Sorry for the shit title. I couldn't really come up with anything better.

I swear to god I had an aneurysm over this. I'm trying to stay calm, but as my friends will testify, I had a long all-caps rant over this.

I can't promise that I won't go all-caps rant here either. Sorry.

Okay. So a friend of mine linked me this article today: "The Washington Post Slanders Thomas Jefferson Over Slave Children."

You already know it's going to be bad when it calls "slave children" slander, especially when it comes to Thomas Jefferson.

(Quick question though: is it really slander if 1) the person has been dead for a few centuries and 2) the Thomas Jefferson Foundation acknowledges that he very likely did, in fact, have children via raping a slave?)

In the first sentence, the author writes: “Many people know that Thomas Jefferson had a long-standing relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings. But fewer know that they had four children, three boys and a girl, who survived to adulthood.”

None of this can be verified. No one knows whether Thomas Jefferson fathered even one child by Sally Hemings.

[excised: an argument that boils down to IT AIN'T TRUE BECAUSE SCIENCE!]

Okay, so while we will never know with 100% certainty whether Jefferson fathered children with Hemings, we are pretty reasonably sure that he actually did.

The DNA tests undertaken in the 90s showed that Hemings's male descendants (i.e. everyone descended from Eston) and Jefferson's male descendants were linked. Then we have Annette Gordon-Reed's book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, which points out why it's probably very likely that Jefferson fathered Hemings's children (cited in the following AskHistorians answers: 1 and 2). There's also a very strong oral tradition that Hemings's descendants were sired by Thomas Jefferson. Because of this, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation states:

Based on documentary, scientific, statistical, and oral history evidence, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and most historians believe that, years after his wife’s death, Thomas Jefferson became the father of the six children of Sally Hemings who are mentioned in Jefferson's records.

The narrowing down is based off of documentary evidence, statistics, oral history, and the DNA evidence. The DNA evidence isn't everything; it's only when we coupled it to the historical record (which includes oral history) that we can get the picture.

Consider: there is no record of Sally Hemings ever telling anyone that Thomas Jefferson was the father of any of her children.

Other than that oral tradition that I mentioned? Oh, wait, it's an oral tradition, that probably doesn't count.

There is no record of anyone having seen anything, even the subtlest glance, pass between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.

There were rumors of such of a relationship published in 1802 by James Callender. He also never actually apologized for those rumors. Just saying.

Additionally, if there were witnesses, many of them might have been slaves, who don't often show up in the historical record for obvious reasons.

There is almost no evidence that Sally Hemings existed at all. In his thousands of letters and farm books where Jefferson kept accounts, there are only a handful of references to Hemings, all of them perfunctory—food distribution lists and the like.

... HOLY CRAP. *implodes*

OKAY, AUTHOR? SHE WAS A SLAVE. SLAVES OFTEN DON'T SHOW UP IN THE HISTORICAL RECORD BECAUSE THEY WERE LITERALLY PROPERTY AND NOT CONSIDERED PERSONS. SHE WAS A SLAAAAAAAAVE. SHE WAS AN ENSLAVED BLACK WOMAN LIVING IN THE 18TH CENTURY. DO YOU KNOW HOW THIS WORKS????

ALSO, IF THIS IS ABOUT HOW JEFFERSON DOESN'T MENTION HAVING A RELATIONSHIP WITH HER IN HIS LETTERS, HERE'S A THOUGHT. WHILE WHITE SLAVEOWNERS DID OFTEN HAVE SEX WITH THEIR SLAVES, THIS IS STILL A TIME PERIOD WHERE BLACK PEOPLE WERE LITERALLY SEEN AS PROPERTY AND INFERIOR TO WHITE PEOPLE. YOU DON'T GENERALLY GO AROUND ADMITTING THAT YOU'RE RAPING YOUR SLAVES BECAUSE THAT MAKES YOU LOOK BAD FOR WANTING TO HAVE SEX WITH A BLACK PERSON OH NOES. THAT'S WHY THE CALLENDER ACCUSATIONS WERE CONSIDERED DAMNING.

Also? WE KNOW FOR SURE SHE GODDAMN EXISTED.

*walks away for a bit*
*comes back much calmer*

Okay.

Consider, too, that at the time Eston was conceived, Thomas Jefferson was 64 years of age and halfway through his second term as president of the United States.

Because clearly men experience something akin to menopause and stop producing sperm before they reach 64! /s

Ponder as well that his bedroom, on the main floor of the home at Monticello, opened to the center rooms of the house, which had as many as 50 overnight visitors at a time when Jefferson was president and spending time there. That meant Jefferson’s daughters, their husbands, and his grandchildren were usually staying at Monticello.

Because clearly, the only place he'd ever have sex would be in his main bedroom!

In an 1858 letter to her husband, Jefferson’s granddaughter, Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge, wrote of the near-physical impossibility of any relations between her grandfather and Sally Hemings, saying, “His apartment had no private entrance not perfectly accessible and visible to all the household. No female domestic ever entered his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be there and none could have entered without being exposed to the public gaze.”

BECAUSE HIS OFFICIAL DESCENDANTS DENIED THAT HE FATHERED KIDS WITH HEMINGS UNTIL AFTER THE 1990s!!!!!!!! THE HISTORICAL CONSENSUS CAN CHANGE!!!!!!! HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THIS????

I give up. I need a shower. I feel so dirty. :(