Mr. Berger,

I would like to say that I support a truthful exploration of the facts concerning President Jefferson and his slave, Sally Hemings. I do not have a full understanding of the DNA science involved, nor its conclusions, and freely admit so in advance. I am in this a lay person who has followed the passionate debate with interest and curiosity. I have looked at accounts on both sides of the issue, and am unpersuaded by your vehemence in the matter. Even Monticello takes a neutral stance, given the paucity of evidence in this matter.

However, I should like to state for the record that as a descendant of the Old Dominion (via Missouri), and with ancestors who fought for the preservation of slavery, IT MAKES NOT ONE WHIT OF DIFFERENCE TO ME WHETHER JEFFERSON FATHERED SLAVE CHILDREN OR NOT. Please forgive my use of capitals, but I have detected in this discussion, and for years in other discussions about the topic, a repugnance at the thought, as if it made any real difference, that Jefferson might have black descendents, and an indignation at those who would advance the theory. If I misunderstand your position, I apologize.

While it would be interesting to know whether Sally Hemings was, in fact, Jefferson's mistress, it would not take one scintilla of greatness away from him, nor would it reduce in any way his standing as one of our greatest presidents. Those who decry the hypocrisy of the author of the Declaration of Independence having carnal relations with his "property" fail to note the deeper hypocrisy the Founding Fathers perpetrated on this country, when they announced the birth of their new nation by stating that "all men are created equal," then left the institution of slavery intact and for another generation to tackle. Divisions over slavery undermined the health of the new country almost from the start, and led inexorably to the Civil War. While there are those who today try to minimize that importance of slavery as the cause of that conflagration, any open-minded person who reads widely in the literature of the period will see that nothing else so consumed men and women on both sides. But I digress.

Bill Cross

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