The Dick Cheney Code by Henry Beard

Author:Henry Beard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2004-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

“I AM HEMMINGS DUMONT,” said the face on the small screen of the laptop computer. Dumont spoke without notes, but on the desk in front of him was a pile of eighteenth-century parchment documents, their curling ends held flat by paperweights.

“I am a direct descendant of Sally Hemmings, the slave girl at Monticello with whom Thomas Jefferson had an intimate relationship, which resulted in the birth of several children of mixed race.

“Sometime towards the end of June 1826, a week or two before his death on July fourth of that year, Jefferson summoned Sally Hemmings into his study and entrusted to her care a collection of extraordinary documents.

“Whether he was animated by a spirit of remorse, or was simply acting out of a desire to tidy up his tangled affairs and perhaps set himself right with his Creator, we simply have no way of knowing.

“Whatever his motivation,” Dumont continued, “he bequeathed to Sally and her descendants a unique—and potentially quite explosive—legacy. No doubt she and the other slaves on Jefferson’s estate would have preferred to be given their freedom, a generous gesture which members of the Virginia aristocracy, like George Washington himself, usually provided for in their wills. Probably due to the precarious state of his finances, this Thomas Jefferson failed to do.”

Dumont gestured reverently at the stack of parchments. “Even today, the contents of this legacy are truly flabbergasting, and it is hard not to speculate at the astonishment they must have caused the literate but far from educated slave girl.

“The first of the manuscripts is a confidential letter written by President George Washington on the last day of his second term, addressed to all his successors, informing them that the critical financial and, ultimately, military support for the foundering colonial cause in the terrible Valley Forge winter of 1777–1778 came from France, via the Marquis de Lafayette, as the result of what was, in effect, a pact with the devil. The terms of the covenant obliged the future occupants of the nation’s highest office to provide to ‘the Supreme Potentate of the Nether Regions, or such of his Nominees or Viceroys as he may see fit to Appoint’ direct, timely, and unfettered access to the President, in perpetuity.

“The second portion of the legacy consists of a sheaf of love letters that clearly show that at least three, and possibly five, of the founding fathers, certainly including Jefferson himself, Madison, and Monroe, and probably John Adams, had engaged in a variety of homosexual relationships during the heady early days of the Revolution.

“The third, and by far the most significant, part of the gift is an amended deed for the Louisiana Purchase, executed by Jefferson while still president, and witnessed and approved by Chief Justice Marshall of the Supreme Court, in which Jefferson used his plenipotentiary power to amend the terms, transforming the transaction into a two-hundred-year lease, upon whose expiration in October of 2003, the entire 828,000 square miles would devolve to any and all descendants of African slaves then living in the United States.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.