Letter addressed to Thomas Jefferson from Annette Gordon-Reed

Dear Thomas Jefferson,

Although you have been deceased for well over a century now, in recent years, many questions have surfaced about your position on race and slavery in eighteenth and nineteenth century America. Americans have debated, researched, and contested allegations that you maintained a long-time romantic relationship with your slave Sally Hemings. Evidence has shown that you even bore children with her. However, even though others have maintained that sexual abuse was a central component of the institution of slavery in America for African American women, your written records tell a more complicated story about your relationship to Sally and your half-black family. While this letter will remain with me since you are deceased, I thought that it was important that I layout my thoughts and conclusions concerning your understandings of race and slavery.

After reading through your Notes on the State of Virginia many times over the past several years, I am struck and perplexed by your discussion of slaves in your query on laws. I am convinced that you provide several indirect references to Sally and the larger Hemings family. For example, in terms of inheritance, you proposed that slaves should be “distributed among next of kin.” If I am correct that you were drawing from personal experiences when you were writing “Laws,” I am convinced that perhaps your connection to the Hemings and your children with Sally encouraged you to think critically and sympathetically about the status of the enslaved after a master’s death.

In addition, although individuals of mixed-race ancestry were viewed as degenerates, you appear to make a different argument. According to your query on laws, mixed-race black Americans are actually superior in comparison their non-mixed counter-parts. I assume that you were reflecting on the futures of your own mixed-race children with Sally and how their lives would be radically different than their white siblings.

Thomas, I have gotten to know you very well through your written records over the last several years. You were definitely a very complex man who attempted to make sense of very complicated ideas about race during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. My goal is to further uncover the pieces of your life that will help twenty-first century Americans better understand how race governed your world.

Sincerely,

Annette Gordon-Reed

Questions:

1) Are the passages about slavery in Notes on the State of Virginia influenced by Thomas Jefferson’s personal experiences? Can we locate a possible relationship with the Hemingses within this document?

2) How does Annette Gordon-Reed’s book encourage readers to think more critically about mixed-race identity in America?