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Jefferson: The Father, the Grandfather, and the Master [AGR 127-33]

Brandi Klotz

with comment by Jason Pitonyak

[1] Gordon-Reed does not write a novel based on fictionalized facts and an embellished romance. She does not write about the history of Jefferson and his opinions regarding slavery and the races. Instead, she brings together all the arguments that were supposed to disprove the relationship between Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings and tries to shatter them. She uses facts and logical arguments in order to disprove the arguments made by Jefferson supporters. She analyzes the arguments that claim Jefferson was incapable of having this relationship and effectively makes them unrealistic.

[2] One of the main arguments against the Jefferson and Hemings relationship was that Jefferson was first and foremost a loving father as well as a grandfather (127-33). He had written countless letters to his family over the years. These letters were filled with such emotion and love that Jefferson supporters use them as evidence against the relationship. The love that he held for his children and grandchildren, as especially exhibited in these letters, would be a major detriment to his taking a slave as his concubine. Having a slave mistress was such a heinous act as to negate the love felt for a family, at least according to Jefferson supporters. Since they considered his love for his family unsurpassed by any other man, then he must be innocent. "But," Gordon-Reed asks, "are we to consider Jefferson's capacity to love as greater than what we would expect from an average person just because he had the ability to express his love through his many elegantly written letters to his family"? (127)

[3] Gordon-Reed finds this argument quite tenuous. No one can truly know of Jefferson's love for his family or how that made him act. No one knows what values Jefferson really held. The supporters of Jefferson, in this argument, impose their own system of values onto him. (see comment by Jason Pitonyak) They condemn him to the same biases they hold. However, Jefferson was his own man, and, as Gordon-Reed points out, we have no way of knowing if he Jefferson conformed to the same biased notions or if he took the path less traveled.

[4] Gordon-Reed points out that in those times "Miscegenation was a prevalent and inevitable part of slavery" (128). It was a common practice, so, by the original argument, many of the men of that time period would have been guilty of crimes against their families. However, we cannot condemn so many people of not loving their families. It is common to believe that most people love their children as well as grandchildren; if they didn't, they would not keep them at home and try to provide for them.

[5] Gordon-Reed takes it even further than that, bringing Jefferson's in laws' family history to light to prove the prevalence of miscegenation. "One has only to recite the family history of Jefferson's in-laws," she says, "to make the case that his engaging in miscegenation would not have produced the shock and angst in Jefferson's daughters and his grandchildren that historians would have us believe" (128). Elizabeth Hemings -- Sally's mother -- had been mistress to John Wayles, the father of Jefferson's wife, making Sally half-sister to Martha. When Wayles died, Martha brought Elizabeth and her children, including Sally, to Monticello, where they were favored house servants.

[6] Historians act as if Martha was blind to the fact that Elizabeth had been Wayles's mistress. Gordon-Reed says this would be "preposterous" to say. Martha had lived in the house with them. Jefferson, the slaves, Thomas Turner, a Virginian who later wrote on the Hemings situation, all knew, but Martha did not!? How would that make sense? She was the one that had lived with them and spent time with them. She would be the most likely one to know if anyone did. Martha must have known, claims Gordon-Reed. We cannot say she did not just because she did not treat Elizabeth and her children with hatred. Because Martha was able to accept the circumstances and even treat Elizabeth and the black children with caring, we can expect that Martha's own children would have grown up the same way. They would have taken after their mother and learned that it was okay and not something to be treated with hatred and disdain. We do not have to condemn her to the same jealousy and hatred as her daughter seemed to have in Jefferson in Paris.

[7] Gordon-Reed could have stopped there. She made her point very clear, but she continues on to bring in a further analogy to back up her argument: Jefferson's handling of the family financial matters. Jefferson caused great stress on his family through his immense debt and constant renovations and house guests. He knew of the immense load he placed on his family, but he still continued in his ways. This did not mean he did not love his family; he just had other concerns as well. He knew his family would always love him and that they would know he loved them. Gordon-Reed asserts that this financial mismanagement shows how he provided for his own needs even considering the rather dire ramifications on his family: "Thomas Jefferson felt the need to spend a lifetime building and rebuilding his houses and interacting with people. . . . That these needs contributed to his financial decline and sometimes caused his family great emotional distress was not enough to deter him from his course. The idea that he may have acted in a similar fashion in order to fulfill other needs cannot be easily discounted" (133).

[8] Gordon-Reed logically and clearly states her analysis of the argument of Jefferson supporters. She brings to light discrepancies and creates a counterpoint for every point in the original argument. Her argument effectively destroyed theirs.

Comments

Jason Pitonyak

To put Brandi's point about differing values on a personal level, my opinion on family values coming from a home with a married mother and father may be, and in all probability will be, completely different from one who comes from a family in which the parents are either divorced, engaging in external affairs, or are non-existent. It is ludicrous to think that one critic has the one and only true judgment of Jefferson's family values. Everyone has his or her own experiences and thus his or her own opinions.