(Again I've changed the subject line, since "New Presidential Descendant
Claimant" is irrelevant to the posting that I'm answering. I've
deliberately retained that posting at the bottom.)
Thanks, Richard Dixon, for your crisp distillation of the case for
paternity disbelief. It reminds me why I'm a paternity agnostic despite
having leaned toward paternity belief a decade ago.
It seems to me, by the way, that paternity disbelievers will likely be
bundled together for renewal of attacks against them, thanks to a
race-focused attack by ardent disbelievers Rebecca L. McMurry and James
F. McMurry, Jr., against paternity believer Annette Gordon-Reed. The
McMurrys' attack appears in the book review "Paranormal Reports from
Monticello" in the ardently right-wing http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/
. As you might expect, the review accuses Gordon-Reed of bad scholarship
involving "garbled facts and half-truths." As I wouldn't have expected,
and as I hope is not true, the McMurrys also accuse Gordon-Reed of
"[b]orrowing heavily as she followed" the McMurrys' own 2002 book "while
failing to acknowledge" the McMurrys "as her mystery opponents." But as
surely almost no one would have expected, new rounds of nastiness in the
Hemings-TJ controversy could now start thanks to lines from the review
like this one: "To best understand Gordon-Reed, one should read David
Horowitz’s 2000 book Hating Whitey."
Sheesh. I haven't yet read the new Gordon-Reed book. But even as a
paternity agnostic, I've been called a racist -- and other names -- in
public. I'm not looking forward to what might now be coming for serious,
civil, constructive Hemings-TJ discussion participants on all sides.
Nevertheless I'm still interested in civil, constructive discussion,
particularly insofar as science evidence is involved. So I'd like to
engage your assertion that "it was the Monticello Report ... which
firmly convinced the academic community that the [paternity] issue was
finally settled." I wouldn't dispute that, but I do want to note two
things that I believe are important:
* Gordon-Reed's colleague R. B. Bernstein, who like her is both a law
professor and an accomplished scholar of history, wrote a short TJ
biography that Gordon S. Wood, writing in the New York Times, called the
best such biography ever. Bernstein echoed other scholars’ belief that
solid proof of Hemings-Jefferson parenthood now exists, resting on one
nonscientific and two scientific evidentiary “pillars”: historical, DNA,
and statistical. The other scholars being echoed include the Monticello
Report's authors and Jan Lewis, who wrote the introduction to that
William and Mary Quarterly post-DNA essay collection in which appeared
the statistical study of the apparent conceptions coincidences. Lewis
called that study an “ingenious statistical evaluation” that “should
quiet those who have resisted accepting Jefferson’s paternity.” In my
view, though, that study actually contributes nothing at all to the
Hemings-TJ discussion. My point: for all that the Monticello Report may
be crucial in whatever it is that academe actually thinks, what academe
actually thinks has been informed in some measure by science --
including junk science. (I'm not, by the way, saying that you dispute this.)
* It also seems worth proposing that we don't actually know what academe
or "most historians," to use the standard media phrase, actually think
about Hemings-TJ. No one, to my knowledge, has ever actually researched
that. My own sense is that the answers, if attainable at all, would be
complicated.
Thanks.
Steve Corneliussen
Richard E. Dixon wrote:
>Steve
>While journalists have certainly perpetuated mistaken conclusions from the
>DNA tests, ("the Carrs were cleared," "Thomas Jefferson fathered Hemings'
>children"), the failure in putting the DNA results in context with the
>known historical facts lies with the academic community. Journalists write
>stories, not history, and if they make a mistake, they move on, and we are
>left with the uncertain remedy of a letter to the editor. Much has been
>made of the Nature headline that trumpeted Thomas Jefferson as the father
>of a slave child. That certainly created an exciting story line and the
>journalists jumped on it. But it was the Monticello Report, about 14 months
>later, touted as a "the most extensive compilation ever of what is known
>and not known" about the paternity story, which firmly convinced the
>academic community that the issue was finally settled. This Report was
>compiled by the staff at Monticello and it concluded that Jefferson "was
>most likely the father of all six of Sally Heming's children." Other than
>the DNA tests, the Report presented no new evidence, and relied on the
>"birth pattern," the Madison Hemings "Memoirs," the "resemblance" claim,
>the "proximity "argument, and the "oral history" of the Hemings and Woodson
>families. The most astounding claim by the Monticello report was the
>"single father" postulate. The report observed that the Hemings siblings
>had a "closeness" that could only come from a single father. Since the
>report concluded that Jefferson must be Eston's father, and since they all
>had the same father, Jefferson must be the father of them all. This
>"closeness" is supposedly demonstrated by siblings naming their children
>after each other. I doubt many on this list have actually read the
>Monticello report, but because of Monticello's prestige and influence, it
>is reason enough for most to accept the conclusions without dissent or
>further study. Later, when the Scholars Commission report was released,
>composed of independent historians, which studied the matter for over a
>year,concluded that it was "unlikely" that Jefferson fathered any of the
>Hemings children, many academics had become paternity believers.
>
>Richard E. Dixon
>Editor, Jefferson Notes
>Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society
>4122 Leonard Drive
>Fairfax, Va 22030
>703-691-0770 fax 703-691-0978
>
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