Yes, it is true that Mr. Barger is protecting Mr. Jefferson's reputation as
Kevin Hardwick asserts. Since I found Monticello was twisting the facts of
the study, which I participated in with Dr Foster, it was time to form an
opposition research organization, The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society
(www.tjheritage.org). They sued us, and won in court for our original name,
Thomas Jefferson Foundation. But they needed to DROP the word, "Memorial"
from their title and thus their emphasis is on slavery issues, at the
expense of Mr Jefferson. 

Dr Foster's DNA Study, which Monticello gladly accepted, was manipulated by
Dr Foster and Nature for a false and misleading headline. He was testing a
descendant of Eston Hemings whose family claimed descent from "a Jefferson
uncle or nephew." I requested Dr Foster to notify Nature about Randolph
Jefferson and sons, Thomas Jefferson's much younger brother, Randolph
Jefferson and his sons. Dr Foster DID not tell of my input to Nature of this
and worked with them to perfect a false headline. Sure there would be a
match, and there was, but DNA could not prove that it was Thomas Jefferson.

Monticello President, Dr Daniel Jordan, assigned an oral history specialist,
Dianne Swann-Wright, to chair their study. This false headline fit in just
well with the Jefferson Legacies, edited by Monticello sponsored UVA history
Professor Peter Onuf. I think we can gather the project's mission (in place
annually) from one of the professors, Prof. Richard Rorty (pg 280) who wrote
"setting aside questions of historical accuracy and philosophical
justification in order to sustain the present-day cause of international
human rights."

Yes, Mr. Barger and possibly readers of the VA-HIST may read this to mean
these authors do NOT have a right to CHANGE our valuable history to fit
their agendas to be politically correct. Our students are receiving this
false information now in biased textbooks. Professor Paul Finkelman,
recently reporting comments on these pages is one of those authors along
with Cinder Stanton.    

Herb Barger
Founder, Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society
Asst. to Dr Foster      

-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Hardwick, Kevin - hardwikr
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2012 3:02 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] (VA-HIST] "The Monster of Monticello"

If what Mr. Barger says is true--if the letter was composed by a third
party, with his own agenda, would not that make this source similar to
documents like Nat Turner's recollections or Mary Rowlandson's captivity
narrative?  Turner's "Confession" was narrated to a white lawyer, Thomas
Gray--and it is notoriously difficult to separate what is Gray's
interpretation from what is authentically Turner's.  Likewise, Rowlandson's
narrative was mediated by Increase Mather, who collected and edited it, and
who arranged for its publication.  Both Gray and Mather had their own
motivations, which must be accounted for in any careful reading of the
documents they helped produce.  While it is tempting to read both documents
as straightforward and transparent, scholars have demonstrated pretty
powerfully that we have to treat both documents with care.  (For a similar
argument about readings documents with careful attention to the contexts in
which they are written, see Peter Hoffer's superb essay on the sources, at
the conclusion of his recent account of the Stono Rebellion.)   In the cases
both of Gray and Mather, however, the events described in the documents they
helped produce were of relatively recent origin, whereas in the case of
Heming's account, the events happened many decades earlier. 

An oral history taken down many decades after the events it purports to
describe, and mediated through the mind and values of a third party, strikes
me as much less useful than the kinds of documents that Lucia Stanton has
used so powerfully in her terrific accounts of slavery at Monticello.  To my
eye, our conversation would be more fruitful if we focused on those kinds of
sources, and not on something as methodologically tenuous as the Madison
Hemings narrative.  It seems to me that we use documents like Hemings' only
in the absence of less methodologically problematic sources.  Since we have
such sources readily at hand, and can use them profitably to construct a
pretty damning account of slavery at Monticello--one that fully implicates
Jefferson in the evils of slavery--discussion of the pros and cons of using
Heming's narrative strikes me as something of a distraction.

Mr. Barger seems most concerned to protect Mr. Jefferson's reputation.  But
if that is the case, the question of whether or not Jefferson had sex with,
and children by, Sally Hemings is largely irrelevant.  Jefferson's treatment
of the slaves on his plantation was thuggish--he was and is thoroughly
implicated in, and complicit in, the evils of slavery.  I am agnostic on the
Hemings question.  Unlike Professor Finkelman, and many others, I am not
persuaded that the evidence for that relationship is conclusive; I find it
easy enough to imagine alternative plausible explanations, although I do
think that Jefferson's paternity is the most likely.  "Most likely," of
course, is not the same thing as "conclusively proven."  But so what?  If
our concern is the culpability of Jefferson, I don't need the Hemings
evidence in order to make the argument.  Jefferson indicts himself with his
own words, as Professor Finkelman and many others have amply demonstrated.

___________________________
Kevin R. Hardwick
Associate Professor
Department of History, MSC 8001
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807
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