Paul,

I'm not sure John Adams was that prudish; at one point he recorded a quite ribald story involving a lusty gentleman, a country girl, and her horse.  But I agree that we really need to be very careful about applying a later cultural norm to an earlier era.  That does not necesssitate accepting as truth every allegation of infidelity or hanky-panky or whatever.  People were what they were.  And no doubt most were moral and upright, certainly within the cultural bounds of their time.



 But it seems just as wrongheaded to insist that Jefferson never could have been unfaithful to his wife (John Walker reported that Jefferson's advances on Betsey Walker lasted long after his marriage) or that it is impossible for him to have had sex with Sally Hemings long after his wife's death.  I'm no lawyer so I have only a layman's understanding of hearsay and circumstantial evidence and even the notion of proof "beyond a shadow of a doubt,"  but there does seem to be enough aambiguity in it all for us to step back and consider just what questions we're trying to answer, and what are the appropriate categories we should be using.

David Kiracofe

________________________________________
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Finkelman, Paul <[log in to unmask]> [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 1:27 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Jefferson and sexuality

We should remember that the Founders were not a generation of up-tight Victorians (except for maybe John Adams perhaps, who would have been a proto-Victorian).  Franklin had an out of wed lock child and wrote some pretty racy things; Jefferson had children with Sally; Hamilton probably had an affair with his sister-in-law;  numerous lesser southern founders (than Jefferson) had sex and children with their slaves; some scholars have suggested that the signs all over New England that "Washington slept here may have a double meaning; pornography was not unknown; this was the  age of Tom Jones and Fanny Hill after all.  English gentlemen notoriously had mistresses (there is a wonderful half-nude of one in Yale museum of British art).  So, why should we be shocked by Jefferson's poetry or his relationships to women?

________________________________
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information or otherwise be protected by law. Any access, use, disclosure or distribution of this email message by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is unauthorized and prohibited. If you are not an intended recipient (or an agent acting on an intended recipient's behalf), please contact the sender by reply email and immediately destroy all copies of the original message. Virus scanning is recommended on all email attachments.

______________________________________
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html