For some reason, Herb Barger has brought up the subject of Sally Hemings and
TJ's wife, Martha Jefferson, being half-sisters, the daughters of John
Wayles--which Barger disputes.  He calls this a "fable" for which there is
"NO proof."  It is not a fable and there is a lot of evidence.  Mainstream
academic historians--including historians sympathetic to Jefferson--have
long accepted this story as being true.  Even Virginius Dabney, one of TJ's
stoutest defenders in the Hemings wars, wrote in "The Jefferson Scandals: A
Rebuttal" that Hemings children were "apparently" the offspring of John
Wayles and that "this would seem to explain why the Hemingses were given
preferred positions at Monticello."  If this story were at all vulnerable,
Dabney would have taken the opportunity to demolish it then and there. From
the tone of that section, Dabney clearly disliked this fact, hedged it up
with "reputed" and "supposedly," but could not avoid accepting it as fact,
however distasteful.  There are no fewer than THREE sources for this
information--an 1805 letter from Thomas Turner to a Boston newspaper, the
memoir of TJ's former slave Isaac Jefferson (taken down in 1847), and the
1873 statement of Madison Hemings.  The new generation of anti-Hemings
partisans is seeking to discredit this story merely on their own say-so.
 There are many things wrong with Madison Hemings's statement but this is
not one of them.  I have not seen any evidence that calls this story into
question, and I would be more than happy to examine any such evidence for my
book-in-progress on Jefferson and his slaves.

Henry Wiencek
Charlottesville

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