One of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America and its most distinguished personalities, Thomas Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence and later served as the third president of America. Being such a prominent figure in the history of the US, Jefferson has a great deal of researches and publications covering his biography, ideas, and his personal life. Although Jefferson’s endeavors are not the first topic of interest for historians, it has also received excessive coverage over the decades. However, what interested most of the authors were Jefferson’s relationships with an African American woman Sarah “Sally” Hemings, which developed after Jefferson’s wife tragically passed away in 1782. The significance of this topic in the cultural context of the America of that time is the subject of this paper. The romance of Jefferson and a young African American girl was rather controversial and to some extent influenced the president himself and the political course that guided him.
Jefferson and Hemings’ Relationship in the Cultural Context
To understand why this relationship resulted in such attention, one would have to understand the peculiarities of the cultural context in which Jefferson lived. The America of those days was a country with highly developed slavery. Needless to say, it resulted in various forms of infringement of rights. African American people were treated by their social status, which was significantly less respected than that of the White American people. Therefore, such a distinguished figure as Jefferson could not avoid a certain backlash for his close relation to black population in any form. Ponterotto1 states that “any still surviving ancestors of Jefferson and Hemings have little grounds to argue that the identity interests of their ancestors have been harmed,” which demonstrates what influence Jefferson’s affairs with Hemings have created.
What made this situation even more disputable is the misrepresentation of some facts and different opinions presented by various authors. For example, a book by Jon Meacham2 is considered one of the highly-respected sources of information of Jefferson-Hemings relationships and their children. However, it is just a perspective, and some other authors may perceive the topic differently while presenting their perspective on the subject matter. Taking it into account, an article by Thompson3 confirms the description given by Meacham stating that Jefferson’s relationship with the Hemings family was close enough.
President’s Relation to Slavery
Another position that many authors take is represented in the article by Thompson3 that claims that “Jefferson’s place in history is compromised and constantly under scrutiny.” It is the result of the fact that although Jefferson created the Declaration of Independence, he still owned slaves as many others did at that time, which completely contravenes the president’s statement that “all men are created equal.” Needless to say, that it created a lot of controversies and resulted in sharp criticism of Jefferson’s work. However, relationship with Hemings became an ultimate acquittal of Jefferson’s history of owning slaves. In the end, it is rather natural that Jefferson treated many African Americans differently. Since he stated that all men are equal, each person would be evaluated based on their actions sooner or later. The difference in reception that Jefferson demonstrated comes with this evaluation.
What gives the topic more attention is the fact that Jefferson may have unintentionally created inequality even amongst African Americans. As Lee4 puts it, “post–civil rights era biographers could marginalize race when discussing Hemings’ and Jefferson’s genders and sexualities and, what is more, could even declare irrelevant the racial differences between the two.” Thus, researchers have a dispute: on the one hand they have the fact that Jefferson treated Hemings as his equal, despite her race; on the contrary, Jefferson owned slaves and probably did not treat them similarly to Hemings.
Jefferson’s Offspring
After the death of his wife, Jefferson, who had six children, was on an official visit to France, where he began an affair with his African American servant Sarah Hemings. Their relationship did not last very long, but there are some reasons to believe that the father of at least one of the eight Hemmings’s children was Jefferson. Quite a significant age difference may have become one of the main grounds why their relationship received a large amount of criticism and caused a public outcry.
Finally, one of the most important aspects of Jefferson-Hemings relationships is presented by Jones5. It was the fact that “while Sally Hemings would not have thought of herself as white, she may not have thought of herself as simply black or considered her identity regarding black solidarity with African Americans of varied skin tones.” After the death of Jefferson’s wife, he had some relationships with other females but ultimately traded them all to stay with Hemings. It may be the key factor to understanding how Jefferson approached relationships with women after his wife passed away.
Summarizing all of the presented facts, any person can figure out why the topic is so polarizing. The nature of Jefferson-Hemings relationship itself was controversial in many ways. This and the fact that Jefferson was one of the distinguished figures in America’s history prove that their communication played a vital role. Despite the fact that some people consider Jefferson’s ideas controversial, everyone should pay tribute to his active work. His relationship with people around him deserves attention since all the decisions he made were sometimes directly dependent on such correspondence. It is hardly worth considering Jefferson’s contacts as one of the most obvious political motives, but his relationship with women, however, played a role and to some extent influenced the development of society.
Works Cited
Jones, Suzanne. “Black and White.” Keywords for Southern Studies, edited by Scott Romine and Jennifer Rae Greeson, University of Georgia Press, 2016, pp. 155-165.
Lee, Fred. “Reconsidering the Jefferson–Hemings Relationship: Nationalist Historiography without Nationalist Heroes, Racial Sexuality without Racial Significance.” Political Research Quarterly, vol. 66, no. 3, 2013, pp. 1-16.
Meacham, Jon. American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation. Random House, 2009.
Ponterotto, Joseph. “In Pursuit of William James’s McLean Hospital Records: An Inherent Conflict Between Postmortem Privacy Rights and Advancing Psychological Science.” Review of General Psychology, vol. 19, no. 1, 2015, pp. 96-105.
Thompson, Sarah L. “Thomas Jefferson, Slavery, and the Language of the Textbook: Addressing Problematic Representations of Race and Power.” Language Arts Journal of Michigan, vol. 32, no. 2, 2017, pp. 18-26.
Footnotes
1 – Ponterotto, Joseph. “In Pursuit of William James’s McLean Hospital Records: An Inherent Conflict Between Postmortem Privacy Rights and Advancing Psychological Science.” Review of General Psychology, vol. 19, no. 1, 2015, pp. 96-105.
2 – Meacham, Jon. American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation. Random House, 2009.
3 – Thompson, Sarah L. “Thomas Jefferson, Slavery, and the Language of the Textbook: Addressing Problematic Representations of Race and Power.” Language Arts Journal of Michigan, vol. 32, no. 2, 2017, pp. 18-26.
4 – Lee, Fred. “Reconsidering the Jefferson–Hemings Relationship: Nationalist Historiography without Nationalist Heroes, Racial Sexuality without Racial Significance.” Political Research Quarterly, vol. 66, no. 3, 2013, pp. 1-16.
5 – Jones, Suzanne. “Black and White.” Keywords for Southern Studies, edited by Scott Romine and Jennifer Rae Greeson, University of Georgia Press, 2016, pp. 155-165.