In Defense of Thomas Jefferson by William G. Hyland Jr

Author:William G. Hyland, Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2012-01-16T16:00:00+00:00

Abigail may have been described with several adjectives, but the terms “confounded” and “racist” do not come to mind. Once again, this is a toxic “race” rationalization by the author to fit her thesis that Sally was an alluring woman, instead of the girl Abigail described: immature, bordering on incompetence as a nanny for young Polly.

• Gordon-Reed implies that Jefferson lived with Sally in some sort of quasi, common law marriage/concubinage for thirty-seven years.

Once again, not a scintilla of documentary or eyewitness evidence supports this claim. In fact, it is flatly refuted by James A. Bear, the former resident director of Monticello: “it is certain that she [Sally] was not housed in the main house.”57 Gordon-Reed does not, and in fact, cannot explain why Jefferson would not free his own slave “wife” in his will, or at the end of his life. Jefferson freed Sally’s adult children (who had trades for their livelihood) but not Sally herself, his supposed lover of thirty-seven years and mother of his “shadow family?” Even if it meant that Sally would have to move out of Virginia within a year after his death (law at the time for freed adult slaves), would she not want her freedom from the bonds of “profane” slavery, as Hemings proponents claim happened at Monticello? Would she not have asked, or rather begged, her common law husband to do this for her? Once again, this entire line of argument defies common sense.

• “[O]nly recently have the Hemingses and other members of Monticello’s enslaved community become the focus of scholarly attention.”58

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