Can We Trust Madison Hemings’ Testimony in the Putative Jefferson-Hemings Affair?

Harvard professor Annette Gordon-Reed—who has won numerous awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, for her book The Hemingses of Monticello (2009)—is widely acknowledged to be the world’s foremost authority on the nature of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his toothsome slave, Sally Hemings. In chapters 13 through 16 of that book and in several subsequent interviews and talks, she goes into considerable speculative detail—e.g., Jefferson seducing or perhaps even raping Hemings in Paris and Hemings, while pregnant, returning to Monticello with Jefferson—concerning how events likely unfolded between the two.

The skeleton she fleshes out for her story is the account of Sally’s son Madison Hemings in the Ohio paper, Pike County Republican (13 Mar. 1873), published by Samuel F. Wetmore. The memoir—titled “Life among the Lowly, No. 1,” and so patterned on Uncle Tom’s Cabin—was the first in a series of articles designed perhaps to revitalize a slumping newspaper. What bigger bomb could have been dropped than a story about Jefferson fathering a child by one of his slaves? States the 68-year-old Madison Hemings, “During that time [while Jefferson was minister to France] my mother became Mr. Jefferson’s concubine, and when he was called back home she was enciente [sic; Fr. enceinte; pregnant] by him.” He continues: “Soon after their arrival, she gave birth to a child, of whom Thomas Jefferson was the father. It lived but a short time. She gave birth to four others, and Jefferson was the father of all of them. Their names were Beverly, Harriet, Madison (myself), and Eston—three sons and one daughter.”

Yet Gordon-Reed has turned doubting the memoir into a racial issue. In Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Tragedy (1997), she notes that prior to the DNA results one year later which showed that Jefferson could be the father of Eston Hemings (Madison’s brother)—a relatively insubstantial claim—scholars have not taken seriously the memoir because Madison was black. Blacks have traditionally been marginalized because of their color. Her argument, fleshed out, is this:

1. White scholars have habitually ignored Madison’s testimony.
2. Doing that is racism.
3. So, all white scholars ignoring the testimony are racist (1 & 2).

Because of Gordon-Reed’s protestations concerning the marginalization of black figures by historians—and there is much to be said on behalf of those protestations—Madison Hemings’ memoir concerning Jefferson being his and his siblings’ father is nearly universally accepted today by Jeffersonian historians. So too are many other claims. Ought they to be? Is the issue overall one of color? What about evidence?

Much rides on the truthfulness or untruthfulness of key claims in Madison’s memoir. In his Literary Commonplace Book, Jefferson, commonplacing Lord Bolingbroke (§57), says:

A story circumstantially related, ought not to be received on the faith of tradition; since the last reflection on human nature is sufficient to shew how unsafely a system of facts and circumstances can be trusted for it’s preservation to memory alone, and for it’s conveiance to oral report alone; how liable it must be to all those alterations, which the weakness of the human mind must cause necessarily, and which the corruption of the human heart will be sure to suggest.

For history to be authentic, Jefferson, continuing to copy Bolingbroke, adds that “these are some of the conditions necessary” (CN₁–CN₄):

1. it must be writ by a cotemporary author, or by one who had cotemporary materials in his hands. 2. it must have been published among men who are able to judge of the capacity of th[e] author, and of the authenticity of the memorials on whic[h] he writ. 3. nothing repugnant to the universal experience of mankind must be contained in it. 4. the principal facts at least, which it contains, must be confirmed by collateral testimony, that is, by the testimony of thos[e] who had no common interest of country, of religion, or of profession, to disguise or falsify the truth.

What do we get if we apply Bolingbroke’s sensible “conditions necessary”—if necessary, they must be sensible—to Madison’s testimony?

CN₁ is not met.

Madison writes of events—e.g., his mother staying at Jefferson’s hotel in France and not with daughter Maria, Sally Hemings’s son Tom Jefferson’s birth back at Monticello and death shortly thereafter, Dolly Madison insisting on naming Madison at a visit to Monticello at the time of Madison’s birth—at which he was not present. Many of his claims are events that occurred prior to him being born. He was not an eyewitness, and thus could only have heard circumstantially of such events.

CN₂ is not met.

The publisher, Wetmore, was a Republican Party activist, and therefore, very likely anti-Jeffersonian. His paper would have had much to gain by publishing scandalous material about the deceased president. Moreover, the phrasing throughout strongly suggests either that Wetmore wrote the memoir, given orally to him by Madison, or that he greatly edited what Madison wrote. Gordon-Reed concedes the former. Madison admits in the testimony: “I learned to read by inducing the white children to teach me the letters and something more; what else I know of books I have picked up here and there till now I can read and write.” It seems clear that he did not write the memoir.

CN₃ is met.

What Bolingbroke aims at are claims that belie common human experiences—for instance, testimony of a human head growing on a tree stump or of Jesus vinifying water. There are questionable claims in the memoir—e.g., that Sally Hemings was pregnant upon returning to Monticello and that she bartered with Jefferson before returning with him (she threatened to stay in France, where she would be free, unless “her children should be freed at the age of twenty-one”)—and claims that are very likely false—e.g., that Dolley Madison “begged the privilege of naming me [Madison Hemings]” (she was likely in Washington at the time of Madison’s birth)—and still other claims that are manifestly false—e.g., that Jefferson “had but little taste or care for agricultural pursuits”—but there are no claims that belie common human experience.

Finally, CN₄ is not met.

The principal claims of Madison’s memoir are not vetted. They have not been confirmed independently by credible and dispassionate persons. They have instead been contradicted by eye-witnesses: e.g., Monticello overseer Edmund Bacon, who stated concerning Jefferson’s avowed paternity of Harriet Hemings [Sally’s daughter]: “She was not his daughter; she was *****’s daughter. I know that. I have seen him come out of her mother’s room many a morning when I went up to Monticello very early.” Bacon’s testimony is eye-witness; Hemings is telling of events that occurred prior to his birth. One must have a keen memory to recall things prior to one’s existence!

Given Gordon-Reed’s concession that Madison Hemings is “the most important historical witness” of the presumed liaison, we find that there are good reasons for doubting key claims of Madison’s testimony. The testimony fails to live up to three of Bolingbroke’s (and most likely Jefferson’s) four conditions necessary for authentic history.

Gordon-Reed and numerous other pro-paternity Jeffersonian scholars have stated that the DNA evidence by itself does not show Jefferson to be Eston’s father. It cannot. It only picks out Thomas Jefferson as a possible father, and there are other likely candidates such as brother Randolph Jefferson or his sons. Consequently, historical evidence must decide the issue, and as Gordon-Reed concedes, Madison Hemings’s testimony is the key piece of historical evidence. Thus, if there are good reasons for doubting the “testimony,” then historians are in no position to assert categorically or with likelihood that Jefferson was the father of Madison, or Eston, or any of Sally Hemings’s children. There are, I have shown, good Bolingbrokean reasons for doubting the testimony.

The question then becomes this: Why should we take Madison Hemings’ testimony as veridical? Gordon-Reed merely states that not to do so is racist, but that is not the sort of argument that ought to convince scholars, if truthful narratives are a desideratum. It is an argument from intimidation—argumentum ad baculum.

Thus, Gordon-Reed has cunningly brought race into the discussion, and race, especially today, is a polarizing issue. The issue concerning Jefferson’s paternity is, however, one of evidence, not of race. Gordon-Reed is right to assert that Madison Hemings’ testimony—if indeed what Wetmore published was Hemings’ testimony and not Wetmore’s narrative—ought not to be ignored because of Hemings’ race. Yet several scholars—e.g., I, Cynthia Burton, William Hyland, Robert Turner, many academic scholars from Turner’s Commission Report, and numerous others who are afraid to publish on the issue lest they be adjudged racist—have carefully examined Hemings’ testimony as well as all arguments pro and con on Jefferson’s avowed liaison and concluded that there are many flaws in the testimony and that it is unlikely that there was a liaison. Those arguments have typically fallen on deaf ears by the people running Monticello, on Onuf, and on his cronies.

All in all, the probative value of Madison’s testimony is scant, but it continues to be peddled by Gordon-Reed and other Onufians as the essential “ort” of historical datum to decide the issue in favor of pro-paternity. Scholars who disagree are racists.

The Onufians, however, have been more concerned with controlling the discourse on Jefferson than with veridical historiography. Following the dictum of Karl Marx—“the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it”—praxis trumps theory. What Gordon-Reed and other Onufians fail to grasp is that change, without sound theoretical backing—that is, without sound normative arguments undergirding it—is embrace of historiographical arbitrariness. Yet arbitrariness, they think, can be eschewed so long as we trust their hunches concerning the sort of stories that ought to be about Thomas Jefferson. In their stories, Thomas Jefferson is nowise an emulatable figure, but a hypocrite, racist, and rogue.

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M. Andrew Holowchak

M. Andrew Holowchak, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy and history, who taught at institutions such as University of Pittsburgh, University of Michigan, and Rutgers University, Camden. He is author/editor of over 70 books and over 325 published essays on topics such as ethics, ancient philosophy, science, psychoanalysis, and critical thinking. His current research is on Thomas Jefferson—he is acknowledged by many scholars to be the world’s foremost authority—and has published over 230 essays and 28 books on Jefferson. He also has numerous videos and two biweekly series with Donna Vitak, titled “One Work, Five Questions” and "The Real Thomas Jefferson," on Jefferson on YouTube. He can be reached at [email protected]

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