| Episodes |
Reviving the Past [AGR 8-16]
Brian Day
[1] After many years of debate, the Jefferson-Hemings controversy had become nothing more than a game for scholars -- an endless bout of he-said, she-said. But when Annette Gordon-Reed's Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy was first published, it was once more the case of the century. Here we had a black woman debunking past white scholars, reanimating old arguments, and successfully bringing new points to the table. And of these points, one was the testimony of Madison Hemings about his ancestry and relation to our third president. For too long his statement had been ignored, unjustly written off as falsified and questionably motivated, all on account of racist generalizations. However, Gordon-Reed saw through these stereotypes and the lack of specifics and, therefore, in an attempt to revive his words as valid evidence, challenged the baseless arguments, separating Hemings from the stereotypes that plagued his testimony.
[2] Right away, Gordon-Reed presents "the two chief means of attacking the statement that Hemings gave the Pike County (Ohio) Republican in 1873" (8). The first, which she identifies as questioning S.F. Wetmore, the journalists and publisher who took the statement, she whisks away easily. Given his previous job as a census taker and current position as publisher, she rightfully asserts that Wetmore had all the means and opportunity to get this story. She also adds that such missions were common among former abolitionists and that his motivation does not spoil his validity. Furthermore, she charges that "this mode of attack does not deal with the substance of what Hemings said" (10). Rather, it is with the second means of attack, the constant degradation of Hemings, where Gordon-Reed focuses her response.
[3] Gordon-Reed's main issue regarding the arguments against Hemings is "the easy manner with which historians make the black people in the story whatever they want or need them to be, on the basis of no stated evidence" (11). In this situation, it is the stereotypical depiction of Hemings as a dull-witted black man lacking any sense of morals. Not only is this "on the basis of no stated evidence," but, as she would later prove, it is flatly wrong. Even so, Jefferson defenders continued to use this characterization of Hemings when trying to refute his report. Using the editor of the Waverly Watchman, John A. Jones, as an example, Gordon-Reed accentuates the inherent racism that underpins all the faulty rationalizations. Jones, in an incredibly half-hearted attempt at concealed bigotry, says it was "a well know peculiarity of the colored race . . . [to] lay claim to illustrious parentage" (12). In addition to chastising him for his use of discriminatory blanket statements of "alleged" characteristics, Gordon-Reed underscores the difference between Wetmore's publication and Jones's, propounding it as "the difference between a legitimate dispute with an individual -- which is always allowable -- and an expression of racial prejudice, which is never" (13). To her credit, Gordon-Reed admits that finding such an article in 1873 is no shocking revelation, but she takes issue with the fact that "in 1975 his editorial would be reproduced as the last word on this subject without any comment about the tenor of Jones's remarks" (13).
[4] In response to this mode of attack, Gordon-Reed finally breaks Hemings away from the stereotypes littered throughout the controversy. She notes that at the time of the interview Hemings had been free for forty-seven years and that "no one can simply assume that he would have allowed himself to be a pawn in Wetmore's game" (11). Moreover, and in a mockery of the Jefferson defenders, she concedes to Dumas Malone and Stephen A. Hochman's (Jefferson defenders) "entirely legitimate point that ‘any document must be viewed by the historian in the actual setting of time and place'" and begins to show that, if anything, Hemings' situation would have deterred him from speaking at all, rather than encouraging a lie (11).
[5] Despite being a skilled carpenter, Hemings lived in an environment generally hostile towards black Americans. Although Hemings was not the only black person exposing past experiences, Gordon-Reed makes the seemingly obvious argument that for a black man in this environment entrusting a story like this to a prominent paper would have been a potentially dangerous move. If simply telling the truth were risky, then fabricating a lie would have certainly netted nothing, only reinforcing the idea that he spoke the truth. Gordon-Reed continues by providing additional reasons, notwithstanding the obvious, as to why he would have spoken at all. Given his brother Eston's relatively high regard as a musician with the white men of the community, Madison would likely have had a gauge on the reaction to such an account, and that knowing he would not be highly scrutinized allowed him to feel safe to do so. She even contends that it is known the people of the community had heard about his possible relationship to Jefferson before, albeit to varying degrees of detail, meaning that while powerful, his testimony was not earth-shattering news to the people immediately surrounding him. As Gordon-Reed concludes, "the additional information about Madison and Eston Hemings [. . .] not sought or analyzed by any of the Jefferson scholars or defenders who first wrote on this subject, helps to explain why Madison Hemings would have felt safe speaking to a newspaper about this matter" (16). Instead, the Jefferson defenders' "only recourse was to appeal to [their] readership through the use of negative stereotypes about blacks in general" (14).
[6] As history would reiterate, racism did not end with slavery. But for all those involved with the controversy, it seemed as if Gordon-Reed was the first to remind them of this fact. No more was she going to going to let the Jefferson scholars get by with stereotype-driven arguments that they would no doubt be flippant about if the situation were reversed. Instead, she protests the idea and saves this long forgotten evidence. However, for Gordon-Reed, this was only the beginning of a series of points that would turn the Jefferson-Hemings controversy on its head. More watertight points were to follow, and, unlike the Jefferson defenders of the past, she was not going to simply invent her points but base them on logic and substantial evidence.
