Count me in the camp with the impeccable and award-winning scholarship. The American historical profession has rendered its judgment, and the likeliest scenario is that TJ is the father of all of Sally Hemings’ children. There is no other reasonable conclution for those of us who know more than a little about the social and cultural (and family) history of 18th and 19th C colonial American and U.S. Southern plantation communities. Please acquaint yourself with the feminist and African American scholarship on this. You just might learn something.

I truly don’t understand what’s in it for you or anyone living today to “defend” Jefferson against what you see as spurious “accusations.” He may have been a rapist, as were many, many (if not most) other slave masters in the Old South. He may have had an ongoing and loving relationship with an African American woman. Which is more disturbing to you? (I think he was more of a rapist than anything else, myself, but that’s neither here nor there.) But he’s long dead, and no one is putting him on trial–can’t we talk about this like adults? Why is it so hard to imagine that Jefferson was not the pillar of virtue for the ages that some 19th and 20th C historians invented, but rather a man of his place and time and a prisoner of history, like all of us? He was a wealthy slaveowner, and one of the privileges that wealthy slaveowners claimed was sexual access to enslaved women.

(And, dude–what’s with the ALL CAPS? In case you’re new to the internets, you might want to know that it’s not more persuasive to be read as screaming in people’s faces.)

Dr Walker and Prof. Gordon-Reed are doing a disservice to our nation and their students by writing definitevly that Thomas Jefferson fathered 7 of Sally Hemings children. There is ABSOLUTELY NO PROOF of this! For REAL research by a team of 13 senior scholars please read the Scholars Commission Report from the suggested web pages.

I assisted Dr. Foster with the test and there was NO PROOF of such a finding. The original Campaign Lie by James Callender in 1802 was proven just that, A LIE, by the DNA test……….NO Jefferson/Woodson match.

Dr Foster KNEW he was testing a man who descended from the Eston Hemings family and if their oral claims were true, that they descend from “a Jefferson uncle or nephew”, meaning TJ’s brother, Randolph, then there would be an automatic match……and there was. This indicates their oral beliefs were true…NOT THOMAS. Dr Foster refused to give this information to Nature as I had strongly suggested, thus HE and THETY were able to concoct a FALSE headline, “Jefferson fathers slave’s last child.”

The public is being CONNED by such irresponsible research by these members of academia and Monticello intrepetation of biased results. NOTHING proves TJ guilty as charged by these people. Mt. Holyoke removed Professor Joseph Ellis for one year for LYING to his students as exposed in the Boston Globe. It is to be noted that this SAME Professor Joe Ellis, wrote glowing words about Annette Gordon-Reed’s latest book, The Hemingses of Monticello. He ALSO co-wrote a a damning UNTRUTHFUL report in Nature and in other media.

Herb Barger
Jefferson Family Historian
Founder, Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society
Asst. to Dr. E.A. Foster