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Gordon-Reed's Attack on the Character Defense [AGR 111-13]
Adam Baker
[1] Ever since the report of a relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings first debuted on the pages of the Richmond Recorder, hundreds of historians have contributed their opinions on this controversy. Many historians fight for the public image of Jefferson, arguing that Jefferson was too wholesome a gentleman, too much of a racist, or simply not bold enough to partake in a relationship with an African-American girl who was thirty years his minor; other historians simultaneously argue that the relationship was completely feasible. Instead of continuing this trend and merely stating her opinion of the viability of the relationship, Annette Gordon-Reed reevaluates the validity of many of the past historian's opinions in her book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. Gordon-Reed analyzes many past arguments used in the defense of Jefferson and discredits them in order to demonstrate her belief in the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings. In her analysis of past character defenses of Jefferson, Gordon-Reed argues that Hemings was considered a grown woman at the beginning of her relationship with Jefferson in order to discredit historians who claimed that Jefferson would not sleep with Hemings because it would be considered child molestation (111-13).
[2] Gordon-Reed begins this passage by discrediting the reliability of two historians who had defended Jefferson with the character defense. After defaming the pair, Gordon-Reed attacks the basic premise of the character defense of Jefferson: Jefferson would not have a relationship with Hemings because she was just a child. Gordon-Reed cites the fact that Jefferson "actively encouraged the relationship" between his friend James Madison and Catherine Floyd, Madison's fifteen-year-old love-interest (112). Gordon-Reed argues that if the relationship between Madison, who was thirty-one at the time, and Floyd was not taboo, then it would follow that Jefferson's relationship with Hemings was acceptable as well. Although this argument effectively establishes that Hemings was viewed as a mature woman at the time, its flaws prevent it from completely nullifying the character defense of Jefferson.
[3] Each of Gordon-Reed's attempts to dismember Jefferson's character defense are shallow and unconvincing to a person knowledgeable of the Jefferson-Hemings controversy. Her initial attacks on the two historians seem forced, nit-picky, and inconsequential: merely arguing for the sake of arguing. She attacks Mapp for citing an unnamed person's claim of Jefferson planning out his courtship of Hemings, but she never refutes or even identifies Mapp's original argument. She even goes as far as defending Fawn Brodie's speculative argument linking the number of times Jefferson uses the word "mulatto" to his courtship of Hemings, an argument that she prefaces by stating it is "admittedly problematic" (111). Both of these attacks are tangential to the point of the passage, the character defense of Jefferson. Instead, these critical assessments seem more like a ploy to establish her own superiority over past historians than a true attempt to strike down a defense of Jefferson. By avoiding the central idea of the passage and focusing on attacking random historians, Gordon-Reed attempts to destroy the credibility of all historians that support the character defense of Jefferson; however, the superficial nature of her attacks on these historians, whose true arguments are never revealed, cause these attempts to be futile and if anything puts the credibility of the rest of her arguments into question.
[4] After criticizing these historians for their flawed arguments, Gordon-Reed ironically attempts to relate the courtship of Madison and Floyd to the alleged relationship between Jefferson and Hemings. Just as her attacks on past historians are insignificant in the context of disputing Jefferson's character defense, so too is her effort to establish that Hemings was viewed as a mature woman at the time. Gordon-Reed's comparison of Madison and Floyd's relationship to Jefferson and Hemings' relationship is immediately flawed because of the monumental difference in the ages of the men. Although both women are approximately fifteen years old, Madison is thirty-one years old while Jefferson is forty-four. Gordon-Reed attempts to cast this aside quickly by stating that "child molestation . . . is judged by the age of the child," not of the adult, but the true question being asked is not whether child molestation occurred, it is whether a relationship between Jefferson and Hemings is feasible (112). When the huge difference in age between Jefferson and Hemings is compared to the gap between Madison and Floyd, it becomes apparent that the two relationships cannot be related. Additionally, Gordon-Reed points out that Madison attempted to marry Floyd, an action that Jefferson could never hope to reciprocate in his relationship Hemings. This comparison drawn by Gordon-Reed between the two relationships is clearly flawed, but even if this comparison was valid, Jefferson's approval of the relationship between Madison and Floyd does not necessarily make it socially acceptable at the time. Ironically, Gordon-Reed is trying to destroy the character defense of Jefferson in this passage while concurrently using his upright morals to prove her point.
[5] Although Gordon-Reed attempts to mask her bias by never outrightly stating her belief in the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings, her complete lack of criticism towards historians that believe in a relationship between Jefferson and Hemings causes this passage to lose the universal significance it could have attained. Had Gordon-Reed fairly critiqued both sides of Jefferson's character defense and then allowed the reader to come to his/her own conclusion regarding the feasibility of a relationship between Jefferson and Hemings, Gordon-Reed's passage would have transcended other past historian's writings in which they merely stated their claims. Instead, the overwhelming bias and incomplete analysis of the character defense of Jefferson renders Gordon-Reed's passage into another overlookable piece of writing in the vast ocean of literature concerning the Jefferson-Hemings controversy.
