Remembering the Hemmingses

Dana Goldstein, inspired by the story of the McCain organizer involved in keeping the Jefferson family all-white, offers us a bit of background on the increasingly cut-and-dry case that Thomas Jefferson is the father of Sally Hemmings' children:

Conclusive DNA evidence linking Jefferson or one of his brothers to the black Hemings line has existed since 1998. In 2000, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation concluded it was likely that Jefferson himself fathered all six of his slave Sally Hemings' children. The dates of their births correspond quite neatly to nine months after the rare times Jefferson and Hemings were simultaneously at the estate. And historical documents indicate, the foundation found, that "several people close to Thomas Jefferson or the Monticello community believed that he was the father of Sally Hemings' children."

I'm not really a Jefferson admirer (though Monticello is definitely worth visiting) so I'm not sure I sympathize all that much with the desire to secure acknowledgment as an official descendant. But the desire to deny such acknowledgment is substantially more baffling.

Comments

I'm not really a Jefferson admirer

For goodness' sake, why not?

Posted by Notorious P.A.T. | June 16, 2008 5:29 PM

Yeah, what NPAT said. You can take serious, serious issue with some of what he did, and all, but it's silly to just stick him in the box marked "bad," along with Tom DeLay and the Eagles and whatnot.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | June 16, 2008 5:32 PM

Fuck Jefferson. There, I said it. Fuck him.

Hamilton, now, there's a mensch.

Posted by b | June 16, 2008 5:34 PM

Thomas Jefferson was a rapist and a torturer.

Whatever pretty-soundign documents he may have authored, that doesn't mkae him an admirable person.

Unless you're the kind of person that admires rapists and torturers.

Posted by Ikram | June 16, 2008 5:35 PM

MY:
Why do you hate America?

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | June 16, 2008 5:35 PM

Ikram kind of has a point. Unlike Kobe Bryant, Thomas Jefferson actually is a rapist (unless one thinks that a slave can give meaningful consent).

Posted by Al | June 16, 2008 5:41 PM

Jefferson hated city-dwellers like you people. Also, D.C. is more or less his fault. Reason enough not to be a fan?

Posted by jbkbj | June 16, 2008 5:47 PM

unless one thinks that a slave can give meaningful consent

Life on the plantations was pretty complicated at times--Sally Hemmings was the sister of Jefferson's dead wife. We don't know enough about the precise nature of the relationship to say it was rape.

Posted by rea | June 16, 2008 5:49 PM

Jefferson just doesn't compare favorably to Lincoln, no matter how you slice the stats: in slaves emancipated per annum, southern military victories per term, or fiat coinage per zinc, Lincoln led Jefferson across the board.

There's just no comparison, and it shouldn't be considered some huge knock on Jefferson to observe that he was and is a clearly inferior president to the best president ever, even if Jefferson weren't a rapist.

Posted by phil | June 16, 2008 5:51 PM

Matt,

I've heard you argue that associations do not matter (ie: Bill Ayers, various religiosity figures in BHO's life, etc,) yet you seem to participate in the same thing. Now I understand the mindset of "Well, they do it, so I will do it, too!" Doesn't that just reek of hypocrisy, though? It's like the saying that because other groups torture, we can do it, too, albeit on a much smaller, and less severe scale. I just want you to live above the fray, like your hero, Barry O'Bama.

Posted by Sean | June 16, 2008 5:51 PM

Under the laws of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, it was illegal for a Christian to engage in intercourse with a female slave. Mr. Jefferson would have gotten his d-- cut off if he lived in the Crusader states. In this respect it would seem that the medievals were more civilized, and more moral, than the wonderful Founding Fathers of the 18th century.

Posted by Hector | June 16, 2008 5:56 PM

What is it with Jefferson descendants anyway? Do the Adams' descendants all get together as well? Or the Monroes or the Madisons? Certainly the Adams descendants seem to have contributed far more to American life than Jefferson's (Henry Brooks Adams, Brooks Adams, Charles Francis Adams, etc. and of course the incomparable actress Mary Kay Adams).

Posted by vanya | June 16, 2008 6:03 PM

The desire to deny the connection isn't baffling if you consider that for 200+ years, Jefferson was firmly ensconed on one of the few pedestals reserved for "America's Founders." I grew up hearing all about his intellect and his contributions to the founding of America, and nothing at all about his slaves.

The DNA data has been around awhile. Here's what the Monticello website has to say:
http://www.monticello.org/plantation/hemingscontro/hemings-jefferson_contro.html

It seems there has been at least some debate over whether Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemmings' children; some say it may have been his younger brother Randolph. Either way, the initial DNA evidence was received with dismay by many of Jefferson's descendants. The notion that he, like many slaveowners, probably fathered several children by a slave woman, was a bit much to swallow.

While I can understand the initial shock, there is definitely a genetic connection between the families, and 10 years should be enough time to get used to it.

Posted by from the sidelines | June 16, 2008 6:04 PM

Hector, why am I not surprised that you consider cutting people's genitals off to be "civilized"?

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | June 16, 2008 6:05 PM

Conclusive DNA evidence linking Jefferson or one of his brothers to the black Hemings line has existed since 1998.

It's worth noting that many of the descendants of Sally Hemings are white - one of Jefferson and Hemings' grandsons was a Union officer in the Civil War, for instance. See here, for instance.

Posted by John | June 16, 2008 6:20 PM

Whatever pretty-soundign documents he may have authored, that doesn't mkae him an admirable person.

Plato was a total dick to his green-grocer.

Posted by southpaw | June 16, 2008 6:28 PM

Mr. Jefferson would have gotten his d-- cut off if he lived in the Crusader states.

Shorter Hector: when I'm not spouting idiocies on blogs, I really enjoy dressing up like Richard the Lionheart.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | June 16, 2008 6:34 PM

Plato was a total dick to his green-grocer.

Well, he was a child molester.

The evaluation of any historical figure has to combine his impact on history, his actions by current standards and his actions by contemporary standards.

Jefferson is still overrated because he had no real consistent philosophy. He flitted from one idea to another to the extent where you can quote Jefferson on both sides of most major issues.

Posted by Jake | June 16, 2008 6:39 PM

Plato was a total dick to his green-grocer.

Well, he was a child molester.

The evaluation of any historical figure has to combine his impact on history, his actions by current standards and his actions by contemporary standards.

Jefferson is still overrated because he had no real consistent philosophy. He flitted from one idea to another to the extent where you can quote Jefferson on both sides of most major issues.

Posted by Jake | June 16, 2008 6:42 PM

I'm not really a Jefferson admirer (though Monticello is definitely worth visiting) so I'm not sure I sympathize all that much with the desire to secure acknowledgment as an official descendant.

This is sort of obtuse. It's not about the pride one gets from being the descendents of Thomas Jefferson.

Rather, it's that the Hemmingses, just like Sally Hemmings herself, have been actively written out of the historical record because of their race, and they deserve recognition just as much as any other person.

Posted by DivGuy | June 16, 2008 6:44 PM

Can one just note, proceeding from my previous comment, that I don't think the issue here is straight up racism.

Eston Hemings's descendants look about as white as any of Jefferson's legitimate descendants, and are excluded; one assumes that if a legitimate descendant of Jefferson had an interracial marriage and had half-black children, those children would be allowed to join the organization without demur.

The issue is that the descendants organization sees itself as the guardian of Jefferrson's legacy, and that their opinion of Jefferson verges on idolatry (I know from Jefferson worship - I went to UVA for undergrad). Admitting that Jefferson fathered children with a slave is admitting that Jefferson was a deeply, deeply flawed individual. It is not terribly surprising that they don't want to do it. (Obviously race plays a role in this, but I think it's secondary)

Posted by John | June 16, 2008 6:54 PM

Does anyone know what the protocol is for overseas royalty to acknowledge illegitimate offspring? I'm wondering, do the illegitimate Tudors and Stuarts get counted as royalty, or is there some other category? I know they're not considered in the line of succession; I just want to know how, or if, they're accepted.

Posted by Kiril | June 16, 2008 7:25 PM

I really admire dear Hector for keeping on trying to find excuses to announce his nostalgia for the Crusades. Well played!

Posted by El Cid | June 16, 2008 7:26 PM

Matt doesn't like Jefferson because he had slaves.

How PC.

Nitwit.

Meanwhile, other morons laud Lincoln over Jefferson:

"I will say, then, that I AM NOT NOR HAVE EVER BEEN in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races---that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever FORBID the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race."

— 4th Lincoln-Douglas debate, September 18th, 1858; COLLECTED WORKS Vol. 3, pp. 145-146

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 16, 2008 7:42 PM

Sean,

Ayers and Obama are not associates as you wish to portray them. They sat on a board that also included an exec from BP. You cannot get any mainstreamed than that. The charity is a local one that has done a lot of good works. It is a well respected one.

Posted by Micheline | June 16, 2008 7:55 PM

Does anyone know what the protocol is for overseas royalty to acknowledge illegitimate offspring? I'm wondering, do the illegitimate Tudors and Stuarts get counted as royalty, or is there some other category? I know they're not considered in the line of succession; I just want to know how, or if, they're accepted.

There aren't any illegitimate Tudor descendants that I'm aware of - I don't think Henry VII had any acknowledged illegitimate children, and Henry VIII's illegitimate son died without issue.

There are illegitimate descendants of both the Plantagenets and the Stuarts, however. They are not considered royalty. However, the head of each illegitimate line is a Duke. The Dukes of Beaufort are descended from an illegitimate line of the Beauforts, who were descended from an illegitimate son of John of Gaunt, Edward III's third son. The Dukes of Richmond, Grafton, St Albans, and Buccleuch are descended from illegitimate sons of Charles II. The Spanish Duke of Penaranda (who may or may not also be the English Duke of Berwick) is descended from an illegitimate, and Jacobite, son of James II. There were also, until recently, illegitimate male line descendants of William IV, a Hanoverian. None of them are considered royalty or members of the British royal family.

Posted by John | June 16, 2008 8:11 PM

Ikram kind of has a point. Unlike Kobe Bryant, Thomas Jefferson actually is a rapist (unless one thinks that a slave can give meaningful consent).

Well, we don't know that he ordered her to have sex with him. It's possible that they both wanted to have sex. Not that he couldn't have raped her, but I don't think that we can automatically say he raped her.

Posted by Glaivester | June 16, 2008 8:17 PM

Lincoln held and expressed racist beliefs. At the same time, he was deeply opposed to slavery, and did probably as much as any American has ever does (and that include MLK Jr.) to give black people equality. So, while he was flawed, I don't think picking a quote and saying "he's a racist" is a useful way to think about his legacy.

Jefferson, on the other hand, was somebody who occasionally expressed egalitarian principles, and even was sometimes willing to apply them to black people. And he seems to have fallen in love with a black woman. Yet overall in his actions he supported slavery and racism, even though he seemed to realize that both were wrong. If you don't admire that...well, that seems fair enough.

I do admire him, though, because he could apparently write two different letters at the same time, one with each hand. That's pretty amazing.

Posted by NoahB | June 16, 2008 8:31 PM

And he seems to have fallen in love with a black woman.

His dead wife's half-sister! Not creepy at all, that.

Posted by John | June 16, 2008 9:03 PM

As I recall, Hemmings has 2 sons and DNA evidence has shown that the oldest, Tom Woodson, was not not related to Jefferson. So the idea of "Jefferson in Paris" is not true. The youngest son, Eston Hemmings, does share DNA, which means he was fathered by Thomas, his brother, one of his 2 nephews, or even possibly by another slave who traced lineage to an ancestor of Thomas'. So, the case is a bit more ambiguous than suggested.

Posted by maddarter | June 16, 2008 9:05 PM

The Woodsons, I think, were not related to Hemings - they just had a legend that they were.

Hemings had three sons and one daughter who survived to adulthood. The daughter, Harriet, and the oldest (I think) son, Beverly, both passed as white, took white spouses, and disappeared from history. They may have descendants, but nobody is really sure.

The second son, Madison, married a free woman of mixed racial ancestry and lived as a free black farmer and carpenter. In 1873 he gave an interview in which he claimed to be Jefferson's son. His descendants are black. The direct male line of Madison's descendants has become extinct, so it's now impossible to test the Y Chromosome to see if they are descended from Jefferson's family, but it seems highly likely.

Eston Hemings, the youngest son, also married a free woman of color. But he soon left Virginia, moving first to Chillicothe, Ohio, and then to Madison, Wisconsin, where he and his wife reinvented themselves as white and changed their surname to Jefferson. One of his sons became a colonel in the union army during the civil war, and the family became fairly prominent in Madison. Eston's descendants are white. It is through one of them that the genetic link to Jefferson was discovered.

Posted by John | June 16, 2008 9:18 PM

or even possibly by another slave who traced lineage to an ancestor of Thomas'.

Incredibly unlikely. All of Hemings' children, as I understand it, basically looked white.

Posted by John | June 16, 2008 9:21 PM

Well, we don't know that he ordered her to have sex with him. It's possible that they both wanted to have sex. Not that he couldn't have raped her, but I don't think that we can automatically say he raped her.

Well, the point I was trying to make with the parenthetical in my post was that even if Sally Hemmings consented to having sex, that consent should not be meaningful, given the obvious power imbalance between the two. After all, she was his slave - what could she have thought would have happened if she had said 'no'? She could have sold, ripped apart from her family, or beaten/whipped, etc. It is similar to a situation in which a prison guard requests sex from an inmate - the inmate cannot give meaningful consent because of the power imbalance between the two.

Posted by Al | June 16, 2008 9:26 PM

"Yet overall in his actions he supported slavery and racism, even though he seemed to realize that both were wrong."

A Google finds this:

“Words Fitly Spoken”: Thomas Jefferson, Slavery, and Sally Hemings
www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/slavery.PDF

Jefferson was no hypocrite when it came to the slavery question – even his most fervent detractors have to admit as much. He loathed slavery – this “great political and moral evil,” he called it in the only book he publishedin his lifetime, Notes on Virginia.

His public and private writings throughout his life make it clear that he held the institution of slavery to be an abomination, its practice immoral and fundamentally inconsistent with his ideas about the natural rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” No passages in his incredibly voluminous papers are, historian C. Vann Woodward wrote, “more moving or more poignant” than those denouncing slavery.

“What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible, machine is man,” he wrote for the entry for “The United States” to be included in Diderot’s great Encycolpedie in the mid 1780s, “who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow-men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.” “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate,” he wrote, “than that these people are to be free.” (Autobiography). The “commerce between master and slave,” he wrote in Notes on Virginia – is “a perpetual exercise of the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. . . . The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances.” It was the most vile form of injustice, and he knew it; from Notes on Virginia again: “[W]ith what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, . . . can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever . . . The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest."

Fine. Nice sentiments, all; maybe his heart was in the right place. But actions, as the saying goes, speak louder than words; did he try to do anything about slavery?

• in 1769, while a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, Jefferson helped to draft a bill to allow for “manumission by deed” – a procedure whereby slave-owners could transfer, by deed, their “property interest” in slaves back to the slaves themselves, setting them free. The bill eventually passed in 1782, and Jefferson – by then the Governor of the new state – signed it into law that year;

• as a fledgling practicing lawyer, in 1770, in his argument in the obscure case of Howell v. Netherland, which involved the freedom or enslavement of a third-generation mulatto, Jefferson had pled that “we are all born free” and that slavery was contrary to natural law – an argument the court dismissed out of hand.

• Jefferson prepared not one but two drafts of a Constitution for the State of Virginia, one in 1776, one in 1783. The earlier draft would have prohibited the importation of slaves into the State: “No person hereafter coming into this county shall be held within the same in slavery under any pretext whatever.” The 1783 draft went further: “The General assembly shall not have to power to ... permit the introduction of any more slaves to reside in this state, or the continuance of slavery beyond the generation which shall be living on the 31st day of December 1800; all persons born after that day being hereby declared free.”

• As a member of the federal Congress in 1783-84, Jefferson drafted and submitted to that body a Report on the Government of the Western Territories, which Congress enacted into law as the Ordinance of 1784. It provided that “after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted to have been personally guilty” in any part of the United States outside of the original 13 colonies. The slavery prohibition was deleted by Congress from the final bill – by a single vote. (Under the Articles of Confederation, which were then in effect, laws could be enacted only if supported by the delegations of seven States. Six States (Penn., NY, Conn., R.I., Mass., Maine) supported Jefferson’s slavery prohibition; three (Virginia [Jefferson himself dissenting], MD, and SC) opposed it; NC was divided. New Jersey would have supported the prohibition but its delegate, James Beatty, was ill and did not attend the session. Jefferson wrote later in his Autobiography: “Seven votes being requisite to decide the proposition affirmatively, it was lost. The voice of a single individual of the State which was divided [New Jersey] . . . would have prevented this abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country. Thus we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man, and Heaven was silent in that awful moment! But it is to be hoped it will not always be silent, and that the friends to the rights of human nature will in the end prevail.”

When the federal Constitution was adopted in 1791, it contained a provision that prohibited the federal Congress from interfering with the slave trade until the year 1808: “The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight . . .” In 1806, in his annual message to Congress, Jefferson wrote:

“I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have long been eager to proscribe. Although no law you may pass can take prohibitory effect till the first day of the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, yet the intervening period is not too long to prevent, by timely notice, expeditions which cannot be completed before that day.”

Jefferson introduced, Congress passed, and Jefferson signed, a bill prohibiting any further importation of slaves as of the earliest date the Constitution permitted: January 1,1808.

Call it expediency, or cowardice, or selfishness, or lack of moral courage; it probably reflects some of each, none of it particularly attractive. He was afraid of the public scandal he would cause if he renounced slavery, afraid of the possibly devastating consequences that would have on his public career – there were, as Joseph Ellis notes, “few quicker and surer ways to stop a political career in its tracks in Jefferson's time than to oppose white conquest of western lands in the name of Indian rights or to advocate the
abolition of slavery” -- and on his financial condition, afraid of going deeper into debt. We’ll never know, for certain, how much further he could have pushed, how much more he could have done.

I repeat the claim I made at the outset of this talk: few people in human history did more, in the sum total of their lifetimes, to dismantle the institution of slavery than Jefferson. The principle of equality laid down in the Declaration of Independence – what Gordon Wood has called “the most powerful proposition in American history, bar none” – set in motion a chain of events that would lead, in as straight a line as history ever gives us, to emancipation.

Nobody understood this (or explained it) better than Lincoln, and he should have the last word(s).

“I am sustained by Mr. Jefferson.”
Abraham Lincoln
Springfield, Illinois, July 17, 1858

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 16, 2008 9:39 PM

The above is referred to as "unloading a can of whup-ass" on the morons here - including Al, Matt, and others - who decided Jefferson was a rapist and a slaver based on the simple fact that he slept with a black woman who was his slave.

This appears to be Matt's only knowledge of Jefferson which is no surprise given his degree in philosophy from Harvard.

You may all now STFU.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 16, 2008 9:45 PM

Re: Well, he was a child molester.

???
Plato was probably a homosexual, and he may have had an affair with a Syracusan politican named Dion (that's some very moldly old gossip which might be untrue). There's no evidence, or even any legitimate ancient slander, that Plato ever had sex with children.

Re: There aren't any illegitimate Tudor descendants that I'm aware of

Two female lines survived the Tudors: one was merged with the royal line of Scotland, the Stuarts, through Margaret Tudor's marriage to JamesIV (and there are definitely bastard Stuart descendants; Charles II made sure of that). The other female line was that of the Grays (via Catherine Gray, younger sister of the ill-starred Jane Gray). They pretty much faded out of history after Elizabeth I shunned them, but there may be descendants still.

Re: The Dukes of Beaufort are descended from an illegitimate line of the Beauforts, who were descended from an illegitimate son of John of Gaunt

Daughter, not son: Margaret Beaufort was illegitimate but through the wonders of medieval legal corruption was bought into legitimacy by her doting father. The Tudors were her ultimate descendants.

Re: Lincoln held and expressed racist beliefs.

In 100 years politicians who opposed gay marriage are going to look equally reactionary.

Re: Well, the point I was trying to make with the parenthetical in my post was that even if Sally Hemmings consented to having sex, that consent should not be meaningful, given the obvious power imbalance between the two.

Sounds like classic feminist claptrap: given the power imbalance between men and women in general presumably every sex act was tantamount to rape in pre-modern times.

Posted by JonF | June 16, 2008 10:11 PM

Thanks for the offer, Richard, but no.

As Dana Goldstein points out, "Jefferson, although thought of in his own time and today as a 'benevolent' slave-owner, did instruct his overseer to beat his slaves. Jefferson sold husbands away from wives and teenagers away from their parents. Jefferson publicly tortured and humiliated runaways." Jefferson's abstract belief in freedom did not prevent him from being an active participant in maintaining Monticello as an economic institution dependent on slavery.

Also, you neglect to disentangle Lincoln's racism from his stance on slavery; moreover, quoting him in 1858 as opposed to 1863 seems to miss a few intervening events which might have changed Lincoln's perspective.

Posted by Patience | June 16, 2008 10:15 PM

in a sign that the end times truly are here, "Al" is completely correct. Richard: many regard Jefferson as a slaver and racist because of the minor, trifling details that he owned slaves and declined to free even his own children while alive, and that the notion of "consent" to sex is meaningless in the context of chattel slavery. that said, I am fonder of Jefferson than Matt appears to be. his moving words on slavery surely did have some positive influence on our nation even as his actions fell far, far short of his eloquence.

Posted by belle waring | June 16, 2008 10:27 PM

Daughter, not son: Margaret Beaufort was illegitimate but through the wonders of medieval legal corruption was bought into legitimacy by her doting father. The Tudors were her ultimate descendants.

Er, not really. [Please forgive, all, this unnecessary and probably boring foray into British aristocratic genealogy]

John of Gaunt had four surviving illegitimate children by his mistress, Katherine Swynford. One was a daughter, Joan, who married some nobleman. One of the sons became a priest, and eventually a cardinal. Another, the Duke of Exeter, never married. The other was John Beaufort, who became Earl of Somerset.

This John Beaufort had two sons. The older, also John Beaufort, was made Duke of Somerset. He had a legitimate daughter, Margaret, who, as you say, married Edmund Tudor and was the mother of Henry VII.

The younger son of the older John Beaufort was Edmund Beaufort, who was created Duke of Somerset as well after his brother's untimely death. Edmund was a big Lancastrian in the Wars of the Roses, and was killed at the first Battle of St Albans, the first major engagement of the war. He had two sons. The older, Henry, succeeded him as Duke, but eventually got himself executed by the Yorkists after they took over. The younger, Edmund, then claimed to be duke, but was also killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471 fighting against Edward IV. That ended the legitimate male line of the Beauforts.

However, Henry Beaufort had an illegitimate son, Charles Somerset. Somerset was created Earl of Worcester by Henry VIII. One of his descendants was a big royalist during the Civil War, and was created Marquess of Worcester by Charles I, and then Duke of Beaufort by Charles II after the restoration. His descendants are still around. They live at Badminton House in Gloucestershire. The current Duke, assuming all is kosher, presumably has the same Y chromosome as Henry II.

Re: Tudors - I wasn't saying there weren't descendants of Henry VII (obviously there are many). I was just saying there aren't any known illegitimate lines.

Posted by John | June 16, 2008 11:18 PM

"I repeat the claim I made at the outset of this talk: few people in human history did more, in the sum total of their lifetimes, to dismantle the institution of slavery than Jefferson. The principle of equality laid down in the Declaration of Independence – what Gordon Wood has called “the most powerful proposition in American history, bar none” – set in motion a chain of events that would lead, in as straight a line as history ever gives us, to emancipation."

That is pretty much it. Repeating a claim. Repeat it long enough and I suppose some folks might believe it.

He had the power to emancipate his own slaves, and didn't.

And he used his power as secretary of state and later president against the revolting Haitian slaves.

Jefferson's actions completely contradicted his words on emancipation.

Posted by Mike Furlan | June 17, 2008 1:14 AM

"I repeat the claim I made at the outset of this talk: few people in human history did more, in the sum total of their lifetimes, to dismantle the institution of slavery than Jefferson. The principle of equality laid down in the Declaration of Independence – what Gordon Wood has called “the most powerful proposition in American history, bar none” – set in motion a chain of events that would lead, in as straight a line as history ever gives us, to emancipation."

That is pretty much it. Repeating a claim. Repeat it long enough and I suppose some folks might believe it.

He had the power to emancipate his own slaves, and didn't.

And he used his power as secretary of state and later president against the revolting Haitian slaves.

Jefferson's actions completely contradicted his words on emancipation.

Posted by Mike Furlan | June 17, 2008 1:14 AM

Given the power imbalance between men and women in general presumably every sex act was tantamount to rape in pre-modern times.

A depressingly large number of them were. Or didn't you realize that's what "lie back and think of England" referred to?

Posted by MouseJunior | June 17, 2008 3:33 AM

Apparently these morons can't read. Jefferson wrote numerous laws and attempted to free slaves all over the place. Saying his "practice" completely contradicted his rhetoric is not correct.

The problem apparently was that he wasn't prepared to completely sacrifice himself to that endeavor to the point where his own career and situation were destroyed by opposing slavery, as the article points out.

As for the assertions that he beat slaves, etc., well, provide a citation - a valid citation. Notice that wasn't done.

"the notion of "consent" to sex is meaningless in the context of chattel slavery."

That simply isn't true and it's pathetically naive to believe it is.

"you neglect to disentangle Lincoln's racism from his stance on slavery..."

That wasn't my point. The point was that Lincoln understood Jefferson better than the amateur historians here, and that Lincoln was not significantly more "righteous" about racism and slavery than Jefferson, which was the claim here by some.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 17, 2008 5:45 AM

The Spanish Duke of Penaranda (who may or may not also be the English Duke of Berwick)

Au contraire, c'est le French Duc de Berwick

Posted by rea | June 17, 2008 6:21 AM

Apparently it's now considered impossible for historical figures to have had complicated, even contradictory effects on the path of national affairs.

Surely we would all be better off if there had been none of these slave-owning hypocrites ever involved in pushing for the U.S. Constitution or even the nation itself. That's why instead of attempting to build on and expand the achievements of the Constitution and the initiatives of founding figures like Jefferson, figures like Martin Luther King Jr. spent all their time condemning past figures for their imperfections and wrongs.

Also, no other nations honor figures from their past who combine admirable developments with contradictory ills.

Posted by El Cid | June 17, 2008 6:35 AM

1. What many of the commentors here are apparently unaware of is that, when Jefferson and Hemings were in Paris, under French law, slavery was illegal and Hemings had only to walk away and decline to return to America with Jefferson and he had no power to do anything about it. Apparently, he persuaded her to return with him, probably, in part, because she was pregnant with his child.

2. Actually, the DNA test did not involve descendants of his brother Randolph but descendants of a first cousin who was the son of a brother of Jeffersons' father and therefore shared Jeffersons' Y chromosome.

3. Mr. John is correct relative to Hemings' son Madison. It should be noted, however, that any break in the male line between Madison and his descendants would cause the Jefferson Y chromosome to be lost, even if there were male descendants currently extant.

4. It is not surprising that children of Jefferson and Hemings could pass for white. Hemings herself was probably at most 1/4 african descent.

Posted by SLC | June 17, 2008 6:51 AM

"Jefferson wrote numerous laws and attempted to free slaves all over the place. Saying his "practice" completely contradicted his rhetoric is not correct."

Lies commonly agreed upon.

However what really happened:

"Jefferson was terrified of what was happening in Saint Domingue. He referred to Toussaint's army as cannibals. His fear was that black Americans, like Gabriel, would be inspired by what they saw taking place just off the shore of America. And he spent virtually his entire career trying to shut down any contact, and therefore any movement of information, between the American mainland and the Caribbean island.

He called upon Congress to abolish trade between the United States and what after 1804 was the independent country of Haiti. He argued that France believed it still owned the island. In short, he denied that Haitian revolutionaries had the same right to independence and autonomy that he claimed for American patriots."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3i3130.html

Posted by Mike Furlan | June 17, 2008 7:37 AM

"Apparently it's now considered impossible for historical figures to have had complicated, even contradictory effects on the path of national affairs."

It is not complicated.

Consider Lord Dunmore:

"He is noted for Lord Dunmore's Proclamation on November 7, 1775, whereby he offered freedom to enslaved Africans who joined his Army (the Ethiopian Regiment). This was the first mass emancipation of slaves in North America."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Murray,_4th_Earl_of_Dunmore

Jefferson fought against Lord Dunmore.

Dunmore pro-emancipation.
Jefferson anti-emancipation.

It really was that simple.

Posted by Mike Furlan | June 17, 2008 7:50 AM

Count me in as another "non admirer". Jefferson was alright, but grossly overrated. Sure he drafted the Declaration of Independence. Then what? I've met fools who think he wrote the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, etc. etc. He didn't. His one book, Note on Virginia, enumerates his belief that black are inferior to white and that it is scientifically demonstratable based on smell. His "Jeffersonian" ideal of the yeoman farmer never panned out. Though he and his ferverent followers made (and still make) a point of attacking Hamilton any chance they get, Hamilton was right and we live in a Hamiltonian democracy and not a Jeffersonian one. Also, Jefferson could have freed slaves if he wish (much like Washington did) but chose not to. He also continued to buy and sell slaves even after he condemned the practice. He even greatly expanded the powers of the President with the Louisana Purchase. Not much to fawn over, really.

Posted by freddiemac | June 17, 2008 9:24 AM

His dead wife's half-sister! Not creepy at all, that

Jer-ree!
Jer-ree!
Jer-ree!

Posted by PanAmerican | June 17, 2008 9:36 AM

even if Sally Hemmings consented to having sex, that consent should not be meaningful, given the obvious power imbalance between the two.

Like John Tanner and Roebuck Ramsden in Man and Superman, I'm surprised at Al here -- most favorably.

Posted by hello | June 17, 2008 10:43 AM

Thank you, El Cid, for attempting to inject some reason into this conversation.

As for the British royalty-- wasn't this country founded by Jefferson et. all to not observe such foolishness?

The issue is that the descendants organization sees itself as the guardian of Jefferrson's legacy, and that their opinion of Jefferson verges on idolatry (I know from Jefferson worship - I went to UVA for undergrad). Admitting that Jefferson fathered children with a slave is admitting that Jefferson was a deeply, deeply flawed individual. It is not terribly surprising that they don't want to do it. (Obviously race plays a role in this, but I think it's secondary)

The cult of Jefferson is indeed pretty strong. Monticello seems to do a pretty decent job of balancing the hero with his feet of clay, but even they have had some controversies around the slave issue.

Posted by Persia | June 17, 2008 10:59 AM

Re freddiemac

1. Jefferson did free the children of Sally Hemmings who he allegedly fathered. He was in no position to free all his slaves as he was deeply in debt (in fact, he was, to all intents and purposes bankrupt) and they had to be sold off to satisfy those debts.

2. Is Mr. freddiemac trying to claim that the Louisiana Purchase was a mistake? I think he will be hard put to find any historians who would agree with that premise.

Posted by SLC | June 17, 2008 12:11 PM

1. Citations please?

2. Did I say it was a mistake? And nice how all of a sudden you are clamoring for the authority of historians. I seem to recall you poo-pooing that idea back when historians were dismissing the Bush presidency as botton of the barrel. Which is which?

Just to clarify, because I'm sure you are having trouble comprehending this: the Louisana Purchase was an act that went outside of Congress and was non-Constitutional. It greatly expanded the powers of the President, something Jefferson himself had previously railed against. It got him into hot water later (see the Jefferson trial). Whether the nation profited for the action doesn't exonerate Jefferson unless you are into an expansionist America with a strong federal government and powerful commander in chief, which is specifically what the Jeffersonians despise.

Posted by freddiemac | June 17, 2008 1:23 PM

I don't agree about Monticello. I went there as a child and thought it was cool with all the gizmos. Went back with my daughter a few years ago. We first saw the kitchen below where we learned the ten or so kitchen slaves (including Sally H.) all slept in one small room. Above we saw Jefferson's bedroom and the machine he used to make exact copies of the letters he wrote. I've never been able to think of him since without picturing a guy making copies of his precious correspondence while 100 people or more were enslaved beneath him. As important as I think the "All men are created equal" statement is in American history, I do not care much for Jefferson.

Posted by full monty | June 17, 2008 1:45 PM

I don't agree about Monticello. I went there as a child and thought it was cool with all the gizmos. Went back with my daughter a few years ago. We first saw the kitchen below where we learned the ten or so kitchen slaves (including Sally H.) all slept in one small room. Above we saw Jefferson's bedroom and the machine he used to make exact copies of the letters he wrote. I've never been able to think of him since without picturing a guy making copies of his precious correspondence while 100 people or more were enslaved beneath him. As important as I think the "All men are created equal" statement is in American history, I do not care much for Jefferson.

Posted by full monty | June 17, 2008 1:46 PM

I don't really understand -- are people arguing that we can only respect the accomplishments of people in the past who were admirable in every way?

Does no one realize that Jefferson attempted to abolish slavery in Virginia, but was beaten?

During his long career in public office, Jefferson attempted numerous times to abolish or limit the advance of slavery. According to a biographer, Jefferson "believed that it was the responsibility of the state and society to free all slaves."

In 1769, as a member of the House of Burgesses, Jefferson proposed for that body to emancipate slaves in Virginia, but he was unsuccessful.

In his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson condemned the British crown for sponsoring the importation of slavery to the colonies, charging that the crown "has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere." However, this language was dropped from the Declaration at the request of delegates from South Carolina and Georgia.

In 1778, the legislature passed a bill he proposed to ban further importation of slaves into Virginia; although this did not bring complete emancipation, in his words, it "stopped the increase of the evil by importation, leaving to future efforts its final eradication."

In 1784, Jefferson's draft of what became the Northwest Ordinance stipulated that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude" in any of the new states admitted to the Union from the Northwest Territory.

In 1807, he signed a bill abolishing the slave trade. Jefferson attacked the institution of slavery in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1784):

“There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson#Jefferson_and_slavery

Hell. Quite a lot of the anti-slavery abolitionist whites still thought black people were inferior. They were wrong, but probably the nation and African Americans were better off in part for their efforts, however imperfect they were.

You don't have to be part of a "cult" of Jefferson -- what do people think? That there were hundreds of thousands of highly educated, rich, powerful incipient American leaders educated in the humanistic values of the Renaissance such that if the immoral slave-owners such as Jefferson stood aside that their spots would immediately be filled by people who would be admired purely and without question by today's purest individual?

Yes, certainly there were probably even more moral, maybe better people to have put in his position -- but we are not gods, and we don't get to pick & choose our predecessors.

Maybe I'm too cynical, but I think the degrees of advances found in the U.S. Constitution were a serious, though dramatically imperfect, advance in human liberty, both for some of the humans living at the time and for the possibility of struggle for further realized liberty in the future.

But then, I'm not one of those fully confident that if we turned back the clock to the start of this nation that it would be guaranteed to proceed any better than it did. Perhaps, but it's just as likely we could have ended up in an even worse scenario with a far less flexible and principle-based founding than the Constitution.

Likewise, I'm not 100% convinced that re-running the post-Civil War period would always lead to the re-destruction of the democracy achieved for blacks and Populist whites in the South. We might well have achieved a great deal more of actual democracy half a century or more earlier.

The point to me is that Jefferson need not be treated as a secular saint to see him as someone who may have imperfectly yet powerfully contributed to the advancement of American and global human liberty.

It's a tough conversation. There are those who argue that maybe the North American continent and the world might have been better off had the colonies remained part of Britain. But that's a different set of questions entirely, and not one that comes down to the personal immoralities of Thomas Jefferson.

Posted by El Cid | June 17, 2008 2:09 PM

Au contraire, c'est le French Duc de Berwick

The French title of the family was actually Duc de Fitz-James. According to French Wikipedia, that title became extinct in 1967. The Spanish government also apparently recognizes the Duchess of Alba de Tormes, a cousin in a senior line of the Duke of Penaranda, as Duchess of Berwick, but an English title like Berwick couldn't descend to women - if the title had not been forfeited in 1695 (which some people apparently argue it was not) it is the Duke of Penaranda who is its heir. He is, at any rate, the senior male-line descendant of James II.

Posted by John | June 17, 2008 3:20 PM

We first saw the kitchen below where we learned the ten or so kitchen slaves (including Sally H.) all slept in one small room.

Even when she slept with Jefferson?

Posted by Dilan Esper | June 17, 2008 3:39 PM

"His one book, Note on Virginia, enumerates his belief that black are inferior to white and that it is scientifically demonstratable based on smell."

I read that passage in another article the other day while researching this issue. I didn't read it that way at all. Jefferson was enumerating the differences between blacks and whites. The passage about smell did not appear to be what you declare it to be from your own bias.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 17, 2008 8:02 PM

"In 1769, as a member of the House of Burgesses, Jefferson proposed for that body to emancipate slaves in Virginia, but he was unsuccessful."

Almost entirely a fabrication.

In 1769 Jefferson voted for, but did not propose a bill to allow private voluntary emancipation of slaves.

Jefferson's opposition to slavery was and is a great PR stunt.

Posted by Mike Furlan | June 19, 2008 11:11 PM