It seems to me that you have a Jeffersonian faith not only in the
inevitability of future science, but in the inevitability of its wise
application. Maybe you're right.
Meanwhile, in schools and in the media, people are regularly assured that
historians now know for certain that Sally Hemings and TJ were parents
together. And maybe they were. (Certainly, as Prof. Finkelman and others
emphasize, there's a notable consanguinity of some sort here in any case.)
But I'd find less reason for pause in certain historians' confident
certitude if I had more faith in the handling of the science that's been
invoked already.
True, the misreporting of valid DNA evidence and the outright misuse of
statistical science originated among people representing science, not the
history profession, though credulous historians unskeptically accepted the
statistical stuff.
It all makes me wonder whether things would improve if there's a next time
for science in this discussion.
Steven T. Corneliussen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephan A. Schwartz" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, May 04, 2008 11:47 AM
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Jefferson's Overseer
Historical data, absent the discovery of some as yet unknown but
definitive documentation, will not get us to an answer. On that we
should, surely, all agree at this point. Only science will settle
this and, based on my reading of that literature, I believe it will,
within the next 10-15 years. Personally, I think it is a question we
should put aside until some new factor is introduced into the equation.
-- Stephan
On 4 May 2008, at 09:03, DFM wrote:
> In a little book called Jefferson at Monticello. The private life of
> Thomas Jefferson, the author addresses the question of TJ and a
> slave-girl lover and he says that he often saw someone else, never
> Jefferson, leaving that slave's abode in the early morning.
> The author of this little book was Jefferson's overseer for many years
> and he saw a lot of what went on around the place. He does not say
> precisely who it was that he saw darting out of her room but he says that
> it was not Thomas Jefferson.
> It seems to me that just like there are those who refuse to believe that
> TJ fooled around with the slaves, there are those who refuse to consider
> that he did not.
> Deane Mills
> Yorktown, VA
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Wilson" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Sunday, May 04, 2008 1:37 AM
> Subject: Re: DNA In Jefferson-Hemings controversy
>
>
> Is it not possible that TJ had a secret sexual relationship with another
> (or
> others over the years?) rather than with apparently the relatively
> convenient SH?
>
> On the other hand, TJ was already among an extremely small percentage of
> humanity at one end of the Bell curve in certain human characteristics.
> He
> was not your run-of-the-mill ordinary guy. Could he not have also have
> been
> among those fewer numbers of men tending to be mostly sexually inactive
> in
> later life - whether for medical or other reasons? For example, although
> "people will be people" most Popes, especially recent ones, appear to
> have
> been people who were celibate - even though over the centuries not all
> have
> been found to be so - and even though maybe more than we know were not
> so.
>
> We may project certain characteristics upon the masses of humanity with
> some
> degree of accuracy, but when trying to say the same things about one man
> or
> one woman we run a much greater risk of inaccuracy. Some are willing to
> make such leaps - other are not. I believe the wiser choice is to not
> make
> such leaps.
>
> Of course some folks die before the answers ("truths") are known. Some
> of
> us may go that route before any new DNA methods or evidence "proves"
> which
> beliefs about TJ were correct. (I hate it when humans pass from the
> scene
> before knowing the answer "for sure" because it means that I may
> eventually
> be among them in things I'd really like to know - but "C'est la vie,"
> eh?)
>
> Mark
>
> On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 7:49 PM, Stephan A. Schwartz <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Herbert --
>>
>> Thank you for this lengthy exegesis on this subject. Much of it I knew,
>> but some I did not. Let me reduce my thinking to a parsimonious essence.
>> The
>> present day DNA data is highly suggestive but not despositive. However,
>> the
>> science of genetics is advancing now with a speed that is reminiscent of
>> laser development — in the 1960s and 70s — when they had to publish the
>> time
>> and date the paper was submitted because there was a chance it had been
>> super-ceded by the time it was through the peer-review and publication
>> cycle. There is much more we are going to learn from DNA inquiry. Of
>> that, I
>> think, we can be sure. There will be new and better tests yielding
>> clearer,
>> deeper insights. Who did what in the beginning of this approach, a
>> decade
>> from now will become a not terribly important part of the narrative,
>> except
>> as it reveals various prejudices of the day. We must be patient until
>> new
>> data emerges. This is like discussing a baseball game in the seventh
>> inning.
>>
>> One thing I do know. People do not live in a Tolstoian village like
>> Monticello without all of the people in the household having a
>> relationship,
>> and Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson had to have had one. Her status
>> as
>> his chambermaid assured that.
>>
>> So I guess it gets down to whether you think he would be capable of such
>> a
>> relationship? People today have sexual relationships all the time with
>> individuals with whom they are far less involved than Jefferson was with
>> Sally. And the same was true in the Elizabethan Age. Between 1558 and
>> 1603,
>> in the Country of Essex, which had approximately 40,000 adults, almost
>> 38
>> per cent — 15,000 — were cited for sexual misbehavior. And it will be
>> true
>> 50 years from now. People are people, and I think Jefferson no
>> different. Do
>> you think he was a celibate? Was it coercive? By definition. But while I
>> can
>> see Jefferson as a man with secret sexual relationship, I cannot see him
>> as
>> a serial rapist, so some accommodation was reached.
>>
>> Does this make him evil. I don't think so. Thomas Jefferson, no less
>> that
>> the other Founders, with the exception of Franklin, was a man of his
>> time,
>> status, and culture. What has always amazed me about these individuals,
>> is
>> that they risked everything and, in the end, rose above who they were to
>> craft what they bequeathed us. Their modernity and relevance, lies in
>> the
>> question they eternally pose: Would I, could I, do the same?
>>
>> -- Stephan
>
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