Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (Appendix III)
- The Left Spins Another Yarn to Trash the Founders -
(Third in the "Shining City" Series)
by Robert L. Pyles, MD
November 2024
* * SEE BONUS VIDEO WITH WALLBUILDERS' DAVID BARTON BELOW * *
---
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Appendix I
Appendix II
Appendix III
---
Final Observations on the Scholars Commission Report
Introduction
The following is a response to the question I had raised earlier in Appendix I. Namely, why did the Report by the Monticello Foundation completely ignore the Scholars Commission Report, even though the Scholars Commission Report was much more thorough and authoritative than the Foundation Report?
I am honored to have Dr. Robert Turner, Distinguished Fellow at the UVA Center for National Security Law until his 2020 retirement and Chair of the Scholars Commission, contribute his comments to this report.
As Dr. Turner pointed out to me, the initial issue was that the Foundation study came out fourteen months before the authoritative and far more detailed Scholars Commission study was released. [1] Unfortunately, the Foundation Study was seriously flawed, as I have described, and the Foundation did subsequently completely and forever, ignore the study of the Scholars Commission. However, even the Foundation Study contained a “Minority Report” by Dr. White M. Wallenborn strongly disagreeing with their conclusions. [2]
Dr. Turner explains the complicated system of groups involved in managing and studying Monticello as follows:
Discussion
The Scholars Commission Report emphasizes what I had described earlier, namely that in the absence of any information from Sally Hemings herself, later generations of her family line filled in the void, and essentially “made up” a desirable mythology, which everyone came to believe.
The reason this bears repeating, is that it answers the question as to why the obviously definitive Scholars report on the Jefferson-Hemings situation has been completely ignored. As I suggested, it came up with the ‘wrong’ conclusion - a politically and racially incorrect conclusion.
Dr. Robert Turner points out that were two lines of DNA testing, one involving the descendants of Thomas Woodson, a former slave who, after Jefferson’s death, claimed to have been the child of Jefferson and the enslaved Sally Hemings. But DNA tests of his descendants established Woodson could not have been the child of Thomas Jefferson. The one descendant of Sally’s youngest son Eston Hemings did show a probable connection to one of the more than two-dozen Jefferson males known to have been in Virginia at the time but, not having a DNA sample from President Jefferson, the tests could not identify which Jefferson probably fathered Eston. But Eston’s descendants passed down the story that his father was not the president, but “an uncle” (until they were told otherwise by an anti-Jefferson professor in the 1970s). Thomas Jefferson’s much younger brother Randolph was known by the family and Monticello slaves as “Uncle Randolph” because he was the uncle of daughter Martha, who ran the plantation when Jefferson was in the White House. The Scholars Commission report documented that Randolph was likely at Monticello when Eston was conceived. Randolph was documented in the book Memories of a Monticello Slave to have spent his evenings at Monticello playing his fiddle and “dancing half the night” with the slave women.
The Scholars Commission report noted that Eston's descendants altered their families’ oral tradition to remove the story that he was fathered by “an uncle” after Professor Fawn Brodie assured them that Thomas Jefferson was Eston's father. After her book was published, Brodie even went so far as to contact the family, to push her thesis.
In fact, it seems to have been Brodie’s book and the contact with her, that radically changed the opinion of the Hemings family that they had been descended from a Jefferson “uncle”, to an absolute conviction that they had been descended from Thomas Jefferson himself.
What makes this so important is that “The Monticello Association” then risked intense rage and charges of racism, if they accepted the conclusions of the Scholars Commission that there had been no intimate relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Professor Turner actually attended a meeting in May of 2002 of the Monticello Association, during which an enraged member of the Hemings family shouted out that the Scholars Commission had been “funded by the KKK!”
Professor Turner goes on to report that any further questioning of the Jefferson-Hemings relationship was immediately met with charges of bigotry, and threats to go to the press with scurrilous accusations of racism.
To sum up, Dr. Turner states: “a truly disturbing McCarthyist-like inquisition has cast its pall over Jefferson scholarship today. Questioning the validity of the claim has been equated with the denigration of African-Americans and the denial of their rightful place in American history. In this climate of scholarly and public opinion, it requires great personal courage for scholars to question the Jefferson paternity thesis and to point out the dubious historical record on which it rests.”
Elsewhere in the report (pg. 291), he writes: “for many, acceptance of the paternity thesis has become a kind of litmus test for ‘politically correct’ views: those of us who continue to question it have been denounced as racially insensitive, if not racists.”
To further complicate matters, administrative changes have occurred at Monticello itself, and employees who supported this earlier, more moderate position, appear to have been replaced by those who support the Jefferson paternity thesis. Very recently, further changes to administrators have occurred, to others who very well may be even more committed to this belief.
All these matters considered, it becomes quite understandable, if unfortunate, that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation has taken the strained position that it has.
Dr. Turner also notes that at U Va, the University that Thomas Jefferson founded, “[1]I don't think Monticello has any formal role with U Va tours, however in a related matter the tours given to visiting potential students have become horribly anti-Jefferson and generally anti-U Va. The Jefferson Council, with which I have been involved, helped lead the fight and the University has recently made changes to that system. We had received a number of reports from visitors that the anti-Jefferson tone of the tours dissuaded them from applying”.
Dr. Turner reports further: “For many decades, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Chair of History at the University of Virginia was held first by the legendary Dumas Malone, whose six-volume biography of Jefferson, “Jefferson and His Time”, won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1975; and then by Merrill Peterson, who until his death in 2009 was widely regarded as the greatest living scholar of Jefferson’s life. After Peterson retired in 1989, the chair was filled by Peter Onuf, whom no one would call a great admirer of America’s third President.”
Professor Onuf is quoted on pages 41 and 398 as having this as his approach: “We don’t need proof. We are historians, we write history the way we want to.”
Conclusion
Thus, we have answered the question we posed at the beginning - the Thomas Jefferson Foundation has completely, and probably deliberately, ignored the Report of the Scholars Commission, probably because they do not want to be met with rage, fury, hatred, and, yes, charges of racism.
As stated elsewhere in the text, what makes all of these matters a great deal more than simply an intellectual exercise, is the deadly malevolent motive behind it - to destroy the character, reputation, and influence of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. To destroy him, is to destroy the Declaration itself, and thereby, go a long way toward destroying our Country.
As explained further in the text, this is part of a widespread, deliberate, and concentrated effort to destroy the entire legacy on which our Country is based. The same attacks are taking place at the home of James Madison, author of our Constitution, University of Virginia (founded by Jefferson), Colonial Williamsburg, and many other honored historical sites.
__________________
Footnotes
[1] The original report was released as a spiral-bound photocopy on 12 April 2001, but the “published” book did not come out until 2011.
[2] Dr. Wallenborn passed away in October of 2024.
- The Left Spins Another Yarn to Trash the Founders -
(Third in the "Shining City" Series)
by Robert L. Pyles, MD
November 2024
* * SEE BONUS VIDEO WITH WALLBUILDERS' DAVID BARTON BELOW * *
---
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Appendix I
Appendix II
Appendix III
---
Final Observations on the Scholars Commission Report
Introduction
The following is a response to the question I had raised earlier in Appendix I. Namely, why did the Report by the Monticello Foundation completely ignore the Scholars Commission Report, even though the Scholars Commission Report was much more thorough and authoritative than the Foundation Report?
I am honored to have Dr. Robert Turner, Distinguished Fellow at the UVA Center for National Security Law until his 2020 retirement and Chair of the Scholars Commission, contribute his comments to this report.
As Dr. Turner pointed out to me, the initial issue was that the Foundation study came out fourteen months before the authoritative and far more detailed Scholars Commission study was released. [1] Unfortunately, the Foundation Study was seriously flawed, as I have described, and the Foundation did subsequently completely and forever, ignore the study of the Scholars Commission. However, even the Foundation Study contained a “Minority Report” by Dr. White M. Wallenborn strongly disagreeing with their conclusions. [2]
Dr. Turner explains the complicated system of groups involved in managing and studying Monticello as follows:
- The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (previously known as the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation) - This group owns and runs Monticello, and is primarily concerned with preserving the Jeffersonian heritage (even though, in my opinion, they wobble quite a bit).
- The Monticello Association - This is open to membership by individuals who can prove they are direct descendants of Thomas Jefferson.
- The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society - Established in January 2000, to address questions raised by the Annette Gordon-Reed book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. This was the group that commissioned the definitive “Scholar’s Commission Report”, chaired by Dr. Turner. This report was initiated in 2000, released to the media a year later, and was published in book form by Carolina Academic Press in 2011. This same group also sponsored an important conference on the same subject in November of 2013, at the University of Virginia. Although the conference did not publish a consensus statement, it certainly seemed that most of the speakers supported the conclusions of the Commission.
Discussion
The Scholars Commission Report emphasizes what I had described earlier, namely that in the absence of any information from Sally Hemings herself, later generations of her family line filled in the void, and essentially “made up” a desirable mythology, which everyone came to believe.
The reason this bears repeating, is that it answers the question as to why the obviously definitive Scholars report on the Jefferson-Hemings situation has been completely ignored. As I suggested, it came up with the ‘wrong’ conclusion - a politically and racially incorrect conclusion.
Dr. Robert Turner points out that were two lines of DNA testing, one involving the descendants of Thomas Woodson, a former slave who, after Jefferson’s death, claimed to have been the child of Jefferson and the enslaved Sally Hemings. But DNA tests of his descendants established Woodson could not have been the child of Thomas Jefferson. The one descendant of Sally’s youngest son Eston Hemings did show a probable connection to one of the more than two-dozen Jefferson males known to have been in Virginia at the time but, not having a DNA sample from President Jefferson, the tests could not identify which Jefferson probably fathered Eston. But Eston’s descendants passed down the story that his father was not the president, but “an uncle” (until they were told otherwise by an anti-Jefferson professor in the 1970s). Thomas Jefferson’s much younger brother Randolph was known by the family and Monticello slaves as “Uncle Randolph” because he was the uncle of daughter Martha, who ran the plantation when Jefferson was in the White House. The Scholars Commission report documented that Randolph was likely at Monticello when Eston was conceived. Randolph was documented in the book Memories of a Monticello Slave to have spent his evenings at Monticello playing his fiddle and “dancing half the night” with the slave women.
The Scholars Commission report noted that Eston's descendants altered their families’ oral tradition to remove the story that he was fathered by “an uncle” after Professor Fawn Brodie assured them that Thomas Jefferson was Eston's father. After her book was published, Brodie even went so far as to contact the family, to push her thesis.
In fact, it seems to have been Brodie’s book and the contact with her, that radically changed the opinion of the Hemings family that they had been descended from a Jefferson “uncle”, to an absolute conviction that they had been descended from Thomas Jefferson himself.
What makes this so important is that “The Monticello Association” then risked intense rage and charges of racism, if they accepted the conclusions of the Scholars Commission that there had been no intimate relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Professor Turner actually attended a meeting in May of 2002 of the Monticello Association, during which an enraged member of the Hemings family shouted out that the Scholars Commission had been “funded by the KKK!”
Professor Turner goes on to report that any further questioning of the Jefferson-Hemings relationship was immediately met with charges of bigotry, and threats to go to the press with scurrilous accusations of racism.
To sum up, Dr. Turner states: “a truly disturbing McCarthyist-like inquisition has cast its pall over Jefferson scholarship today. Questioning the validity of the claim has been equated with the denigration of African-Americans and the denial of their rightful place in American history. In this climate of scholarly and public opinion, it requires great personal courage for scholars to question the Jefferson paternity thesis and to point out the dubious historical record on which it rests.”
Elsewhere in the report (pg. 291), he writes: “for many, acceptance of the paternity thesis has become a kind of litmus test for ‘politically correct’ views: those of us who continue to question it have been denounced as racially insensitive, if not racists.”
To further complicate matters, administrative changes have occurred at Monticello itself, and employees who supported this earlier, more moderate position, appear to have been replaced by those who support the Jefferson paternity thesis. Very recently, further changes to administrators have occurred, to others who very well may be even more committed to this belief.
All these matters considered, it becomes quite understandable, if unfortunate, that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation has taken the strained position that it has.
Dr. Turner also notes that at U Va, the University that Thomas Jefferson founded, “[1]I don't think Monticello has any formal role with U Va tours, however in a related matter the tours given to visiting potential students have become horribly anti-Jefferson and generally anti-U Va. The Jefferson Council, with which I have been involved, helped lead the fight and the University has recently made changes to that system. We had received a number of reports from visitors that the anti-Jefferson tone of the tours dissuaded them from applying”.
Dr. Turner reports further: “For many decades, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Chair of History at the University of Virginia was held first by the legendary Dumas Malone, whose six-volume biography of Jefferson, “Jefferson and His Time”, won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1975; and then by Merrill Peterson, who until his death in 2009 was widely regarded as the greatest living scholar of Jefferson’s life. After Peterson retired in 1989, the chair was filled by Peter Onuf, whom no one would call a great admirer of America’s third President.”
Professor Onuf is quoted on pages 41 and 398 as having this as his approach: “We don’t need proof. We are historians, we write history the way we want to.”
Conclusion
Thus, we have answered the question we posed at the beginning - the Thomas Jefferson Foundation has completely, and probably deliberately, ignored the Report of the Scholars Commission, probably because they do not want to be met with rage, fury, hatred, and, yes, charges of racism.
As stated elsewhere in the text, what makes all of these matters a great deal more than simply an intellectual exercise, is the deadly malevolent motive behind it - to destroy the character, reputation, and influence of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. To destroy him, is to destroy the Declaration itself, and thereby, go a long way toward destroying our Country.
As explained further in the text, this is part of a widespread, deliberate, and concentrated effort to destroy the entire legacy on which our Country is based. The same attacks are taking place at the home of James Madison, author of our Constitution, University of Virginia (founded by Jefferson), Colonial Williamsburg, and many other honored historical sites.
__________________
Footnotes
[1] The original report was released as a spiral-bound photocopy on 12 April 2001, but the “published” book did not come out until 2011.
[2] Dr. Wallenborn passed away in October of 2024.
More on the Sally Hemings Controversy with Historian David Barton (starting ~ 14:50)