To: S. Corneliussen
If you are being soo truthful, why do you ignore so much valid information
presented in THE JEFFERSON HEMINGS MYTH and JEFFERSON VINDICATED? I don't
buy your argument. Nevertheless, I think a study of slave abuse is valuable.
Even as a lesson to prevent people at present that are being horribly
abused, from being so horribly abused. The worst abuse I can think of at
this time is in Africa. I think ignoring pertinent exculpatory information
about one of the most influential people who would have stated how horrible
slavery was in the Declaration of Independence but was not allowed to leave
it in his draft, etc. on and on, is most incorrectly barking up the wrong
tree. And I'm tired of "prominent, expert historians'" deliberate and sloppy
ignoring exculpatory informaiton, amounting to lies, when they claim with
certaintly that TJ is the father of one or more of SH's children. You just
keep dishing it out, and you deserve to get it thrown back at you....
Evenso, again, study of slave abuse is a valuable pursuit. So keep on with
it; but again, I think it's adding abuse to injury to rape the man Thomas
Jefferson's heritage.
Adrian Zolkover
----- Original Message -----
From: "S. Corneliussen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2008 6:22 PM
Subject: [VA-HIST] Why Hemings-TJ matters
> (I changed the subject line -- and I join many other forum members in
> asking, pleading, that lobbers of the same old Hemings-TJ bombs lob not.)
>
> History professor Kevin Hardwick, after noting that he had shifted from
> Hemings-TJ paternity belief to paternity agnosticism -- an interesting
> datum for those who persist in asserting, without benefit of any actual
> survey, that "most historians" believe the paternity thesis -- wrote
> concerning the paternity question:
>
>> But suppose we did know. What difference
>> would it make for the way we commemorate
>> [TJ] in our public history? ... And if in fact it
>> does not make any difference, why are we
>> spending so much time talking about this?
>
> (Please forgive my ruthless excerpting.)
>
> The Hemings-TJ question matters because the truth matters.
>
> It also matters because people across the country and around the world
> judge that it matters. It comes up from time to time in Nature, the most
> important forum for the international science enterprise. I remember
> learning in 2002 of a heated commentary about the question in the South
> China Morning Post. A few days ago, a BBC report featured the question and
> confidently misreported that "DNA evidence establishes beyond doubt that
> Jefferson fathered Sally's children." ("Jefferson's hidden slave legacy,"
> Allan Little, BBC News, apparently reporting from Monticello:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/americas/us_elections_2008/7689734.stm )
>
> The Hemings-TJ question matters because people incorporate it in various
> ways into their thinking. It matters because people are engaged with, and
> are nowhere near through with, a centuries-long, continually evolving
> assessment of the slave era in light of the principles Jefferson led in
> articulating -- and because people intend to compare what Jefferson
> articulated with what Jefferson actually did.
>
> It matters because one of those ways involves the admirable impulse --
> maybe only a beau geste -- retrospectively to confer a bit of dignity, if
> possible, on those from whom the grotesque, perverted system of slavery
> stole dignity and much else.
>
> It matters because that admirable impulse appears also in discussions like
> the one in this forum about the nature of the society that evolved from
> Jamestown, and like the one about the degree of personal agency in the
> actions of the Fort Monroe Contrabands.
>
> It matters because liberty and dignity and race and women's rights and
> human rights all matter.
>
> It matters because personal honor matters, which means it matters whether
> TJ was something equivalent to, or even remotely akin to, a statutory
> rapist or a rapist outright, and whether he lied about it.
>
> And it matters because love matters, which means it matters whether Sally
> Hemings and TJ had some measure of hidden happiness heretofore mostly
> unimagined.
>
> I'll bet there's a lot more, but I'll just add this: it matters, and is
> going to continue to matter, even if members of this forum are
> understandably tired of the bomb-lobbing.
>
> And this, which may sound partisan, and may sound political, but is
> absolutely not, though it's most definitely corny: it's likely going to
> matter even more starting next Wednesday, when Americans are likely going
> to wake up into a changed American context, and are going to begin
> constructively revisiting -- and constructively revising -- understanding
> of American history, and indeed history itself, in ways that we haven't
> even started to think about.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Steve Corneliussen
> Poquoson, Virginia
>
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