much.
Steven T. Corneliussen
Poquoson, Virginia
(and Jefferson Lab, Newport News)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Henry Wiencek" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2008 1:06 PM
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Jefferson on BookTV
My thanks to Mr. Corneliussen for his thoughtful comments. I don't think
I'll be adopting his nomenclature of "pro-paternityist" and
"anti-paternityist"; but I'm grateful for the suggestion. As for the
Man-in-the-Moon jibe, I didn't know that Halliday had also used it; I guess
great minds think alike. Coulter did use the number 25, which she got
directly from the official Monticello report. My basic point is that
commentators such as Coulter, who don't know anything about the subject,
have foghorned their opinions about it anyway.
Much of the literature on the Hemings issue, though not all, consists of
experts attacking the work of other experts. I'm avoiding that as much as
possible. I try to approach this "de novo" and I try to lay out the germane
information as clearly as possible.
Henry Wiencek
Charlottesville
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