A Letter from Sally Hemings to Annette Gordon-Reed

Dearest Ms. Gordon-Reed:

If permitted to embrace fantasy and momentarily suspend time I would welcome the opportunity to spend the afternoon with you, nurse a cup of tea and discuss a persistent, but distressing theme in your acclaimed book The Hemingses of Monticello.

You seem to posit and wholeheartedly assert the misleading notion that Mr. Jefferson and I were willfully party to a purely-conceived, tacit love affair that unfortunate social circumstance and context disallowed. Problematically, you suggest that our love was a romance of epic proportion that could not be bound by social convention, law or even time. Aye! How I wish our tangled lives were so naively innocent and benign.

Please know that I am flattered and humbled by your determined interest in my earthly days. I found your painstaking research incredibly meticulous and remarkably accurate. However, please allow me to interject a wee but significant bit of truth to your thesis.

Love is such a curious matter -- a 21st century pre-occupation at best. And love was certainly not a fancy that any well-intentioned slave woman entertained. As instructed by my mother, Elizabeth, I reserved any cursory consideration of love for my beloved children – and my children alone. My primary preoccupation and concern was maintaining the wellbeing I had grown accustomed to and securing those comforts for my offspring. As Mr. Jefferson’s highly regarded and special companion I was spared the unsolicited advances of other men, maintained my familial residence at Monticello, lived comfortably amongst my children without the fear that they would be sold and jettisoned from their birthplace and, of course, secured freedom for them all.

You suggest that I returned to the States when I could have remained free in France, but neglect to address that I was tethered to him – Mr. Jefferson secured my living arrangements, obtained my immunizations, purchased my clothes, maintained my social engagements and taught me French. Please do not knowingly impart 21st century notions of agency on a 19th century slave woman. I could not fathom that staying in France would have been liberating – literally and figuratively. Quite simply I was sixteen years old, pregnant and afraid. And I wanted to return to my mother … surely you understand. Of course, Mr. Jefferson wanted me to return with him … I was familiar, young, unquestioning, adoring, reverent.

Certainly you are familiar with Mr. Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. Mr. Jefferson did not have to pen such a scathing, unsolicited treatise, but he did. And, most notably, Thomas wrote it because he earnestly believed those assertions to be true. Although I was only a child when it was written, my relationship with Mr. Jefferson never altered those opinions. Mr. Jefferson founded a university, brokered the largest acquisition of land in American history, penned the Declaration of Independence and repeatedly, publicly denigrated my ancestry and the ancestry of our children; he repeatedly, publicly (but not convincingly) denied our relationship. At best, Thomas was disconcerted, torn and uncruel … but loving? No Ms. Gordon-Reed, this was not a relationship predicated upon love.

And ultimately, this unnecessary “love query” is meaningless. Ah! Perhaps a white man ‘loved’ a colored girl – but this topic does not flatter or enlarge me – it is of much greater importance to Mr. Jefferson’s legacy than mine. This query absolves Thomas, humanizes slavery, allows a more benevolent opinion of Colored/White relations, and champions an institution rife with maltreatment, torture and everything tragic and inhuman.

If Mr. Jefferson truly loved me – why wasn’t I freed upon his death? Instead I was left to scavenge for his glasses and shoe buckles – paternal trinkets to pass on to our children. Monticello would have been the only suitable testament of an unbridled love that spanned decades -- not mere trinkets.

If Mr. Jefferson had really loved me, perhaps I could have penned this note myself – and been taught to properly read and write. Maybe our children would not have been forced to leave their estate and birthright to seek subterfuge in another state. Perhaps the direct descendants of an American president would not have had to choose between passing as White or living as admonished Coloreds.

I was enslaved by my own father and enslaved by the father of my children. I knew Mr. Jefferson well -- perhaps better than most -- but our bond should never be cast under the pronouncement of love or anything noble and sacred.


Sincerely,

Sally Hemings



Questions:

What does Ms. Gordon-Reed’s book tell us about animosity and social tensions between White women and women of color? Does this legacy have any bearing on contemporary quarrels suggesting that White women are ‘taking’ eligible men of color?

Why is the Sally Hemings story significant? Does it offer a broad commentary on a uniquely American experience? Does it demonstrate the chasm in the legitimacy and acceptance of oral histories for American Whites vs. Peoples of Color? Is it that an American president sustained a substantive relationship with an African-American woman?