thomas jefferson and sally hemings an american controversy

In September 1802, political journalist James T. Based on documentary, scientific, statistical, and oral history evidence, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) Research Committee Report on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (January 2000) remains the most comprehensive analysis of this historical topic.ĭetail from Callender's 1802 piece on Jefferson and Sally Hemings The claim that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman at Monticello, entered the public arena during Jefferson's first term as president, and it has remained a subject of discussion and disagreement for two centuries. Jefferson did not grant freedom to any other enslaved family unit.

Decades later, Jefferson freed all of Sally Hemings’s children – Beverly and Harriet left Monticello in the early 1820s Madison and Eston were freed in his will and left Monticello in 1826. While in Paris, where enslaved people could petition for their freedom, she negotiated with Jefferson to return to enslavement at Monticello in exchange for “extraordinary privileges” for herself and freedom for her unborn children. Sally Hemings worked for two and a half years (1787-89) in Paris as a domestic servant and maid in Jefferson’s household. Four survived to adulthood and are mentioned in Jefferson’s plantation records: Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston Hemings. Years after his wife’s death, Thomas Jefferson fathered at least six of Sally Hemings’s children.

Thomas jefferson and sally hemings an american controversy