Jefferson–Hemings controversy

The Jefferson–Hemings controversy is a historical debate over whether there was a sexual relationship between the widowed Thomas Jefferson and his much younger slave and sister-in-law, Sally Hemings, and whether he fathered some or all of her six recorded children. For more than 150 years, most historians denied rumors that he had sex with a slave. Based on his grandson's report, they said that one of his nephews had been the father of Hemings's children. The opinion of historians began to shift in the second half of the 20th century, and by the 21st century and after DNA tests of descendants, most historians agree that Jefferson was the father of one or more of Sally's children.

In the 1850s, Jefferson's eldest grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, told historian Henry Randall that the late Peter Carr, a married nephew of Jefferson's (the son of his sister), had fathered Hemings' children; Randolph asked Randall to refrain from addressing the issue in his biography. Randall passed on this information to James Parton, another historian. Parton published the Carr story, and major historians of Jefferson generally denied Jefferson's paternity for nearly 150 years. In 1953, new documentation related to this issue was published and studied by historians. In the 1970s, biographer Fawn M. Brodie suggested Jefferson had been the father of Hemings' children. In 1997, the controversy was reopened when Annette Gordon-Reed published an analysis of the historiography on this issue, deconstructing previous versions and detailing oversights and bias. That year Ken Burns released his documentary on Jefferson as a PBS series, highlighting the debate and conflicting viewpoints. A changed consensus emerged after a Y chromosome DNA analysis was done in 1998, which showed a match between a descendant of the Jefferson family male line, a descendant of Field Jefferson, and a descendant of Eston Hemings, Sally's youngest son. It showed no match between the Carr line and the Hemings descendant.

In the majority view, the DNA evidence is consistent with Jefferson being the father of Eston Hemings, plus the historical evidence favors Jefferson's paternity for all of Hemings' children. In June 2018, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, with introduction of the new exhibit on Sally Hemings, asserted the relationship is "settled historical matter".

Jefferson became a widower at age 39 in 1782. He never remarried and died in 1826. Sally Hemings, a "quadroon" (3⁄4 white), was his much younger slave and a likely half-sister of his wife. According to oral tradition of the latter's descendants, the then recently widowed Thomas Jefferson previously had a sexual relation with her sister Mary and fathered at least one of her children. In 1787, when Hemings was 14, she accompanied his daughter Maria to Paris, where Jefferson was serving as the American ambassador to France. Hemings and Jefferson are believed to have started a sexual relationship at some time before 1789, when the 16 year-old returned with him to Monticello. Most historians now believe that this relationship lasted nearly four decades, until Jefferson's death, and that he fathered six children by Hemings.

Four of Hemings' children survived to adulthood. In the antebellum period, hers would have been called a shadow family. Sally Hemings was also the child of a shadow family. Historians believe her father to have been John Wayles, Jefferson's father-in-law, who as a widower had a 12-year liaison with his mulatta slave Betty Hemings and fathered six children with her. These children had three-quarters European, one-quarter African ancestry, and were half-siblings to Jefferson's wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. Sally Hemings was the youngest child of this shadow family. Jefferson former slave Isaac Jefferson described Sally as "mighty near white ... very handsome, long straight hair down her back."

Of the four Hemings children who survived to adulthood—Beverley Hemings, Harriet, Madison, and Eston Hemings—all but Madison Hemings eventually identified as white and lived as adults in white communities. Under the Virginia law of partus sequitur ventrem, because Sally Hemings was a slave, her children were also born enslaved. But the children were seven-eighths European, one-eighth African by ancestry. If free, they would have been considered legally white in Virginia of the time.

In 1802, the journalist James T. Callender, after being refused an appointment to a postmaster position by Jefferson and issuing veiled threats of "consequences," reported that Jefferson had fathered several children with a slave concubine named Sally. Others privately or publicly made the claim. Elijah Fletcher, the headmaster of the New Glasgow Academy (Amherst County, Virginia) visited Jefferson in 1811 and wrote in his diary:

Republicans as well as federalists in his own County dislike him and tell many anecdotes much to his disgrace—I confess I never had a very exalted opinion of his moral conduct—but from the information I gained of his neighbors, who must best know him—I have a much poorer one—The story of black Sal is no farce—That he cohabits with her and has a number of children by her is a sacred truth—and the worst of it is he keeps the same children slaves—an unnatural crime which is very common in these parts.