Mr Barger,

IMO your arguments are powerful.

The unwillingness of some to pursue simple, painless DNA tests which would
shed light on TJ-Sally Hemings lineage claims is quite understandable --
they would risk the loss of much.  However, the unwillingness of those who
claim to revere historical relevance and accuracy yet fail to concentrate
the attention of others on the arguments and solutions you raise is not
understandable.  IMO the latter owe you at minimum a detailed explanation of
their unwillingness.

Regards,
Mark
(with maternal roots in Virginia)
PS - Also believe that Nancy ("Sunshine 49") has suggested one reasonable
explanation - human fear about their own fate - as to why some wealthy slave
owners might not have been willing to free their slaves.  Of course another
reason (or rationale?) might have been fear that their slaves would suffer
even more if they had their "freedom" -- and a lack of their former paternal
oversight, care and discipline.

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 8:57 PM, Herbert Barger <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dr. Hardwick,
>
> It is true that I gave Dr. Foster the names of Jefferson males who
> descended from Thomas Jefferson's grandfather, Thomas Jefferson II, thus
> they all shared the same Jefferson DNA as did TJ's brother, Randolph,
> who I believe to be the father of Eston Hemings. It was a descendant of
> Eston, John Weeks Jefferson whose DNA matched the blood of the 5
> Jeffersons tested. But naturally it would match...the Eston family had
> ALWAYS claimed descent from "a Jefferson", meaning Randolph. That was to
> be expected BUT Dr. Foster did not tell Nature Journal, Monticello, the
> media and our citizens SO it was a BIG media event and one that did
> great damage to Mr. Jefferson. Dan Jordan at Monticello continues to
> cling to the old biased original test Chaired by an oral history
> specialist.
>
> NO, the Jefferson men descended from Thomas Jefferson II are white and
> recorded Jefferson lineage. In an earlier post I alluded to a slave,
> Sandy, that TJ inherited.
>
> As a Jefferson Family Historian, for many years (the reason that Dr.
> Foster chose me),I believe I have a pretty accurate genealogical picture
> of the Jeaffreson/Jefferson family from the West Indies. Not all
> Jeffersons are related to the Presidential Jeffersons as shown by DNA.
>
> I will leave to you historians to discuss all the slavery and other
> factors of TJ's personal life, BUT I am the authority on the
> Jefferson-DNA Study and there is nothing related to this study that I am
> not aware of. I am aware of who benefits by confusing the public and
> publishing books using old MEDIA hype for confusing the public. May I
> trust that you are NOT teaching the "TJ's guilty" theme at JMU?
>
> Herb Barger, Jefferson Family Historian
>
>
> As I understand the DNA evidence, science has confirmed that the father
> of one of Sally Heming's children was someone descended from Thomas
> Jefferson's paternal grandfather.  Obviously, that person might be
> Thomas Jefferson--but it could also be any of several other individuals
> as well.
>
> We will never know for certain, it seems to me.  For one thing, it seems
> quite possible that the group of men descended from Thomas Jefferson's
> grandfather included men who were themselves enslaved.  Given the
> prevalence of miscegenation in Virginia, how can we rule out the
> possibility that Jefferson had half-brothers or cousins who were slaves?
> It is not much of a stretch at all to imagine that Jefferson's father,
> uncles, or grandfather had children by enslaved women. As is the case
> with so many other plantation families in Virginia, our genealogies for
> the Jeffersons are partial and incomplete, precisely because sex between
> enslaved women and their owners or overseers was so common.
>
> And that, ultimately, is the point, isn't it?  White men rather
> routinely had sex with their slaves.  Even if Jefferson himself did not
> engage in sex with Hemings--a big if--he surely had to know it was
> happening.  And he did nothing about it.  Jefferson is damned either
> way. And the larger point is that this is necessarily true, because
> Jefferson was a slave owner.  Jefferson's moral plight was no different,
> really, than that of any other slave owner, for reasons that he himself
> well understood.  Slavery corrupted everyone who came into contact with
> it.  Jefferson himself knew this, and wrote eloquently about it in NOTES
> ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA.  So on this issue there is no "out" for the
> man.  Like Patrick Henry, Jefferson saw slavery for what it was, and did
> nothing, because (as Henry put it), owning slaves was "convenient."
>
> The dispute over the ancestry of Hemings' children, it seems to me,
> rather perversely distracts our attention from the deep hypocrisy at
> Monticello.  Monticello was built on a lie.  As much as Jefferson tried
> to hide slavery from view, slavery permeated the very bones of the
> house, as well as the life he crafted for himself there.  If slavery
> contradicted the high ideals that Jefferson, at his best, so elegantly
> articulated, we should not forget that it was Jefferson who laid the
> foundation for the pro-slavery argument of the 1820s and 1830s.
> Jefferson pointed the way, in his discussion of the laws of Virginia, to
> reconcile slavery and Lockean liberalism.
>
> More charitably, Jefferson illuminates the condition of slaveowners--and
> by extension all of us--who lived enmeshed in social institutions that
> enveloped their lives in ways they could not fully grasp.  For all the
> subtlety and clarity of his thinking, Jefferson never seemed able to
> internalize his understanding in ways that informed his actual day to
> day behaviour.  Like almost all of his peers, Jefferson never managed to
> come to grips with the day to day evil in which he participated.  If the
> very best men and women that 18th century Virginia produced could not
> pull off this feat, then perhaps we are asking too much of them?  And if
> that is true, then what does that have to say about us?  Is it not
> possible that we, too, live our lives enmeshed in social institutions,
> and reified power relations, whose evils we dimly perceive, and with
> which we grapple ineffectually?
> Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
> Department of History
> James Madison University
>
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