Talk:Thomas Jefferson/Archive 4

Citation needed
Can I get a source for this? Especially on Federalists being deeply religious? (This particular writing only futhered the enmity many Federalist party members already have against him since most of the Federalists were deeply religious.) - 12.135.134.146 15:45, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Cause of Death
Does anyone know what Jefferson died of? I don't think the article says. &mdash;Vivacissamamente 23:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Don't know. My fondest hope is that his two, black sons (and three more of his half-black children) and his concubine, all of whom he owned, formulated and executed a plan to brutally murder the horny, old hypocrite in his sleep, knowing that, per the agreement between Jefferson and Hemings, "the kids" would be freed upon his death.  But my guess is the old fart died of natural causes.  He was, after all, 83 -- a very long life in those days.  I guess that's what a life of having successive generations of hundreds of enslaved humans earning your living for you, toiling from can't see to can't see so that you can be a "gentleman planter" and devote yourself to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" will do fuyyah. deeceevoice 05:53, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * What the [fill in blank]? --Sparkhurst 05:58, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah. No justice.  My thoughts perzackly. deeceevoice 06:14, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure either but if you are interested in the medical history of Jefferson or any other president, check out this website. Regarding you deeceevoice, what a pity you and other individuals who share this disdain for Jefferson must unfairly view him through a prism erected by those who wish to discredit him. --Sparkhurst 06:24, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Uh, no. I view him through the prism of my own blackness.  I am a descendant of those people whom Jefferson, in his hypocrisy, owned and worked like draughthorses, and I insist on accuracy and balance.  I owe my ancestors that.  Before I made my notation in discussion a little over a year ago to this day, the discussion of the Hemings matter was desultory, inaccurate, somewhat superficial and clearly biased -- as was the article's treatment of none of your beeswax slavery issue itself.  Until my skimming of the article and subsequent edits a few days ago, the article contained (and still does) uncited information, as well as fairly fawning, silly language such as "fairly aglow" and such nonsense wholly inappropriate to this endeavor.  I mean honestly!


 * Did Jefferson accomplish great things? Yes.  Was he a flaming hypocrite who professed virtue and a belief in the God-given right of humankind to be free, but who profited and lived off the labors of a despised, brutalized and enslaved people so that he could devote himself to intellectual pursuits and live the good life?  Was he a slavemaster who, by certainly the modern definition of the term, raped the woman known as Sally Hemings, who bore him two sons he never acknowledged and kept them all as his personal property?  Yes and yes.  In his public life, he was a great man.  Privately, he was a leacherous, sleazoid, adulterous, slave-owning ["fill in the blank"] .  Had I been born in Jefferson's time, I could have been his property myself.  And I am a member of the "race" Jefferson "suspected" was innately inferior to whites.  And you presume to lecture me on "unfairly view[ing] him through a prism erected by those who wish to discredit him"?  ROTFLMBAO.  Hell, I'd say the glaring hyprocrisies of the man's life speak for themselves in that regard.  deeceevoice 07:03, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thomas Jefferson lived longer in years and had a much better life than Sally Hemings and her two sons. He was much loved then and is today. Does this make you angry? Don't let it bother you too much. Having such anger is not good for your health. Welsh4ever76 07:17, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

That's funny deeceevoice, I was always under the impression Jefferson treated his slaves well (better than Washington at the very least). As far as Sally Hemmings, only circumstantial evidence can be produced that he was the father of at least one of her many children, yet you insist he raped her! Why would he do that? That a man that was averse to having his slaves whipped could rape a woman who was purported to be his dead wife's half-sister, a woman who was nearly white (3/4 if I recall), is stretching the limits of reality. Perhaps he did father some or all of her children, but suggesting he raped her without any evidence to support this accusation is ludicrous. Since this is turning into a debate that has nothing to do with Vivacissamamente's request, I will leave it at that. While balance in the article is of the highest import, right now you are blinded by emotion and hopefully others will see as I do that you are out of control. 'Tis well. --Sparkhurst 07:22, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Why, thank you, Welsh. I'm touched that my health seems to concern you. Warm fuzzies to you, too, dear. :p And read my language about "rape." Hemings was in no position to refuse him, as she was a slave. Today, he would be considered a rapist. Did I write anywhere that Jefferon beat or tortured his slaves? No. But he denied them their freedom -- even those who were his own flesh and blood. Even the woman who bore them. And with regard to Jefferson's sensibilities, yes, Hemings was 3/4 white. What? That was supposed to make him less capable of taking advantage of her? It seems to be what you suggest. Well, not to my way of thinking. Her fair skin certainly didn't make her immune from servitude -- did it? (It didn't make her (even whiter) children by her slavemaster immune.) And read the information I inserted from www.monticello.org. Even their commission concluded that TJ was likely a slave f***er and the father of Hemings' six, fair-skinned children. And my reading of the nation's "founding fathers" tells me that they would have preferred death to enslavement, finding even being colonized an intolerable tyranny. What? Being deprived of the ownership of one's body is not cruelty? Being denied authority and control over one's children/offspring is not cruelty? Being denied the fruits of one's labors and having them usurped by another man so that he may read, travel, entertain and tend to his hobbies is not cruelty? Well, I suppose that's a matter of debate -- isn't it? I wonder how Jefferson himself would have characterized it were he on the receiving end of his own treatment. :p And, no. I'm not "blinded" by anything, nor am I "emotional" about Jefferson. In fact, IMO, my contributions to the article have made it more balanced, more thorough. The article has been improved by my contributions. deeceevoice 08:10, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * So you say you aren't emotional about the issue... You might want to rethink that. --Sparkhurst 09:38, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

White supremacy
Not in the least. My comments are calculated. Intense. Not emotional. It seems to me that those of you who can actually bring yourselves to write that a "suspicion" that blacks are inherently inferior to whites is not by its very nature a white supremacist notion are functioning more on emotion than reason. I, on the other hand, am simply calling it what it is. If you were writing about, say, Hitler, or David Duke, or George Wallace, or even Strom Thurmond, would you have the same reaction? Hell, the man owned slaves. deeceevoice 09:54, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Intense - to an extreme degree; very strong or acute; emotional. Awesome. --Sparkhurst 10:08, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Rather than examining what I am, you'd do better to spend your time addressing the issue of white supremacy in a more forthright, straightforward, focused -- and, yes, "strong or acute" (my meaning with "intense") manner. deeceevoice 10:16, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Frankly, I don't see the point. You have hijacked this article to spout off your point-of-view and any edits from a plethora of our fellow Wikipedians that is contrarian to your position is quickly reverted. Thus I am reduced to smartass replies such as my most recent comment. Also, I said above that, "Since this is turning into a debate that has nothing to do with Vivacissamamente's request, I will leave it at that." That is all I have to say. --Sparkhurst 10:33, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, at least you admit to your puerile conduct. But you're wrong. No one is forcing you; yours is merely a ridiculous excuse for failing to address a matter you'd rather not: the fact that Jefferson expressed white supremacist "suspicions." (I included a wiki link in case you need to look up the phrase.) I am at least trying to discuss the matter at hand up front, while you (and others) continue to sidestep it, while repeatedly reverting my inclusion of it. It's called tag-team edit warring. Ever heard of it? Further if you will check the edit record, as well as the accompanying edit summaries, I have accommodated the comments of others and made changes where appropriate. The tack others have taken, obvious what you're doing. You can't act like a "smartass" and then credibly blame me for your conduct. deeceevoice 11:31, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The first mention of white supremacy on this particular talk page was just after you wrote, My however, has been to revert wholesale. Further, my contributions to the article go beyond the slavery issue, thank you very much. :p  It's quite comments are caluculated. Intense. Not emotional. And then shortly there after Hitler makes an appearance which is usually a sign that further discussion would be a waste of one's time. So I won't bother. Good day to you! --Sparkhurst 12:19, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

"Further discussion"? That's a joke -- right? Don't try to make my comments something they are not. The example is clear. If someone wrote, "Hitler advanced the white supremacist suspicion that Jews and blacks were inherently inferior to Aryans," you likely wouldn't bat an eyelash. The characterization of "white supremacist" speaks to the very nature of the suspicion of inherent inferiority, the corollary of which is Aryan (or, in the case of Jefferson, white) superiority. The logic is clear and unassailable. Failure to rationally discuss the matter as is required by Wiki policy will simply prolong the issue on the article page. I intend to reinsert it and reinsert it and reinsert it and reinsert it unless and until someone can/does explain why it does not apply. deeceevoice 13:06, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * White supremacy is a belief that Europeans are superior. Not a suspicion that another race is inferior. It is a fine line but Thomas Jefferson's comments are based on observations that he states may not be fair to blacks. If you take his comments on race and put them together I would not call them supremacist. If you look at the wiki entry it states "A supremacist not only holds that any evidence and reasoning for his or her beliefs is superior to any other, but that those holding such beliefs have rights over those who do not." It is clear that he questioned the right to own slaves and that even if they were inferior this does not make them less deserving of freeedom. This has been discussed before. He did very little about slavery and it is a bit curious but read what he says about it. His views are not supremacist. They are the norm for that time. Welsh4ever76 14:24, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but you are simply incorrect. White supremacy clearly speaks to the belief that whites are, if you will, "supreme"/superior -- and Jefferson fits the bill. I would direct the reader (again) to white supremacy. Read the definition. Read its definition elsewhere in any credible, authoritative text. And your comment/argument that one can hold one group superior without, ipso facto holding that another group is inferior is absurdly specious; it defies any semblance of logic. Further, there is ample evidence that Jefferson regarded blacks as inferior to whites. Read the paragraph in the article where the debated text appears. Then read the earlier quote by Annette Gordon-Reed. Jefferson was a white supremacist. And even so, the disputed text merely characterizes Jefferson's "suspicion" -- not Jefferson himself -- and leaves the reader to draw his/her own conclusions. :p deeceevoice 14:38, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Stating that he is a white supremacist does not leave the reader to draw his/her own conclusion. You wrote "And even so, the disputed text merely characterizes Jefferson's "suspicion" -- not Jefferson himself -- and leaves the reader to draw his/her own conclusions". This is why it should not be characterized as white supremacism. He is giving his opinion. He admits it may be wrong. Welsh4ever76 15:33, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Again, the disputed passage read: "In this same work, Jefferson advanced the white supremacist suspicion that blacks were inherently inferior to whites "in the endowments both of body and mind" [34]."

Now, tell me, what about that passage is incorrect? Are you saying that the proposition/suspicion that blacks are physically and mentally inferior to whites is not a white supremacist notion? Because that's what it says. deeceevoice 15:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * We must be careful to avoid Presentism when discussing people who lived in the past. I say just let Jefferson's quote speak for itself.  --JW1805 (Talk) 01:10, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with "presentism." In fact, in Jefferson's times, white supremacist attitudes were pervasive; they were the norm. Lincoln was one himself. deeceevoice 04:45, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * A proposition and a suspicion are not the same thing. Suspicion - act of suspecting; imagining of something being wrong, on little evidence; doubt; mistrust; slight trace or hint.


 * Proposition - a proposal; a statement or assertion. Statement and assertion have a common meaning in that they are strongly put forward. Jefferson did not strongly put forward that blacks were inferior to whites "in the endowments both of body and mind." It was merely a suspicion. It has been my experience that white supremacists (or any supremacists of any kind) don't lack conviction. They usually don't endorse that those they are superior to should enjoy the same freedoms either. --Sparkhurst 08:19, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Jefferson Foundation Report
The entry quoting from the above-mentioned report was excised with the edit note that the Foundation "has since revised that statement" (or something similar). The information I submitted was a direct quote and appears currently on the foundation website. No sourced information was presented with the repeated revert, despite my repeated requests for evidence to the contrary. Unless authoritative information is provided, that information, too, will be reinserted and reinserted and reinserted and reinserted ad nauseam. The passage, in fact, refers to precisely the same document that was sourced before by another editor; it is simply more detailed. So, it would appear the assertion that the foundation recanted its findings is false. deeceevoice 15:29, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

So, now we have an "anonymous" editor who has deleted the section, stating that it repeats the previous information -- when clearly that is not the case. They are two, separate reports by two, separate entities -- with, certainly, the one commissioned by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation far more significant, as one would expect them to be skeptical of Jefferson's paternity of Hemings' children. And, no. The passages are not "taken out of context" as the edit note claims. These are block quotes, rather than one or two sentences, precisely so as to avoid such a problem and place them in the appropriate context. The objections are without merit. And the report cited is the same report another editor referred to earlier, but who did take a sentence fragment or two out of context. You can't delete the information because you don't like what it says. If the Thomas Jefferson Foundation can stomach the truth, what's the problem? Deal with it. deeceevoice 16:08, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, thank you, User: Dpbsmith. Finally, someone capable of, and willing to, listen to reason. deeceevoice 17:43, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Since it would be wise to defend my decision to revert back to a previous version of The Sally Hemings controversy section, I shall re-enter the fray (at least temporarily). It is my understanding that when "For more details on this topics, see...." appears, a summary is required. The first paragraph has been left alone, but the second (and any further paragraphs added afterwards) has changed. It is only necessary to list the studies and state their conclusions. Anything further than that, such as the addition of an excerpt from one particular study, will lead to further additions and what was intended to be a summary will turn into War and Peace. Sparkhurst 20:14, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Along with some general clean-up, I reinserted the appositional phrase describing the Thomas Jefferson whatever-it-is, because it is relevant in that their stated purpose is to "further the honor and integrity" of Jefferson -- and end certainly at odds with a positive finding of paternity in the Hemings case. And, no surprise, they were the lone entity that did make such a finding. deeceevoice 22:49, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


 * So you are suggesting they may be biased?


 * Purposes of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society
 * To further the honor and integrity of Thomas Jefferson, and to promote his vision and ideas, and their application in our times and in the future.
 * To pursue truth in all matters that touch upon the legacy of Thomas Jefferson.
 * To promote the principles of freedom, patriotism and truth, which were the hallmarks of Thomas Jefferson's life.
 * To sponsor and perform research in matters pertaining to the private and public life of Thomas Jefferson.
 * To stand always in opposition to those who would seek to undermine the integrity of Thomas Jefferson.


 * You can think what you want of this group or any other group, but a link is already provided to the site. It is preferable to let the reader make their own conclusion. --Sparkhurst 22:58, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


 * At least two of those points can be paraphrased as "to defend Thomas Jefferson." I wasn't interested one way or the other in Jefferson's reputation when I came to this article, but at least based on your summary, they sound like they could be biased. &mdash;Vivacissamamente 00:27, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * That summary comes from the website. I forgot to supply the link in my previous comment. I don't think the Hemings controversy is the only thing the TJ Heritage Society looks into. --Sparkhurst 00:59, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Check out the books section and click the reviews. I think that's most of what they care about, for what it's worth. &mdash;Vivacissamamente 02:22, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I guess the question of whether the TJ Heritage Society is biased or not is a moot point; It is The Scholars Commission that matters. --Sparkhurst 03:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

It's hardly a moot point. The Society, after all, did choose the members of the Scholars Commission. Its purposes was reactionary from the git-go, formed in 2000, after the DNA findings were reported, specifically to address the matter of Sally Hemings. The Society itself said at the time that it fully expected to go out of existence after the report was concluded. Vindicating Jefferson was its raison d'etre. And, as User:Vivacissamamente points out, if you check the website, that's virtually all it deals with. deeceevoice 05:59, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * "The Heritage Society is a permanent organization with its own officers and directors. It sponsored The Scholars Commission as an important part of its overall mission. It is expected that after The Scholars Commission completes its work, it will go out of existence."  --Sparkhurst 07:55, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
 * If you wish to suggest The Heritage Society is biased, fine. But perhaps you should consider that the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation was much, much worse. BTW, the M.D. you listed in the article dissented from the findings of the 9-person-in-house committee! --Sparkhurst 09:10, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

A response

The central point is this: The Foundation existed well before the controversy came to a head and, as such, consisted of individuals, scholars well-equipped to conduct the study. The voluminous information the committee studied is an indication of its thoroughness in the matter. They are caretakers of the Jefferson legacy and of Monticello, but came to a far different conclusion. Further, their website does not evidence a fixation on the Jefferson-Hemings issue, as the Heritage Society's clearly does. It seems, in fact, virtually all its website discusses. They were established to clear Jefferson's reputation, and that's what they proceeded to attempt to do.

I've skimmed the article you've presented, and parts of it are, indeed, interesting. And a lot of it is utterly hilarious. David Mayer points to a letter in which Jefferson merely refers in nonspecific terms to another letter in which he defended himself against his detractors. Mayer goes on to state that the second letter not only did not survive; it was "destroyed." Still, he then asserts the preposterous conclusion that it is "reasonably clear" that Jefferson denied the paternity rumors regarding Hemings' children, with apparently no real evidence before him -- and then proceeds to criticize the TJHF for not counting the destroyed "evidence" as exculpatory. Mayer also argues that Jefferson remained celibate from the time his wife died until his death at 83, something pretty remarkable on its face. He further states, "Another sense in which a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings would have been 'morally impossible' for Jefferson focuses on his own personal moral code—his self-described 'Epicurean' philosophy...."

Since when is it "morally impossible" for otherwise upstanding, morally upright, principled men (in particular) to lie about their sex lives? I mean how naive, how fawningly firmly glued to TJ's ass do one's lips have to be for a person to not only believe such nonsense, but to present Jefferson's purported celibacy at age 39 as a factual certainty? The next thing you know Mayer will be clapping and barking like a seal in hopes his faith and sincerity alone will save Tinkerbell.

Keep in mind that when Jefferson's wife died, he promised her never to remarry. Hemings had already given birth to at least one of her Jefferson-looking children by that time. What self-respecting white woman of the time would take up with Jefferson, given the rumors and mockery surrounding Jefferson and Hemings and their offspring and -- if that weren't off-putting enough -- knowing that the relationship could never lead to matrimony? His sexual appetites, however, didn't have to go unsatiated. Hemings was there in the wings, always close at hand as his chambermaid, as a caretaker of his children, accompanying him and the kids to Paris -- always around for a Jeffersonian massuh booty call. Seems pretty convenient.

Of the exceedingly naive, faith-based approach of some to Jefferson's sexual proclivities (or, more accurately, the purported lack thereof), Aaron Garrett writes on "Of Racism and Remembrance" (on a website maintained by the American Antiquarian Society): "Instead of weighing the evidence reasonably, historians offered defenses for Jefferson of the circular He - couldn't - have - done - that! - Why? - Because - his - character - was - such - that - he - didn't - do - such - things! - Why? - Because - he - didn't - do - such - things - so - he - couldn't - have - done - that! variety."

Such "reasoning" (and I use that word charitably) is beyond circular. It's embarassingly naive and fairly stinks of blind hero worship. These same "historians" seem to have forgotten the central glaring hypocrisy of Jefferson's life: he bought and sold slaves and made his livelihood from the sweat, heartbreak and toil of enslaved human beings as a "gentleman planter." This man had over 650 slaves at one time or another working for him without pay, for free, his entire life, while he traveled, read, entertained lavishly, puttered about at his various self-described "hobbies" and wrote eloquently about the "God-given rights of man." And even with the free labor of 650 human chattel, Jefferson still ended up in financial difficulty at the end of his life. Most of his slaves were sold -- to God knows whom, into God knows what kind of circumstances -- to settle his debts after his death. These love-struck Jeffersonophiles somehow manage to ignore these critical, damning moral failings of the man, of slaveholding and then the abject hypocrisy of his championing the cause of liberty and "inalienable" human rights, and then proclaim he was somehow too pure to screw Hemings. It would be one thing if Jefferson, like many of his time, believed slavery to be justified -- the "niggers" being savages 'n' all. But Jefferson knew better, repeatedly stating that slavery was wrong. Yet, he freed only eight of the hundreds he owned, and then five only in his will (and every single one of them related to Hemings in some way), when he no longer could benefit from their labors.

Time for a reality check, people. Such reprehensible conduct as is clearly indicated (one way or another) by the Sally Hemings matter is, in fact, perfectly in keeping with Jefferson's conduct throughout his life. And after all, Jefferson wouldn't be the first man in history -- or the last -- who could be accused of "talkin' high and walkin' low," as black folks put it, when it came to satisfying to his sexual urges.

Prof. Paul A. Rahe, as the lone dissenting member of the Heritage Society's commission, wraps it all up fairly neatly in the final paragraph of his minority opinion:

"What we do know, however, is damning enough. Despite the distaste that he expressed for the propensity of slaveholders to abuse their power, Jefferson either engaged in such abuse himself or tolerated it on the part of one or more members of his extended family. In his private, as in his public life, there was, for all his brilliance and sagacity, something dishonest, something self-serving and self-indulgent about the man."

It is one thing to acknowledge the tremendous contributions Jefferson made, as a public citizen, to the founding of this nation and the notion of human rights, democracy and freedom. It is quite another to turn a blind eye and seek to censor those of us who would examine the contradictions of the man, as well -- because they tell us a great deal about the very nature of this nation and the thorny and difficult matters around the issues of race, enduring racism, sexuality, white privilege, guilt and fundamental intellectual (and moral) dishonesty that are still with us today. Wikipedia should not a cyber mirror of mainstream textbooks purveying mindless, dumbed-down, calculatedly expurgated pap to schoolchidren more concerned with peer pressure, the adulation of the opposite sex and text messaging notes in class than learning. It should be better than that. There are important things at issue here which impact what the citizens of this nation actually know about ourselves and our history and about, ultimately, the true character -- good and bad, noble and ignominious -- of America. It is the reason I included the reference to the work of historian Roger Wilkins on the subject -- which subsequently was excised as POV and irrelevant, when it is, in fact completely germane to this discussion of Jefferson and his life and the life of this nation.

As Garrett also states at the conclusion of the same article:

"Gordon-Reed opens her pivotal chapter on 'Thomas Jefferson' by describing a mock trial of Thomas Jefferson, put on by the New York Bar, with Charles Ogletree as prosecutor, Drew Days as defense attorney, and William Rehnquist as trial judge. 'The issue to be decided by the trial was whether examples of hypocrisy in Jefferson's life significantly diminished his contributions to American Society.' Although the judge, and the majority of the audience (including Gordon-Reed and her husband), voted to acquit and forgive, forgiveness says little about the historical record, or its meaning. The question rather is, What is the legacy of guilt and hypocrisy?"

On this point, I would disagree with Garrett somewhat. "What is the legacy of guilt and hypocrisy?" is not the question, but one question. Still, it is an important one worth examining and considering for those of us both benefited and burdened, inspired and shamed, ennobled and outraged, by the legacy of Jefferson's life.

deeceevoice 12:17, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

One more note: the footnote regarding the findings of the Heritage Society seems misplaced. It would seem that the "not persuasive" language should be footnoted, as it is the information critical to the point. Also, in skimming the page to which link 42 leads, I could find no such language -- though I concede I easily could have missed it. Perhaps a link to a page containing the precise language of the findings would be more helpful, rather than to a page which pretty much seems to simply list .pdf downloads which -- in the case of the Minority Report, at least -- are so corrupted they cannot be read. deeceevoice 12:51, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I see you are always eager to get into prolonged, off-topic debates, off-topic in the sense it will have no bearing on what will appear in the article. Seeing as this is the case, I don't care to participate especially when it seems you made up your mind a long time ago on TJ. The TJ Heritage Society has a quote on its website. "For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." I think you are afraid (or at least unwilling) to follow the truth as you fear it may lead somewhere you don’t care to be. So this response of mine isn't deemed off-topic itself, I feel it is inappropriate to note that the TJMF committee included an M.D. since it was the M.D. who held the lone dissenting view and criticized the committee. That is all. --Sparkhurst 13:29, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

And, no. My comments are not off-topic. They speak to the clear tendency of many editors to seek to censor the content of the article, either by obliterating language they find objectionable, or to downplay certain matters. And inappropriate to mention the M.D.? By that reasoning, then, should we reduce the number of Heritage Society commission members to 12 in light of Rahe's fairly damning dissenting opinion? :p Right. I didn't think so. deeceevoice 13:36, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The article doesn't cite his credentials. --Sparkhurst 13:40, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

You're evading the point. He's included in the, presumably, aptly named "13-member Scholars Committee," the name of which implies a certain level of academic achievement and expertise. Unfortunately, less flashily named "9-member in-house committee" of the Foundation might be janitors, secretaries and groundskeepers, for all we know, without the additional information. Also, please turn your attention to the matter of the footnote, if you contributed the information and know where that language comes from. Thanks. deeceevoice 13:58, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Simply absurd, though coming from you this doesn't surprise me. I wonder why? And you continue to edit your not so little rant even though it is off-topic, POV nonsense that is more fitting for a blog entry than a Wikipedia talk page. --Sparkhurst 14:16, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh. And now you want to censor the discussion page, too? How decidedly un-Jeffersonian of you! :p deeceevoice 14:23, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Disputed paragraph on freeing of slaves
The objection raised about the paragraph was that it broke up the flow; if that is the principal objection, you guys could end this revert war by moving it somewhere later in the article, where it is somewhat less obtrusive. It is an interesting point, worthy of comment somewhere in the article, if not right at the top. Considering how down on slavery he was in principle, I had imagined he would have freed a few more of his own slaves. I would have liked to have thought so, anyway….

Also, some of this page probably ought to be archived (again). Does anyone know how to do it? &mdash;Vivacissamamente 00:27, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * All of this is already mentioned in the article. I think a short NPOV statement on slavery can go in the opening, but I don't think details about who he freed and why really belong there.  And "chattel" isn't a word that most people are familar with.  --JW1805 (Talk) 01:11, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * You're right, it is there in the article. I agree a short statement should go the opening. I've actually only seen the word "chattel" ever used in connection with slavery. Some people seem to like it. &mdash;Vivacissamamente 02:04, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I thought the paragraph was fine. There is absolutely nothing wrong with pointing out up front the central and contradiction in the man's everyday life. And I said in an earlier exchange, being a slaveholder is what fed and clothed the man; it's how he made his living. Since the perfectly reasonable paragraph has been deleted, I've included "slaveholder" among his many "occupations", which is where that notation was when I started (again) on this article a few days ago. It's certainly as valid as any other. deeceevoice 04:50, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I've changed my mind. I've deleted "slaveholder" and reinserted a revised paragraph which mentions nothing about the freed slaves. (And, actually, "chattel" is a perfectly serviceable word. It describes, or refers to, the nature of slavery as practiced in the U.S.  deeceevoice 04:57, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The First Pillar of Wikipedia
I would like to remind everyone of the first of five pillars of Wikipedia.

'-Wikipedia is an encyclopedia incorporating elements of general encyclopedias, specialized encyclopedias, and almanacs. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. It is not a collection of source documents or trivia, a dictionary, a soapbox, a newspaper, vanity publisher, an experiment in anarchy or democracy, or a web directory. It is also not the place to insert your own opinions, experiences, or arguments — all editors must follow our no original research policy and strive for accuracy.'

Please read and keep in mind when editing. Welsh4ever76 23:25, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


 * And I would like to remind editors that no topic is sacrosanct. Legitimate, sourced information is not to be deleted simply because it may seem vaguely "inappropriate" or offend someone's sensibilities.  If one finds the examinination of the truth of a nation's history or its historical figures offensive, then one can always vote with one's web browser:  click.  Problem solved.  deeceevoice 23:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Not sure about the content she's providing, but deeceevoice is right about the "inappropriate" information. Some folks have become so accustomed to watered-down public relations releases or politically correct bios -- wiki is different.   It is *all* appropriate here, whether it is that Kwanzaa's founder is a convicted felon or that Thomas Jefferson had kids with his slaves.  There's an art towards adjusting where things go in the articles and how much emphasis is put on various information... Justforasecond 01:05, 24 July 2006 (UTC)


 * That information about Karenga is perfectly appropriate -- in an article about Karenga. Just as the information about Jefferson is perfectly appropriate here.  I didn't place the information where it was inserted, but have argued for its appropriateness to the article.  The separate paragraph I wrote and inserted had a big more substance, but it was edit warred out.  deeceevoice 04:55, 24 July 2006 (UTC)


 * C'mon DCV, that's like saying the info about Jefferson and Sally belong in the Sally article. Justforasecond 05:00, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Let's keep that argument where it belongs -- on the talk page of [kwanzaa]]. deeceevoice 06:46, 24 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Let me post The third pillar of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is free content that anyone may edit. All text is available under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) and may be distributed or linked accordingly. Recognize that articles can be changed by anyone and no individual controls any specific article; therefore, any writing you contribute can be mercilessly edited and redistributed at will by the community. Do not submit copyright infringements or works licensed in a way incompatible with the GFDL. Let me repeat no individual controls any specific article  It is a free country and If I want to edit the article I am allowed by the rules of this web site. God Bless America and thank Thomas Jefferson. Welsh4ever76 02:56, 23 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, but that applies to everyone, now -- doesn't it? :p  deeceevoice 08:42, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I'd just like to add that I think the contradictions or nuances of leaders such as Jefferson or Bill Clinton, good or bad, makes them "more human" and to some or in some cases more endearing. Excluding elementary school, I don't think my history teachers or professors have made presidents sacred cows and I would hope we prefer history, and the recording of history as encyclopedias like Wikipedia do, told that way so that it is more complete and accurate. Political correctness has no place in such an equal-opportunity, good-faith based site as Wikipedia. A major reason I decided to contribute to this site was to give back to the rewards its given me of such massive free education at my fingertips from such a humanistic goal that I daresay ought not be tainted or tarnished by political correctness. Improve Wikipedia with a PC but not PC! Minutiaman 06:21, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


 * "Improve Wikipedia with a PC but not PC!" Well and succinctly put.  deeceevoice 09:09, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you. But in writing the rallying cry, there was the concern that its economy would compromise its message.  That is, that it would not unite Wikipedians but rather divide Mac and PC users... Minutiaman 20:53, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, well. To hell with Mackies.  Like black folks in Jefferson's pronouncements on God-given freedom, they don't count! :p


 * Note that someone deleted (again) the paragraph about TJ being a man of contradictions. I've inserted a new paragraph that I think wholly appropriate, as the opening paragraphs of any article are a summary of sorts of the information presented later. The argument that this information is presented later in the article simply doesn't hold up.  Otherwise, virtually all the information in the opening four paragraphs just as easily could be deleted.  The new wording reads: "Jefferson was also a man of contradictions.  Though an eloquent spokesman for human liberty and author of the famous phrase, 'all men are created equal ... endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,' he was a slave owner.  And while Jefferson acknowledged that slavery was an evil, he manumitted only a handful of the hundreds of human beings he owned during his lifetime."  I hope this will be allowed to stand.  deeceevoice 12:46, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The truth about Jefferson should definitely be in this article -- but I'm not sure it is currently missing.  Most of this seems to be an argument about how much weight his slave-holding is given.   I think it should be stated fairly prominently in the article, even in the lead, but a full paragraph in the intro is too much.   It should also be acknowledged that slaveholding was legal and it seems?? even respectable at the time.
 * The Sally Hemmings info seems to be intriguing but the woman was 3/4 white and there don't appear to be conclusive genetic tests proving she and old Tom had kids together (though it seems pretty likely). Beyong that, the term "jungle fever" is inflammatory and borders on racist.
 * We also need to remember to be civil: ROTFLMBAO (rolling on the floor laughing my black ass off) is not a civil thing to say.  Deeceevoice, you are on probation for precisely this behavior.  The current editors have been kind enough not to report you but their patience will wear thin.  If its necessary to express laughter to improve the article, a simple "hehe" will do it.  Justforasecond 06:11, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Thomas Jefferson the anarchist?
Over on anarchism, an editor keeps inserting a section on Jefferson, claiming that he is the root of anarchist thought. The assertion seems a bit strange to me, and the sources are dubious. It looks like a clear example of WP:OR. I'd appreciate it if someone who knows the subject well could come on over and explain to User:Lingeron that Jefferson was most definitely not an anarchist. It's at least clear that there is no way to verify such a thing. --AaronS 03:16, 27 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Well...for an anarchist he certainly played a big part in a government.  There is a little info online.  e.g.


 * ''I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves & sheep. I do not exaggerate — Thomas Jefferson
 * ''John Adams denounced Jefferson as “an atheist, anarchist, demagogue, coward, mountebank, trickster, and Francomaniac"
 * (francophilia being used to denounce a populist population.  will anything ever change?)
 * though other sites say that he was by no means an anarchist.  he was clearly opposed to certain characteristics of governments and had more faith in people than large governing bodies, but it is possible that some of his anti-government leanings led to the anarchist movement.  Justforasecond 07:06, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Please stay on topic
Everyone, please remember that talk pages are for discussing the article, not the subject of the article. Talking about how good or evil he was is a matter for a forum, not for Wikipedia. Friday (talk) 21:04, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Anarchism
I am an editor on the wikipedia anarchism article. There is an editor(s?) who wishes to include several paragraphs detailing Thomas Jefferson's (along with Jesus and Thoreau) influence on modern anarchist thought. There is also a vocal group who do not agree that such information is pertinent to an article on anarchism in general but rather belongs in the anarcho-capitalist article. I thought that there might be people here who could contribute something to the debate. Thanks, Blockader.

Criticism of Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson died over one hundred and eighty years ago. He is buried in Charlottesville, VA. You may go visit his grave and discuss the problems you have with him there. Until then I do not believe we need a section like this under an article meant to educate people about him. It is not wrong to point out this inconsistency in his life under the slavery section. When he wrote the Declaration of Independence he went through many drafts and included an anti slavery clause in many of them. He was aware it appeared hypocritical. However he was not the only member of the continental congress. Shall we have a criticism section on everyones wiki page where detractors can add their POV about a person? Welsh4ever76 22:22, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation. I have restored the criticims section until concensus can be reached.  Certainly Wikipedia can report on criticism of a subject.  We can say, for instance, that people were critical of Richard Nixon with regard to the watergate scandal.  We could, likewise, say that Roy Blunt has been criticized in the media and for what.  To not report what might be deemed as critical is to whitewash subjects.  Certainly not all criticism is notable, however.  Looking over the section in question, material PBS documentaries include do seem notable to me.  I would like to request the section be kept in the article until consensus can be reached. --TeaDrinker 22:45, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I viewed the Richard Nixon article and no where do I see a section that is entitled criticism of Richard Nixon. There is a section dedicated to Watergate. I think you proved my point well. I was also going to add that this is modern criticism which is not wrong but very few people criticized him in his own lifetime for owning slaves. Many people owned them. He was elected President after all even though he was a known slaveholder. Welsh4ever76 00:51, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Critical views of a subject (from reputable sources, of course) are relevant to pretty much any article- this one is no exception. The details are up for debate, of course.  My preference is to merge the criticism section with the "Jefferson and slavery" section if that's what it relates to.  If we have a lot of criticism for different reasons, maybe then we'd lump them into a "criticism" section. Friday (talk) 01:12, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Since the section is well sourced, it clearly qualifies as "facts about opinions," which are perfectly acceptable. If it is felt that these facts present an unbalanced look at opinion about Jefferson, they should not be removed, but balanced with well-sourced statements of other opinions.

In the words of the neutrality policy, "We sometimes give an alternative formulation of the non-bias policy: assert facts, including facts about opinions — but don't assert opinions themselves.... When asserting a fact about an opinion, it is important also to assert facts about competing opinions, and to do so without implying that any one of the opinions is correct. It's also generally important to give the facts about the reasons behind the views, and to make it clear who holds them. It's often best to cite a prominent representative of the view."

It seems to me that the current section meets these tests with regard to the opinions it asserts, but perhaps needs to include additional (well-sourced) statements of competing opinions. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:18, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * There is a whole section on Jefferson and Slavery. There is no point whatsoever to create a new section that contains much of the same content.  Put the critisim in the Slavery section, it's as simple as that. --JW1805 (Talk) 01:47, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I certainly do not object to the merging into the section on slavery, in fact, I would welcome such a move. The removed section does make a different point, however, than the retained section on slavery.  The retained section highlights the apparent contradiction between his voiced views on slavery explicitly and his action of keeping slaves.  The removed section highlights his views on liberty and freedom, not slavery explicitly.  The authority of the criticisms cited in the removed section also are notable, and deserve to be kept, in my view. --TeaDrinker 02:02, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, they are interconnected points, not really separate. A slight rewording of the Slavery section would suffice.  We don't need a complete new section for that.  The Sam Johnson quote that was removed doesn't really add anything to what is already said (and the quote isn't specific to Jefferson anyway).  The New England Palladium quote is specifically about Jefferson.  The Rahe quote also doesn't really add anything new either, in my opinion.  --JW1805 (Talk) 04:11, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I think what people are overlooking here is that Wiki articles are works in progress. I don't anticipate that the information included in the section on criticism will always consist of solely the information or perspectives provided here.  And I agree with TeaDrinker.  The Rahe quote does add an interesting perspective in that he participated in the commission and offers an opinion on aspects of Jefferson's character which are not examined or commented upon elsewhere.  I think it's an interesting take on the man.  And I suspect there will be others offered later.  After all, there have been volumes written on the guy, by lots of notable historians and others, and there's certainly more than can, and should, be included there.  deeceevoice 08:11, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I have merged the criticism section into the slavery section, (hopefully) retaining all the content and references. Deeceevoice is correct that the criticisms may not always be about slavery- and I bet most people won't object to having a section called "criticisms" as soon as that happens. Friday (talk) 02:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I also think this could be incorporated into the slavery section, since the sole criticism is about slavery and repeats portions in that section, but also explores it a little more, so would be perfectly fitting in the slavery area, IMO. plange 02:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

What's going on here? I noticed some of the merged stuff was removed piece by piece (apparently there are objections) but then put back again as a "criticisms" section? I thought we agreed that things about Jefferson and slavery belonged in the "Jefferson and slavery" section? Can we all stop editing by brute force, please? Friday (talk) 14:32, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree.  The material in the criticism section already exists in the slavery section.  I think there's consensus that this info should not be repeated and the criticism section can go.  Justforasecond 14:52, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Why do we treat our founding fathers like sacred cows? As an African-American, what comes to my mind first when I see Thomas Jefferson's face is slavery. I know of his other accomplishments, of course, and they were remarkable, but why this Boy Scout version of history? The "criticisms" section is warranted, I believe. Someone proposed to fold the criticisms section into the Slavery section, but that wasn't really done. What you get in the slavery section is a defense of Jefferson. I believe this man warrants criticism and that anyone reading this article shouldn't have to dig down so far to find it. So I'm restoring the criticism section. Although I agree to take out the early "man of contradictions" material. Griot 23:15, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, my vote was for putting it in the slavery section, but not getting rid of it altogether, as a way to balance out that section and since it's the one main criticism of him, I would expect to see criticism of it in the slavery section. If you want to keep it separate that's fine, but it needs to be better sourced and better written. This link http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/enigma/ is after saying contemporaries scorned him, but it brought me to a pbs site and I couldn't find something there written by a contemporary. I might have missed it.... To make your point on that, it would be nice to have a quote from a contemporary. If the contemporary is meant to be Samuel Johnson, you don't need the pbs link, but rather have a colon.... I wouldn't call this link reputable - it brought me to some free junky site with all sorts of pop ups and a naked woman in a banner ad: http://www.studyworld.com/newsite/reportessay/Biography/AmericanPresident%5CThomas_Jefferson-32543.htm - surely better ones can be found for the number of slaves he had. plange 23:33, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Griot, can you address the things I have above? Renaming it contemporary views is a little misleading if you have modern views in there too. plange 20:12, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I deleted this section as this is an article about Thomas Jefferson and not a discussion board where people can post their feelings and views about him. No other founding father has an entire section dedicated to him in this manner. Contemporary views and criticism is from a modern POV and as I stated in the discussion below his contemporaries elected him President regardless of this contradiction. Why point out one person. George Washington owned slaves. James Madison owned slaves. Why no section about them? This is not a contribution to the article. It is a POV. Welsh4ever76 04:29, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Man of contradictions/hypocrite
We need to be careful here. In his day he was not a contradiction. We're judging someone from the past by today's standards. Perhaps re-word to something akin, to "in modern times, he's a man of contradictions..." plange 01:31, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Uh, this really has nothing to do with modern standards. Even Jefferson's contemporaries remarked on the obvious discordance between being an advocate of innate human liberties and a slaveowner. Simply because hypocrisy was the fashion of the day, with slavery being an accepted norm in many parts of the nation, that did not render the contradiction nonexistent or any less glaring. Indeed, it was an element constantly remarked upon by abolitionists of the day, generally (as well as by Jefferson's detractors/political opponents). deeceevoice 01:38, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Re-adding the "criticism" section when the information is already covered in the slavery section seems repetitive to me (even using "hypocrite" twice). Is there any consensus on whether this belongs?       Justforasecond 01:42, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Certainly we should make no attempt to hide obvious facts about Jefferson, but I'm not sure this warrants an entire paragraph in the intro. We do have the "Jefferson and slavery" section already.  Friday (talk) 01:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Further, the paragraph about Jefferson being a "man of contradictions" was reinserted because the lead paragraphs of an article are meant to be an introduction to, and a summary of, the information that follows. The subject matter is of sufficient importance (it is beyond question the most hotly debated issue about Jefferson and his legacy, period) and it is treated generally enough that it is appropriate there as a prelude to more detailed information presented later -- and the same can be said for other information also presented in the opening paragraphs. It is simply the way an article naturally develops. The information about Jefferson being a slaveholder is as an important fact about the man as that he is the "eponym of 'Jeffersonian democracy'," etc., etc. It seems to me that the repeated removal of such a simple, straightforward paragraph about a critical -- and historically defining -- contradtion between the man's public life and work and how he earned his living, or, more accurately, how others earned his living for ihm :p (certainly more important than his various hobbies, which are mentioned at length), is merely an attempt by others to censor the article. deeceevoice 01:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I think it needs to be in the lead too. On another note, I see it says he only got some of the 600+ from his father and wife, when in fact most came from his wife whose father was a slave trader and died right when he'd received a huge shipment for sale right after they married (ugh, that was creepy to write)... anyway, I'll dig up the cite... Also, what is everyone's thoughts on exploring, in the interest of NPOV historians take on why he freed so few? I've read various theories but see none explored here.plange 02:36, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * There should be something in the lead, but we should try to make it as succinct and NPOV as possible. The opening is getting too long.  Maybe find some way to condense it into one sentence and put it in the 2nd paragraph?  --JW1805 (Talk) 04:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I took out the last paragraph mentioning his contradictions. I feel that the opening looks better without and it is not needed. He was elected President by the people of the United States at that time even though he was a known slaveholder. We may view this as a contradiction but his contemporaries did not feel this way as they voted him into the highest office of the land at that time. Welsh4ever76 04:21, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Absurd. You deleted the paragraph regarding contradicitions because you persist in edit warring/censoring the article.  The text clearly states and cites:  "This double standard occasioned scorn from Jefferson's contemporaries.  'How is it,' asked Samuel Johnson, 'that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?'"  This isn't about what you "feel."  This isn't about your apparent hero worship of the man.  The passage is restored.  deeceevoice 07:07, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Please remain civil deeceevoice.  It's not OK to refer to an editors opinions as "absurd" or accuse him of engaging in "hero worship" of an individual you've criticized extensively or to say that constructive edits (rather than reverts) are "merely an attemp to censor the article".   I don't think there's support for a full paragraph in the intro about TJ's being a "man of contradictions".   Are there any other "contradictions" Jefferson is known for?  Justforasecond 07:13, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't need your counsel on remaining civil. There is absolutely nothing incivil about my remarks. They are accurate and on point. And, yes. Try reconciling his comments about miscegenation with him screwing Hemings over a period of several years and fathering a half dozen quadroon children. Or, if you prefer to take the other side, allowing one of his close relatives to do so. That'll do for starters. There are likely others rooted in the same issue if one were to dig up quotes: on say, honesty, morality, propriety and fidelity, like tippin' on his wife and regularly humping his wife's half-sister; or, on work ethic, like, say, living off the sweat of other people's labor; or, possibly, thrift and prudence, like how the hell can someone have 650 slaves over the course of one's life working for them for free and still end up in financial difficulty? deeceevoice 07:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * deeceevoice you were indeed uncivil and failing to assume good faith.  as for "contradictions", you seem to have only one issue -- slavery.   i'm not sure one issue makes someone a "man of contradictions".  it also strikes me as original analysis and, as i said before, there isn't support for making a full paragraph about this in the intro.  how about a single sentence, such as in the version i created?  Justforasecond 15:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to get into a back-and-forth with you over wiki editiquette. TBQF, what you think doesn't really matter much to me. As others have indicated here, the language of the paragraph is measured and appropriate as-is. And, no. It's hardly original analysis. deeceevoice 15:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Edit conflict: At the risk of bringing deecee down on me, I mentioned above we needed to be cautious about judging someone from a time period over 200 years ago. Certainly 200 years from now, deecee, you'll need to be okay with how you're judged, and what I mean by that, is that probably by then, they will look on us with disgust for eating meat, driving fossil fuel cars and shopping at Wal-mart for low-cost products made by what basically amounts to slave labor in China. An analogy can be drawn by let's say taking another modern politician, Al Gore, known for being smart, intelligent and pro-Environment. But 200+ years from now he would be seen as a man of contradictions because he didn't live off the grid and use biodiesel in his car. There are contemporaries you can find today that could be used in the future to say that he was scorned for not doing that, but do the majority of his contemporaries scorn him for that? (there are political things they scorn him for I know, but that's not the issue here).... Also, no one has addressed the source issue I mentioned above for that section. Also, if you do insist on using a quote from a contemporary, I'd find an American, not someone who was British and probably against our fight for independence and so had some POV-pushing to do of his own. The sad fact is, that fierce opponents to slavery (like Johnson) were in a minority. If the majority thought otherwise, Jefferson would have had no problem getting the bill passed that he introduced when Governor of Virginia to abolish slavery and would have not had the sections lambasting the institution of slavery in the Declaration of Independence struck by fellow Southern delegates. Am I advocating we whitewash things? No. I just think it needs to be better written and sourced if you're going to have it in the lead. plange 07:39, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * More detailed, sourced info regarding TJ as a slaveowner is provided later in the body of the document. Again, the intro provides a general framework for what is to follow.  Note that other statements in the lead paragraphs are, likewise, unsourced/uncited.  The fact is the contradictions of Jefferson's life were on display and constantly remarked upon in his day, from his slaveholding to the gaggle of quadroon children who looked like him. Finally, IMO, the language in the lead is perfectly sound and measured.  However, if you'd like to suggest alternative verbiage, I invite you to do so -- and we'll see what sticks.  deeceevoice 07:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Oops, can I claim fatigue? It's almost 4 AM here, and I was getting this confused with the criticism passage. I think it reads fine as it, sorry deecee. plange 07:53, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Cool. deeceevoice 08:22, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Deeceevoice, This is an article meant to educate people, including children, about Thomas Jefferson. It is not a message board for your personal disappointments you may have with him. You are calling him a hypocrite for behaviour that may not be his. You are citing his lack of action on abolishing slavery and not taking into account events outside of his control. I am not saying that it should not be mentioned but it should not be in the opening of the article. In the end he was much more important than just being a slave owner even if that is what is important to you. He did many other things people know him for or should know him for. This paragraph does not fit into the opening and doesn't belong there. Welsh4ever76 16:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Indeed, Welsh4ever. And it should contain information -- all of it -- and not be some expurgated pap.  And I'm not citing anything; I simply expect the article to contain all the information that is pertinent.  And I disagree.  It is a striking and notable feature of the man's life, is an important dimension of his life's work (in that it is so contradictory) and one that continues to cloud the man's legacy today.  It's one of the things that makes him most notable.  It's no different from, say, an article on Richard Nixon.  And guess what?  That Wikipedia article mentions Watergate in the first paragraph.  IMO (and others here have concurred), the paragraph belongs in the article, and it belongs in the lead.  deeceevoice 04:32, 5 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Of course, Wikipedia is not censored (for minor or anyone else). The fact that folks like PBS are bringing this up as a point of criticism is notable in my view.  It is not a matter of judging him by modern standards, indeed it is not judging him at all (Wikipedia is not a place to pass judgement).  It is simply reporting on notable criticism.  If we can agree that the criticsm is indeed notable, then the question is one of prose: where should it go in the article, and how should it be worded.  I tend to agree that the paragraph taken out here in unneeded and editorializing.  The last paragraph of the section on slavery, however, is I thnk appropriate.  --TeaDrinker 17:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the paragraph under slavery is appropiate. It should be mentioned but as stated by Plange "we needed to be cautious about judging someone from a time period over 200 years ago." He was elected President even though he owned slaves. To look back now and say what a hypocrite he was and make it a focal point of his achievements is pointless. Many people owned slaves. People owned slaves before Thomas Jefferson and people owned slaves after Thomas Jefferson. What makes Jefferson more notable? Because he believed freedom was important. So should he not have believed that? Should he not have tried to change things because of it. I am not advocating censorship. My point is that he did much more than own slaves. Lots of people did that. It seems strange now and contradictory but that is our view of it now and should not be a focal point. That and it does not go well in the opening. Welsh4ever76 17:51, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

3rr
hey griot -- please be sure not to violate the "three revert rule"

Justforasecond 05:42, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Number of slaves
In the opening sentence of the paragraph in the section titled "Jefferson and Slavery," he is stated to have owned 650 slaves, but it closes with his owning 600. (refers to this version.) Neither gives a source. Any thoughts on clarifying this seeming contradition? --TeaDrinker 17:22, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I have a biography published of him at home, will dig that up tonight...plange 19:56, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Picture of Thomas Jefferson
I believe that the current picture of a gray-haired Jefferson, similar to the one found on the two-dollar bill and many other famous portraits and depictions of Mr. Jefferson, should be left as the one for this site. This portrait is overwhelmingly the one recognized by the majority of Americans as well as foreigners, and the former portrait was one of a far less recognizable Jefferson, one with brown hair that may confuse the uninitiated with another president, a young Andrew Jackson or James Monroe being the most popular. CinnamonCinder 21:06, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Any evidence to back your assertion? Popular movies in the US in recent years protray him as the red haired Jefferson. I recognized the picture over the grey haired one you reverted to. JPotter 21:16, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I like the red/brown haired version better too.  Jefferson did some of his mos important work while he was still young (he wrote the declarataion at 33) -- the image of an old, gray-to-white haied man perpetuates a false image of TJ.   Justforasecond 21:54, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I too prefer the red/brown haired version. I think this image is better than either, but that is just my opinion. Also, if you are going to use an image of Jefferson painted while he was president use one of the Rembrandt Peale paintings since they are of a higher quality. --Sparkhurst 22:46, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with Justforasecond and Sparkhurst. Can we get one of the younger images of Jefferson in there?  King Wen €ŸØãç  00:43, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

And the pic that Sparkhurst pointed to is great. I love that painting of Jefferson.  King Wen €ŸØãç  01:03, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Religious views
There is a statement included in this article that reads, "most of his biographers agree he was a deist." This statement, however, is not referenced. If it is a true statement, though, then that means there exist some biographers who do not agree that he was a deist. Their views however are not presented. I do not think it can be argued that their views are not significant, as I have witnessed serious debates about Jefferson's deism, and I think for NPOV the other side should at least be presented, although in accordance with the policy on undue weight, I don't think there is a problem if it is presented in less detail.

My recollection from some things I read years ago was that Jefferson changed over the course of his life so that at some points he was a deist and at some points he was not. This resulted in there being quotes from him both affirming his deism and affirming him not being a deist, which is part of why people could debate so seriously, because both had quotes that they thought proved them right. But that is just my recollection from like ten years ago, and (unfortunately) I really don't remember the reference. HalfDome 15:19, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. This is an important question that should be thoroughly covered in this article. I have some books that cover some of the founders religious beliefs that may contain information that presents the idead that he was not a deist. Gaytan 14:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The following passage from Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (pp. 42-43) might be apropos:


 * ... it is tantalizing to speculate that at least some of the Founders might have gone beyond deism. Might they have been agnostics or even out-and-out atheists? The following statement of Jefferson is indistinguishable from what we would now call agnosticism:


 * To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise... without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.


 * Christopher Hitchens, in his biography Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, thinks it likely that Jefferson was an atheist, even in his own time when it was much harder:


 * As to whether he was an atheist, we must reserve judgment if only because of the prudence he was compelled to observe during his political life. But as he had written to his nephew, Peter Carr, as early as 1787, one must not be frightened from this enquiry by any fear of its consequences. 'If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in this exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you.'


 * I find the following advice of Jefferson, again in his letter to Peter Carr, moving:


 * Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.


 * Remarks of Jefferson's such as 'Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man' are compatible with deism but also with atheism.''


 * There's a counterpoint to Hitchens' argument here.


 * chocolateboy 20:52, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Trivia
"Jefferson and John Adams were the only signers of the Declaration of Independence to become Presidents."

Perhaps this should clarified as being President under the present Constitution as John Hancock was a president under the preceding one.

"The least governed country is the best governed country"
I managed to track down the actual quote which was being falsely modified to say "That government is best which governs least." Jefferson's actual words were: "I hold the world is governed too much. I hold that when we have established justice and so legislated as to prevent the strong from preying upon the weak, then the least governed country is the best governed country." It was written from Jefferson to John W. Eppes and is quoted in The Freeman, November 3 1920, page 185. How's that for research? C-Liberal 08:05, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Good find. Welsh4ever76 20:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * A quotation in "The Freeman" from 1920 is not a good source (what is "The Freeman" anyway? A magazine?). We would need something far more authoritative - an edition of Jefferson's letters, a book on his political philosophy. The quotation does not sound right to me, but that's just a hunch about the use of English. More to the point, I can find no authoritative source for it. I such a quotation were authentic, it would be splashed everywhere. It isn't. Paul B 08:58, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * It's a journal dealing with classical liberal issues ...The Freeman. Apparently, the quote got lost over the years and I found it. C-Liberal 09:03, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * "Got lost over the years"? If it were lost and then found - in authetic form - it would certainly be incorporated into the literature on Jefferson. Paul B 09:07, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
 * You mean "will" be incorporated into the literature...I mean the internet. A lot of you people think if you can't find it on the internet, it's not real. The internet is not even the tip of the iceberg of all the information that's out there. I'm not going to force it into the article. If any historian wants to delve deeper, there it is. Jefferson wrote it to John W. Eppes. C-Liberal 09:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I rather doubt it. And I mean literature - books, articles, and, yes, also authoritative websites. Paul B 10:28, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Also it appears that you have miraculously "found" a 1920 edition of a journal that was founded in 1946. You are a brilliant researcher indeed! Congratulations. Paul B 09:09, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Don't assume bad faith. Look at the bottom of The Freeman article. There was another Freeman: "Albert Jay Nock, a noted literary figure and author, edited a magazine called The Freeman in the early 1920s." That's the one I'm talking about. C-Liberal 09:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Well that's great. Who's assuming bad faith? It's still just an unregulated, unpeer-reviewed magazine, and not a legitimate or authoritative source. Paul B 09:36, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Paul A. Rahe quote
I thought I would copy and paste a quote that I do not think we need on the wiki TJ article page.

''Prof. Paul A. Rahe, who authored the lone dissenting opinion in the 2001 report of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society commission, remarked on the inconclusive findings regarding the question of Jefferson's paternity of Sally Hemings' children:

''What we do know, however, is damning enough. Despite the distaste that he expressed for the propensity of slaveholders to abuse their power, Jefferson either engaged in such abuse himself or tolerated it on the part of one or more members of his extended family. In his private, as in his public life, there was, for all his brilliance and sagacity, something dishonest, something self-serving and self-indulgent about the man.

-We do not know what he thought or what he did. He may not have been the father, he may not have known what was going on and did not feel the need to control every aspect of the slaves lives. He may have become angry when he found out. While we do know a lot about him we do not know everything. Since there is no way of knowing exactley what went on concerning him, someone else or what he even knew about it, I think this quote is a point of view and in a section of the article that does not have other points of view to counter it. We could easily add the points of views of others on the panel but we decided earlier that this was pointless and to just add a link to the Sally Hemings page was sufficient. Welsh4ever76 21:12, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The edit war on this quote should end, and we should discuss inclusion here. I agree with Welsh4ever's concerns about this quote.  My view is that if this guy was the lone dissenting opinion, then maybe he isn't really the best source of information on this subject.  --JW1805 (Talk) 20:26, 1 September 2006 (UTC)


 * He appears to have been the "lone dissenter" on a report whose conclusions were contrary to the other reports cited as well as contrary to the DNA evidence -- so he's hardly in the minority. I would be much happier seeing another quote added, perhaps one from the body of the report, rather than deleting this one.  bikeable (talk) 21:15, 1 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Lone dissenters merit neither extensive quoting, nor the "last words" on a topic--JimWae 18:37, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

He was the lone dissenter in this particular effort. Keep in mind there was another study which found the reverse. Further, Rahe's comment is a valid one, regardless of the paternity of Hemings' children; it is an informed observeration/criticism of the character of Jefferson, and that's the point. deeceevoice 20:17, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
 * No one else is quoted from any of these reports. Rahe's quote doesn't even have anything to do with whether Jefferson father's Sally's children or not.  It is also a negative POV of Jefferson ("...self-serving and self-indulgent").  If we include it, we have to put in another quote that argues the opposite (yes, there are many).  The article is too long as it is.  The reports are linked, so people can read them if they want.  I agree with JimWae, there isn't any reason for this to be the "last words" on the topic.  --JW1805 (Talk) 02:01, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Inventions
Reverting a long list of inventions added without citations. Jefferson did introduce a swivel chair to the united states after seeing them in Europe, and did create an improvement to the dumbwaiter, but he didn't invent either one. The other additions, so far as I can tell, are entirely fabricated, and Jefferson's actual inventions are omitted entirely. If I'm wrong, could someone provide a verifiable citation before re-adding the text? Thanks. -- Vary | Talk 18:20, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Discrepencies with Sally Hemings article
It seems there is a massive discrepency between the Jefferson article on wiki and the one of Sally Hemings. The Hemings article actually goes on to provide further proof that Jefferson was the father of her four children and the National Genealogical Society Quarterly conclusion that he did indeed father the children. However, it seems the Jefferson arcticle is highly edited to keep out as much of a blemish as possible on Jefferson's record. It seems rather seedy to me.Sally Hemings


 * I think the idea is to briefly mention the subject here, and provide detailed info at Sally Hemings. This article is long enough as it is.  --JW1805 (Talk) 02:21, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I understand...but the issue is not the fact that it only breifly deals with the subject. By all means, it should only do so briefly. The issue is that it deals with it almost as if it concluded that the claims have been proven false. Whereas in the Sally Hemings article, quite the opposite opinion and view is held, as the article goes to greater length and uses more researchers...and in comparison the Jefferson only uses specific references and articles from the Sally Hemings' one, all being ones that decline the theory, while completing ignoring any of the articles that prove otherwise. It just seems like propoganda. Or at best...whitewashing.

No offense, but I've kept track of the DNA and Lineage testing of Sally Hemings offspring. All that was proven was that Thomas Jefferson and some of Heming's descendents have a common ancestor. There exists no exact proof that Thomas Jefferson actually fathered any of Sally Heming's children. I'd say it's extremely possible, but until some undeniable proof of this surfaces, it should remain as speculation and, therefore, not VERIFIABLE.

In a letter written by 19th century biographer, Henry Randall, it was widely known around Monticello at that time, that Jefferson's nephew Peter Carr was actually the individual who fathered Sally Heming's children. LRS

Jupiter
I was suprised to see that Jupiter, Thomas Jefferson's childhood friend and, as an adult, his most respected slave, didn't have his own page--not even a small one. I was even more suprised to see that Jupiter isn't even mentioned in Thomas Jefferson's page.

I don't really know much about Jupiter other than he was TJ's friend. In fact, that's why I was hoping Wiki would have something more, because I would love to know. So I just think anyone who knows anything about Jupiter should put it at least in the TJ page, just so that he's mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.148.25.198 (talk • contribs)

No Good Hustler
Yeah, I'm not an editor or anything, but you should probably take out the part about Thomas Jefferson being a rapper and no good hustler.

Spouse?
I do not see any discussion of the matter on the current discussion page, and because there is not even an allegation that I have read anywhere to the effect that Jefferson actually married Sally Hemmings, I am changing the 'spouse' entry in the sidebar to reflect the name of the woman he actually did wed. Ari 16:59, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It was vandalism from earlier today-- thanks for catching it! The person who rolled back a vandalism didn't roll it back far enough. This page is constantly hit, and so pretty much most edits to it are rolling back, but we all need to be careful and click back until we get to a good version. --plange 18:57, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Number of Slaves Freed
Here is the quote.

During his lifetime, and in his will, Jefferson had freed only eight of his slaves (all of them members of the Hemings family) .

http://www.monticello.org/plantation/lives/freed.html

He freed two men during his lifetime. Robert Hemings and James Hemings. In his will he freed five men. Joe Fosset Jr., John Hemings, Burwell Colbert, Madison Hemings and Eston Hemings. I counted seven people. He allowed three slaves to run away. Jayme Hemings, Beverly Hemings and Harriet Hemings. That would be ten. Welsh4ever76 01:42, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Recommended changes to section titled: Political Career 1774 to 1800
First, my thanks to everyone who contributed to this very thoughful article.

I would like to make a suggestion for a change in the section titled: Political Career 1774 to 1800 that would be in keeping with the spirit of NPOV. The current article reads..."Jefferson strongly supported France against Britain when war broke out between those nations in 1793. However, the Jay Treaty proved that Washington and Hamilton favored Britain, so Jefferson retired to Monticello." Stating that Washington and Hamilton favored Britian may be a misrepresentation of the President's convictions. Washington did not believe that America could win another contest against Great Britian, doubting that our county had the means and collective will to pursue such a course of action. Hamilton did not believe that the nacent union could financially sustain another major conflict. The Jay Treaty was as much an acknowlegement of our nation's persistent dependence on Britian as it was an example of the lack of any real leverage, the nation had at that time, in negotiating with the British. For the reasons listed above, and others not mentioned here, Washington and Hamilton favored neutrality in the conflict between France and Britian. It is a correct observation, however, that Jefferson strongly supported France against Britian when war broke out between those nations.

I would suggest modifying the sentence to read thus: "Jefferson strongly supported France against Britain when war broke out between those nations in 1793. However, Washington and Hamilton favored a policy of neutrality. After the Jay Treaty was narrowly approved by congress and was signed into law by Washington, Jefferson departed from Washington's cabinet and retired to Monticello." I believe that this modification would more accurately characterize the opposing points of view, between Jefferson/Madison and Washington/Hamilton, without detracting from the theme of the overall article.

Top Quark 18:12, 5 October 2006 (UTC)David Israel 10-05-06


 * Stating that Jefferson favored France as Here:
 * ''Jefferson strongly supported France against Britain when war broke out between those nations in 1793. However, the Jay Treaty brought peace and trade with Britain--while Jefferson wanted a trade war with Britain and closer ties with France.
 * is a misrepresentation of his acttions. Septentrionalis 05:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed, he simply wanted to remain independent of strong ties at that point in time. Skyemoor 09:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I wonder if the phrase "ran for the Presidency in 1800" shouldn't be changed to "stood for the Presidency in 1800". Certainly the notion of actively seeking office and campaigning as we now understand it didn't come in until very much later, as the very next sentence indicates.  It seems a bit contradictory to me as it is currently worded.  What would the contemporary usage have been?  (And why am I interested in such trivial points?)

Bruce E Baker 22:59, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree; the contemporary usage would have been even more reticent: Madison avoided Jefferson's letters so he would not have to hear Jefferson's refusal to run. Septentrionalis 05:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Cultural depictions of Thomas Jefferson
I've started an approach that may apply to Wikipedia's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information. I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list. Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this approach as a model for the editors here. Regards,  Durova  17:01, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Thomas Jefferson - Biographical Information

 * Thomas Jefferson by Adam, G. Mercer (Read online or download for free)


 * Chronological Events In the Life of Thomas Jefferson

Random Question
Does anyone know anything of Thomas Jefferson ever being suicidal?

Zidel333 20:19, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

WTF?? no

Watersoftheoasis 13:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Annette Gordon Reed
I deleted the last paragraph added under the Sally Hemings section. There were numerous words that were spelled wrong and the accuracy is questionable. Sally Hemings was never manumitted and I am unaware of any of her children becoming millionares. Maybe there were grandchildren that did so but that is not what was stated. This is not correct information. Welsh4ever76 19:13, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I deleted this supposed sourced information again because Annette Gordon Reed is mistaken if she thinks Thomas Jefferson ever freed Sally Hemings even at his death. She was a slave until the day she died. His daughter, Martha Randolph, inherited Sally Hemings and for a time she was a servant in her household. She did give Sally Hemings her time. This means that Sally Hemings was allowed to live in town. It was a retirement of sorts. Martha Randolph did draw up a will in which she would free two slaves upon her death. One of them was Sally Hemings. However Sally Hemings died before Martha Randolph so she was never manumitted. Welsh4ever76 22:20, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I cannot find any information that indicates any of Sally Hemings grandchildren were millionares. Could someone site Annette Gordon Reeds sources for this. Also this is different information from what was originally posted. The contributer said children. Did Ms Gordon Reed make this change or did you? Welsh4ever76 22:22, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

The section didn't say Sally was manumitted, it refers to the laws in France and England. In England she was automaticlly free just by putting her feet on English soil, in France she could have pursued freedom, but she didn't.

What was the actual circumstance with the French? What was their actual position with regard to slaves who people brought into their society?

If the slave was in England, there was a statement that the air of England is "too pure for a slave to breathe." If you were on English soil, you were free. That was not the case in France. At the time of Jefferson was there, the slave would actually have to make a petition to an assembly. These petitions were granted, but it wasn't clear that they would always be granted. His slaves would have had a chance to make this petition and would have a chance to be free.

Is there anything to indicate that the two Hemings servants in his household--Sally and her brother James--were ever interested in pursuing freedom in France?

Nothing besides Madison Hemings's memoir, in which he says that his mother wanted to remain in France, and then Jefferson promised her various things if she would come back.

Sally was in England for several weeks along with Jeffersons doughter Polly:

"So he wrote and said that we should send his youngest daughter, Polly--her real name was Mary, she was later called Mariah, at that time she was Polly--to send her along with a mature woman who had been inoculated against smallpox. Instead, the person that they were going to send was pregnant. So they sent Sally instead. Sally, at this point, was between 14 and 15 years old. She had been the companion of Polly, the nurse companion for Polly for many years. And so they went to London, and stayed at the home of Abigail Adams and John Adams for several weeks until Jefferson sent for Polly. And that's how Sally ended up in Paris."

And about Sally's children and grandchildren, which were classified as "white" after gaining freedom, Reed says: You're focusing on the bad. If you focus on his perspective--not from Madison's perspective, not from Sally's--but from his perspective, look what he's done. They're white, and they're going to be free white men. Within one generation, two of his grandchildren are millionaires. They own businesses in Madison, Wisconsin.

Grandchildren from the descendants of Sally?

From the descendants of Sally. The thing is, if you're a white man, a white person in America, and you apply yourself, that worked. That's exactly what happened. CoYep 22:57, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, Reed states that Jefferson payed wages to her and other slaves:

"She was paid wages along with James, her brother, who was paid wages. But that was a practice that Jefferson followed whenever he had any of slaves in a place where the other servants were free workers. He paid them wages along with the others, so that there wouldn't be slaves there working along with servants and not getting paid."

For the sake of balance, those informations should be included into the Slavery and Hemings controversy sections. CoYep 23:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Another thing, the article implies that for Jefferson, being a slave and being black was one and the same. That is not correct. In Jeffersons opinion, as well as by the laws of the time, slave status was not connected to skin color or race. And Sally's offspring indeed registered as white after emanzipation. See this source CoYep 23:28, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * What are you talking about? I am referencing this paragraph:

'Using a large-body of non''-DNA evidence, African-American historian Annette Gordon Reed argues that not only did Hemings and Jefferson have sexual relations, but that they were in love with each other. She explains that Jefferson didn't manimate Hemings until his death because it wasn't possible for them to openly have a relationship because of miscegenation laws of the time. Hemings took trips to France and England, where by law she was free, yet she returned to live as a "slave" with Jefferson. Jefferson ensured that Sally's children received a good education - within one generation two of his grandchildren became millionaires - and that their live together resembled a family rather than a master-slave arrangment. '''


 * I read this as Thomas Jefferson freed Sally Hemings after his death. He did not and this is why I state it is incorrect information. She was never manumitted or freed. As a teenager she was free to go in England and in France but he dies many years later. What am I missing? I do not see what one has to do with the other. She was property of his daughter until she died. I think the author is implying she must have loved Jefferson to return to the US with him but I think this is nonsense as her entire family was back in the US and she may not have even been aware she was free to go. Her brother returned as well. Did he do it because he loved Jefferson? Also, Jefferson did not ensure that Sally Hemings children had a good education. This another lie. I am not sure where it came from but Madison Hemings himself said he was never formerly taught how to read. Jefferson's grand-duaghter sometimes taught him to read but this was the only education he recieved. Jefferson seemed to care very little about her kids. The descendants of Eston Hemings did own a hotel but I do not think they ever became millionares from this. Any other sources besides Gordon Reed? This quote has many things wrong with it. Specifically it is historically inaccurate. Welsh4ever76 23:59, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I deleted this paragraph again. This is incorrect information even if it was said on PBS. The web site http://www.monticello.org/plantation/lives/sallyhemings.html has information about what happened to Sally Hemings after the death of Thomas Jefferson.

''--Sally Hemings was never officially freed by Thomas Jefferson. It seems most likely that Jefferson's daughter Martha Randolph gave Sally "her time," a form of unofficial freedom that would enable her to remain in Virginia (the laws at that time required freed slaves to leave the state within a year). --''

Martha Randolph did include a provision to set Sally Hemings and another slave (Wormley Hughs I believe) free in her will however Sally Hemings died before Martha Randolph so she remained a slave until she died.

Please stop posting incorrect information.Welsh4ever76 23:10, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I deleted this revised paragraph again. Madison Hemings states that Jefferson did not ensure that he or his siblings received a good education. Here is a quote from Madison Hemings concerning his education.

I learned to read by inducing the white children to teach me the letters and something more; what else I know of books I have picked up here and there till now I can read and write.

This is from the website http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/cron/1873march.html

Annette Gordon Reed seems to be mistaken in much of what she writes concerning this subject. Please stop using her as a reference. Welsh4ever76 20:49, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I also deleted a qoute from Annette Gordon Reed under the slavery section. It is poorly written and does not make sense. It has many spelling errors as well. Welsh4ever76 17:19, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


 * There are no spelling errors in this quote. It is from a book published by the University of Virginia. It's clear to me that you object to Reed not on scholarly grounds, but because you disagree with her interpretation of history. This does not give you authority to remove her opinions from this article. Please quite trying to white-wash the Thomas Jefferson article. Griot 17:40, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I have shown at least two different instances where incorrect statements were made by Annette Gordon Reed. I also disagree with some of the assertions she has made in the referenced passage. I do not believe that Thomas Jefferson encouraged a black family to send their children to an all white school. All that I can find is her claim. I believe this to be inaccurate information. I do not like the way it is written either. She uses the term on the one hand and on the other too much. It is just bad writing and questionable material. Welsh4ever76 19:11, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You appear to be removing quotes from Annette Gordon Reed, a published researcher on this subject, because you "disagree" or "do not believe" what they say. This is original research on your part and inappropriate.  If you can find citations to cite your point of view, it would be reasonable to include those points of view as well as AGR's, both appropriately cited.  As it stands, it appears to me that you are dramatically pushing a point of view in the article based on what you believe.   bikeable (talk) 19:26, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I deleted this again. The original research is on Annette Gordon Reeds part. Thomas Jefferson never said this. Welsh4ever76 19:43, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I thought I would paste the qoute that I have a problem with.

''On one hand, Jefferson wrote that slavery was an abomination. On the other hand, he seldom freed slaves. On the one hand, he argued that slaves could not be freed because they were like children. On the other hand, he saw to it that many slaves on his plantation became skilled craftsmen....On one hand, Jefferson seems to have been revolted by the notion of amalgamation and social relations with blacks. On the other hand, he took products of amalgamation and made them favored members of his household. He also maintained cordial relations with some blacks and encouraged one black family to send their children to the local white school in Charlottesville. The truth is that Thomas Jefferson can be cited to support almost any position on slavery and the race question that could exist [40].''

I have not been able to confirm any such story. In colonial Virginia slaves were not permitted to attend school with whites. Free black people were not permitted to live in the state. So to tell a black family that they should send their kids to the local school in Charlottesville simply does not make sense. It was illegal for them to even be there.Welsh4ever76 05:51, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I think you continue to misunderstand WP:OR. You don't need to "confirm" this point for it to be in here: AGR has published the quote you keep removing, and she is a published academic researcher.  You say above, The original research is on Annette Gordon Reeds part.  True: she is a researcher, and that is her job, and it is our job to cite her work and that of other researchers.  Unless you are also a published researcher -- in which case, please provide a citation -- it doesn't matter whether you disagree, cannot confirm, or even can disprove AGR's words.  If you disproved quantum chromodynamics in clear English we still wouldn't let you put your proof into the article: publish it in the literature, and then it will be cited.  Similarly, you should find a direct citation in the historical literature that disproves AGR's point.  Otherwise, you persist in promoting your own point of view which you arrive at via original research.   bikeable (talk) 14:59, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I do not want to put my proof or point of view in the article. All I did was delete something because I think it is incorrect and misleading. I do not care where it came from. The historical record contradicts what Annette Gordon Reed wrote. It may have been a mistake like the other qoutes above but bottomline it did not happen so why have it in the article. It gives people an impression of Jefferson that is false and promotes a story that didn't happen. It is not Wikipedia's job to promote her view. There are numerous authors who have published works about Jefferson that turned out to be incorrect. There is no place for them in this article and there should not be for Annette Gordon Reed either. I have heard similar tales about comments he made that could not have happened because of timeline issues, laws or known discrepancies so just because someone publishes it does not make it so. Welsh4ever76 06:49, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I am going to delete the qoute by Annette Gordon Reed again. In 1806 a law was passed that forbade manumitted slaves from staying in the state of Virginia for more than one year. Also, there were laws prohibiting free and enslaved African Americans to be taught to read or write. Neither free nor enslaved blacks could attend schools with whites. So even a black family with a waiver to live there, which was uncommon but not unheard of, would not have been allowed to attend schools with whites. Thomas Jefferson would not suggest to a black family to send their kids to the all white school knowing it was illegal to do so.Welsh4ever76 00:54, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Specificity - It was illegal to teach enslaved, free and orphaned blacks to read. Free blacks over the age of twenty-one had to leave the state within 12 months of being freed. If not they could be re-enslaved. It was illegal for free blacks to move to Virginia. A teacher would be fined for teaching a black student enslaved or free. I can find no record of a school in Charlottesville until around 1800 and these laws were strictly enforced at that time because of the attempted revolt of Gabriel Prosser in 1800. I am going to delete this again.Welsh4ever76 03:13, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but your actions are the textbook example of original research. Specifically, it appears that you are arguing with the phrase, ...encouraged one black family to send their children to the local white school in Charlottesville.  Even if you are correct that it was illegal to teach blacks to read, perhaps TJ was encouraging them to do something illegal.  I don't know, and I don't really care -- the page cites a well-known academic researcher on the subject, and until you come up with a citation that says that she is wrong, your opposition remains original research.  bikeable (talk) 04:07, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I will leave it then until I can find a published source to refute it. It is incorrect. I am just having trouble finding a good source to counter it. Welsh4ever76 06:28, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Gordon-Reed's footnotes for this passage are Malone's book, 1:265; 3:206, 4:493. She also refers to McLaughlan and Miller. Unfortunately she has a habit of footnoting a whole paragraph with one note, so it is unclear which text is the source for the point about the family. Of course by "black" she may mean mixed race. Paul B 09:04, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I orginally added this quote to the article. The incident with Jefferson ...encouraged one black family to send their children to the local white school in Charlottesville. is also mentioned in another part of the book, if I remember correctly, which gives more details.  I will try to find it.  --JW1805 (Talk) 03:53, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Five Points:

1. TJ and the school question The source for the citation of TJ’s urging a black family (the Scotts, a famous family of musicians) to send their children to school is given in TJ and SH: An American Controversy at page 139 in the text, page 268 in the notes. That source, an essay in the much acclaimed Jefferson Legacies, cites to Ora Langhorne’s Southern Sketches, a book that profiles various figures in 19th century Virginia. R.T. W. Duke and W.C.N Randolph wrote in their recollections of the Scotts’ exceptional lives. Randolph remembered that the mixed race Scotts were allowed to vote. The Scotts were not the only ones who reported going to school in C’ville. The children of David and Nancy Isaacs, a Jewish C’ville merchant and free black woman, younger than the Scotts, also remembered going to school with white children. One can say that all these people were lying, but there should be some firm basis for saying that, and the purported existence of a law against it is not a firm basis. Historians in all fields of study have long noted the gap between law on the books and law “on the ground”—as they say. That is one of the many things that makes history continually fun; finding the unexpected circumstances that confound conventional wisdom, seeing human flexibility in the way people respond (or don’t respond) to authority. Individuals in communities, away from the seat of government, very often make up their own “customary” rules to take care of their local values and preferences. Sometimes governments pass laws for their salutary effect, with neither the intention, nor the power, to enforce them. To say that a thing didn’t happen because it was against the law for it to happen, does not really get at the way people actually live in the real world. History is more than the study of what appears in statute books. What made the Scotts different? In addition to being local celebrities, they were the grandchildren of Thomas Bell, a prominent C’Ville merchant and very close friend of TJ’s. Bell, a white man, lived on Main Street in C’Ville with SH’s sister, Mary Hemings, from the late 1780s until his death in 1800. Their relationship was completely open and completely against the law. But Bell was a respected member of the community who became a magistrate and Justice of the Peace while he was living with Hemings. When the town put together special commissions to study problems, he was often voted to lead or participate. He and TJ socialized together, and Bell was TJ’s agent on business matters. People did not care how he lived. See Joshua D. Rothman’s Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families Across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861. It is especially good about the gap between law and actual practice in C’ville during TJ’s time. An example from TJ’s specific case; a 1782 Virginia law made it illegal to let slaves hire themselves out. See, Thomas D. Morris, “Southern Slavery and the Law 1619-1860”, p. 339. They were also not supposed to be given general passes to go wherever they wanted. The master was supposed to maintain strict control over the process of hiring slaves out and their movement. Yet, TJ regularly allowed Martin, Robert, James, and Peter Hemings to hire themselves out and keep their money. His letters make clear that sometimes, he didn’t even know where they were and for whom they were working. According to the law, TJ was not supposed to do that. But, he did. I am prepared to believe that the vast majority of white Virginians acted with implacable hostility towards blacks, but we know that there were some people of conscience who did not think the laws in certain cases made sense, and acted in contravention of them as circumstances warranted. In the Scotts'time, Virginia had prohibitions against unlawful assemblies of blacks where learning could take place that could be, and were, finessed. An 1831 law prohibited free blacks from teaching other blacks to read and write, and any whites from teaching assemblages of blacks for pay or going to school with them. But that law was passed five years after TJ's death and, thus, had no bearing on his dealings with the Scott family. Even then, Morris, in his painstaking and exhaustive study of the laws of southern slavery cited above, says that, unlike other regulations policing blacks, those laws were only rarely enforced.

2. Free blacks in Virginia – The notion that the story mentioned just above is untrue because the laws of colonial Virginia prevented free blacks from residing in the state is incorrect. It is emphatically not the case that free blacks were not allowed to stay in colonial Virginia, as the numerous books and articles exploring the lives of free blacks in Virginia throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, attest. (See the works of Ira Berlin, Philip Morgan, Stephen Innes, and many, many others. One of the most recent books on free blacks in Virginia is Melvin Patrick Ely’s 2004 Bancroft Prize winning, Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom From the 1790s to the Civil War). Before the beginning of the 1780s there could be no private manumissions. The owner of an enslaved person had to get permission from the colonial government to emancipate him or her. But there were a number of free blacks who had not been slaves for generations, if at all:they were, mainly, the descendants of white women and black men who had married (or merely had liaisons)before the 1691 Virginia statute that outlawed intermarriage. Children followed the status of their mothers, so they, and their progeny, were free. After the 1782 liberalization of the law, which allowed for private manumissions, the number of free blacks increased. After his emancipation in the 1790s, Robert Hemings lived in Richmond and operated his own small business. The 1806 law requiring blacks freed after that date to leave Virginia, had a provision that allowed masters to seek permission for the freed slave to remain in the state. Ely discusses how local officials largely ignored the provision requiring removal to another state. Most importantly, the laws of colonial Virginia have nothing to do with the Scott children and their relations with TJ, because they were not alive when Virginia was still a colony. They were born during the early American Republic.

3. The Prosperity of SH’s grandchildren—John Wayles Jefferson (born John Wayles Hemings) was a Memphis cotton merchant, president of J.W. Jefferson & Company, and land speculator. His younger brother, Beverly Jefferson was his heir- at -law and was the owner, in is own right, of a hotel and cab company in Madison, Wisconsin. Their stories can be found in “Thomas Jefferson’s Unknown Grandchildren”, an American Heritage article, also cited in TJ and SH: An American Controversy. Near the end of his life, Wayles Jefferson’s estimated net worth was between fifty and one hundred thousand dollars. “Millionaire” is a term of art used to convey to modern day readers what it meant to be worth between $50,000 and $100,000 in 1890. A person who had that amount of money in today’s terms would not be considered “rich”. It is necessary, and more accurate, to try to give readers some sense of what that amount of money really meant in the times in which the subject had it--or didn’t have it. For example, saying TJ was about $107,000 dollars in debt when he died in 1826, does not really convey the magnitude of his financial ruin. By some estimates, a dollar in 1890 had the spending power of almost 20 dollars today. By that measure, Wayles Jefferson was a rich man and, at least, a “millionaire”. 4. The “habit” of using one endnote for paragraphs—This is not a personal eccentricity. It is a convention in academic press books to use one endnote for a paragraph that contains numerous assertions for which there must be a citation. The citations in the endnotes are given in the order in which the assertions appear. Law review articles cite each sentence. That scares ordinary readers, which is why book publishers don’t let their authors do that. Popular history books are starting to give citations by referencing the beginnings of sentences in the text. They are meant to be minimal, and do not usually contain additional discussions of material. For that reason, academic presses probably will no go that route.

5. The Future --All of this-- and much, much more-- will be discussed and further expanded upon in the forthcoming two book set, The Hemings Family of Monticello: A Story of American Slavery, from W. W. Norton: first book in 2007. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vertvox (talk • contribs) 14:22, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The "habit" is that of books that are aimed at a mass market while seeking to retain the mechanics of academic citation in such a way that they will not "scare" ordinary readers, as you put it. It is not normative within academic literature. You seem to know a great deal about Annette Gordon Reed's future publishing plans. Why is that, I wonder? Paul B 17:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I understand that John Wayles Jefferson was like a millionare but that is not being a millionare. They existed at that time. People who were worth over a million dollars. They were millionares. It meant something different in dollar terms but a millionare is very specific even if it means different things now compared to back then. It is a misleading statement.Welsh4ever76 18:54, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

It is not misleading in the context of his life story as presented in the American Heritage article. Okay, the term "millionaire" as as a synonym for "very wealthy", "rich" or "prosperous" does not work for all, and it is best to be literal. In any event, it is not a material mistake given the context of the overall point being made, certainly not as compared to saying that free blacks were not able to reside in colonial Virginia. We can say in the end that Wayles Jefferson was a very rich man, who would be a millionaire by today's terms, just one generation out of slavery. That was no mean feat; a testament to the tenacity and creativity of the Hemings/Wayles line. UserVertvox


 * I did write that free blacks were allowed to stay in the state of Virginia with a waiver to do so. I still question this and it is not all about the laws of the time. I will have to research the Scott family.


 * You state that calling John Wayles Hemings a millionaire is not a material mistake but I believe it is. It misrepresents who he was. He was wealthy but not a millionare. Being a millionaire back then was a big deal.


 * The entire point made by Annette Gordon-Reed is misleading. Thomas Jefferson never freed Sally Hemings. His daughter did not free Sally Hemings. They did not live together as a family. He lived in mansion and she lived in a soot filled servants quarter. Thomas Jefferson did not ensure that Sally Hemings children received a good education. The only education he appeared to ensure was their uncle teaching them carpentry. Madison Hemings said no one taught him to read. It is not clear his brothers and sister even knew how to read. Neither John Wayles Hemings nor his brother became millionaires.


 * When a historian or anyone for that matter stretches the truth like this it gives a false impression of what really occurred. This spin by Annette Gordon-Reed makes Thomas Jefferson appear as loving to Sally Hemings' children and concerned with their welfare and future. In reality all the available evidence suggests he could care less and treated them no differently then other slaves. He allowed Critta Hemings' son Jayme to run away just like Beverly and Harriet. Jayme Hemings could not have been his son. It appears that he didn't bother to teach them to read or write. He made them work from a very young age. He did not have them inoculated against smallpox and in his will he left houses for the other freed slaves but did not give a home to Sally or her two sons.


 * There is no loving family relationship. This is not historical fact. Some of it is made up. It is always best to be as factual and clear as possible. This is really the only way to get to the truth. Welsh4ever76 03:20, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

As to impressions: the presentation of the state of the law of Virginia in colonial times (again, nothing at all to do with the Scotts who knew TJ) as an argument against the notion that they could have gone to school with white children is just wrong. By all means, research the Scott family. Theirs was a fascinating story. As to the term millionaire, you are right: it's best to be precise for those people who don't deal in metaphor: “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?--minus Uncle Sam's, and your individual state's tax rate?” Because I don't sense much humor coming from this page, I'll say in advance that this was only a joke. In that we're operating at the moment in the online world, it is okay to turn to Dictionary.com, which defines "millionaire", not just as a person who actually has a million or more dollars, but, in definition two, as "any very rich person". We just disagree about the materiality of this, when the overall point was that Eston Hemings' early emancipation, and decision to go into the white world, allowed his children to make the most of the American Dream. Wayles Jefferson was, in fact, a big deal in his time. He was a respected officer in the Union Army, he was heavily involved in the Memphis Cotton Exchange--and his net worth would make him more than a millionaire in today's terms. Nowhere in TJ and SH: An American Controversy is it stated that TJ formally freed SH. Nowhere. One enslaved person from Monticello recalled that TJ freed "seven" people. We know his will mentioned only five. Later, TJ's daughter gave SH and Wormley Hughes, their "time". It is not at all irresponsible, given the totality of this information (TJ's will, the recollection about 7 people freed, and TJ's daughter's action), to at least raise the question whether there was a verbal understanding that TJ wanted SH, and W. Hughes, to be freed. Raising it does not answer the question. Historians do this kind of thing all the time. One finds similar modes of analysis, thinking, and questioning all throughout Jefferson scholarship, and it is all the richer and more complex for that. It's just that the subject of SH and TJ is, for some people, so volatile (painful even) that there is no tolerance for even thinking about the question in the same free-ranging way that other issues are thought about. But that's simply a matter of individual personalities, emotions, and sensibilities. Not everyone is equally hyped up about this. We don't know that SH lived in a "soot filled servants quarter". Those are the reported words of TJ Randolph, who also said that all of her children were fathered by Peter Carr,--all of them, not just the first three, all of them-- a notion totally discredited by analysis and DNA. By any fair standard at all, he is not a source to be trusted on the details of SH's life. That much is clear. Anyway, new archaeological work being done at Monticello is turning up previously unknown (and very intriguing) housing sites, making it clear that we really don't know very much about where people were housed at the plantation. Also, the existence of rooms in the basement of Monticello, with no indication of who lived there, makes it even clearer that we don't know exactly where everyone was. There are simply no definitive statements to be made about this. Nowhere in TJ and SH: An American Controversy is it stated that TJ ensured that "Sally Hemings (sic) children received a good education", meaning a "liberal arts" type education. We have letters from Madison Hemings as a young man, and signed documents as an elderly man. So, he could read and write. We have legal documents with Eston Hemings' signature. But because they went into the white world as young adults and disappeared, we don’t know about Beverley and Harriet Hemings except that they lived as white people, married people who were well off (not millionaires) and that Beverley was apparently a hot air balloon enthusiast. It is not true that they were treated just like other enslaved people. The Hemings children did not work from an early age, unless one counts running errands for one's parents work. Beverley, Madison and Eston began to learn carpentry with their uncle when they were teenagers. Their sister, Harriet, learned to spin. But TJ's overseer said she never really did much work. On the emancipation question, as TJ and SH: An American Controversy makes clear, Jamey Hemings' flight (informal emancipation) from Monticello was very different from SH's children, in that there was a serious precipitating event that put it in motion and TJ's response to his flight was different. Jamey Hemings ran away after he was almost murdered by an overseer. There is no indication that if this event hadn't occurred, TJ would have freed Jamey Hemings. When he ran away, TJ's correspondence shows that, at first, he tried to have him brought back to Monticello. For whatever reason, after more than a year had passed, he just let him go. That's not the same as giving someone money, putting them on a stage coach, and not sending anybody after them or freeing a person in a will and petitioning the state to allow them to remain in Virginia. As your determined point about "millionaire" suggests, (let’s stick with your literalism for the moment) details matter; and the details of Jamey Hemings' freedom and those of his first cousins' freedom are very, very different in material ways. So, it is misleading to lump them all together as if those differences do not matter. No, TJ did not give SH and her children a house upon his death. Right after he died, they moved into a house that they rented (with money from where?) in C'ville. They soon bought homes. Burwell Colbert, John Hemings and Joseph Fossett were left life tenancies in houses. We don't know about Hemings and Fossett, but Colbert was reportedly living at TJ Randolph’s plantation. So, he got a life interest in a house, but he got a house on a plantation—essentially living under the cover of his former masters. Under those circumstances, I’d rather rent than own. Inoculation was going out of vogue by the time the Hemings children were born and old enough to undergo a procedure to protect them against small pox. Jenner had developed vaccination, a much safer procedure, and TJ personally vaccinated the Hemings children and the entire enslaved community when the vaccine became widely available. TJ had their mother, SH, inoculated in 1787. user:(vertvox


 * This is what I am talking about. Thomas Jefferson did not personally vaccinate the Hemings children. Eston Hemings great- great grand-daughter, Jean Jefferson, says he died of smallpox. I would add that both Beverly and Harriet Hemings ran away and were brought back. Beverly Hemings lived at Monticello until he was twenty-four as well. Eston and Madison did not immediatley move into a rented home. They lived and worked with their uncle and their mother was a most likely a servant in Martha Randolph's home. You state that they move right away and wonder where the money came from. It is pointles to wonder as the first part of your statement is untrue. Welsh4ever76 17:33, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

"This is what [you are] talking about". What on earth are you talking about?! Wrong again! And I knew this was coming, tipped off by your reference to inoculation (becoming passé by the Hemings children's day) rather than the procedure of their time, which was vaccination. I know what Eston Hemings died of. This is akin to your mistake about the laws of "colonial Virginia" and the Scott family. Anyway, unlike inoculation, vaccination DOES NOT, I repeat, DOES NOT provide lifelong immunity against the disease. People can, and did, get small pox after being vaccinated. Inoculation, which involves inserting live small pox virus into the patient, renders the patient forever immune from small pox, barring some problem with the procedure. Vaccination, using vaccinia (cow pox “vaca” from cow”), provides immunity in people for varying degrees of time. Many contemporary critics of Jenner disparaged his work when people who had been vaccinated came down with the disease many years after they had undergone vaccination. He and his supporters insisted that these people had contracted the disease due to mistakes made by the vaccinators. It was not until a couple of the patients that he had personally vaccinated came down with small pox, that he realized that small pox vaccination does not provide lifelong immunity from the disease to everyone who is vaccinated. Evidence suggests that immunity declines after 20 to 30 years. Eston Hemings was vaccinated as a young boy. Way more than 20 or 30 years had passed when he contracted the disease. This is the stuff of deep tragedy and irony, of course. But it has nothing to do with the fact of his vaccination. I have no reason to believe that TJ was lying when he said he’d vaccinated everyone on the plantation. You were the one who brought this up as some proposed item of evidence that TJ didn’t care about, or had no special connection, to the Hemings children. I’ve never seen this offered as evidence of anything. You brought this up. About vaccination at Monticello, one can imagine that the primitive procedures of those early days- TJ got the material for vaccination just a decade or so after it was developed-- may have made it more likely that people would contract the disease than they would in modern times. In other words, the vaccine could be weak due to problems with storage, which TJ tried to get everyone to focus on, or a host of other issues that arose in those more primitive times. But, even today with modern procedures, vaccination, though much safer initially, provides less immunity than inoculation. It’s just the nature of the virus and the way it works in the human body. In sum, with all this, it is not at all a surprise that Eston Hemings contracted small pox decades after Jefferson's vaccination-- not a surprise at all. Again, small pox vaccination does not provide lifelong immunity from the disease. You may recall after the events of 9/11, there was serious talk about reviving the small pox vaccination that all Americans used to receive out of fear that terrorists would launch a biological attack using the virus. If you go back and look at the papers, you will find that health officials were concerned because protecting the country would really require vaccinating everyone. With that, there would be some certain number of people who would die as a result of complications from the vaccination. Mandatory small pox vaccination ended at the beginning of the 1970s, so the majority of Americans were well past the 20 to 30 year immunity range, and anyone born after that would never have been vaccinated at all. Actually, elderly Americans, who had come of age before mandatory vaccination, would have had to be vaccinated, too. Given the numbers, and certain probabilities of death due to the vaccination itself, they decided that the potential harm outweighed the likelihood that there would be an attack. If you doubt me about vaccination versus inoculation, and the lack of lifelong immunity provided by the former, please look this up. A good biography of Edward Jenner would explain all of this. Beverley Hemings and Harriet Hemings did not run away from Monticello and get brought back. One time, Edmund Bacon sent a note to TJ saying that Beverley was missing from the carpenter's shop. That’s it. There is not one document, circumstance, or passing statement that suggests that Beverley Hemings (or Harriet Hemings) ran away from Monticello and TJ sent someone to bring him (her) back. Nothing. Not showing up to work, even for several days, is not the same thing as running away from the plantation. He could have been sick for all we know, or visiting a girlfriend. Bacon didn’t say, “Beverley is not at Monticello anymore.” As the overseer, he could easily have found that out. He just said he hadn’t been coming to the carpenter’s shop. Beverley and Harriet can be tracked in the Farm Book until 1822, when they left Monticello. Just look at it. There is no reason to doubt that SH, MH, and EH moved into Charlottesville after TJ’s death. A regular census report, and a special census, support that. “Most likely” a servant of MJR is pretty lame in comparison to those things. Ellen Coolidge left her servant, Sally Marks, with MJR when she got married. To the extent that there are references to “Sally’ in the late 1820s, they are to her. Mistaking Sally Marks for SH is a thing that happens in some published accounts. We know what happened to Sally Marks. She was not the “Sally” given her time. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vertvox (talk • contribs) 22:58, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


 * He vaccinated family and servants on his plantation in 1801. He did not vaccinate all of them. When he was older he did not do the actual vaccinations. For instance I believe his younger grandchildren were vaccinated by doctors. It is not all that unusual that he would not have vaccinated any kids later in life. There are many reasons for this. It could mean something or maybe it means nothing. Welsh4ever76 23:44, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Jefferson did not stop all vaccinations at Monticello in 1801. He had enslaved people coming from his other farms, other workers who could have infected newly born enslaved people. As a matter of economic investment alone that would have made no sense.In any event, you were the one who brought this up as if it meant something. You are right, it could mean absolutely nothing at all. And I should say that the tone I adopted at the beginning of my last message was not necessary. I should be able to answer without invective or sarcasm. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vertvox (talk • contribs) 01:34, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The reply was fine. I should state that one of the reasons that I fight what may seem like the most tedious thing in this article is because it can lead to a total misunderstanding. When I first read about Sally Hemings I was surprised about how misinformed people were on this story. Through out time people have believed things that turned out to be false concerning Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings on BOTH sides of this argument. One of the things that historians and others have done is present evidence as fact. I know that historians have done this before but for some reason it took on mythic proportions in this case. It has involved people believing things that didn't happen. You accuse Thomas Jefferson Randolph of not being a reliable source but Madison Hemings also believed things that could not have happened like Dolly Madison being at Monticello when he was born. Neither men may have lied intentionally but they do not know the full story. I think the evidence for Sally Marks is very compelling and correct but we still do not know when Eston Hemings moved away from his uncles home. He may have been able to work and make money to pay for rent. I do not think it is wrong to search for the truth and to try and show people what it was like back then. With this story some people have taken it a step further. I am not going to name names but the Nature article was not just damaging to Thomas Jefferson reputation and seeing as how nothing was really proven concerning Thomas Jefferson I think that it was wrong to publish. Welsh4ever76 01:33, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad you thought that was okay. You and I just have different views about what constitutes a material mistake, and we're just not going to meet on that. Not all mistakes are equally problematic. Saying that your dead cousin, a married man, was notoriously carrying on an affair with another woman, and fathered all her children--when that didn't happen-- is worse than saying that someone suggested to your mother when you were born, that she give you a certain name. Peter Carr had a wife and family. Why shouldn't we be careful and protective of their relationship, and mistrustful of someone who would so flagrantly disregard the importance of the Carr family-- because Peter Carr wasn't famous and we don't care about him as much as TJ? TJ Randolph did damage, not just to Peter Carr, but to his wife and children who existed within a bond made by matrimony. I'm sorry, adultery is worse to me than fornication (what an archaic term that is!) and I have a higher standard when someone is accused of that. The Carr marriage has gone down in history, until recently, as a sham under TJ Randolph's formulation, and there is no evidence that it ever was. Randolph also said that he knew there was no special treatment of SH because he was in charge of giving out all the clothes and supplies to slaves when SH was having her kids. Well, he wasn't. He was about 12 when she conceived her last child. I just think Randolph should receive demerits for all this, and other things he said on this subject that were not true. I can listen to him about some things, but not this subject. As for MH, as it turns out, Dolly Madison was at Monticello when SH was in the latter stages of her pregnancy with MH. I can easily see how, with no bad faith at all, "Dolley was there when I was born" could come out of a casual statement made when Dolley Madison was visiting at Monticello when SH was visibly pregnant. One should ask, "How could this person be mistaken? Could this be true in substance, but not happen exactly the way the person said it happened?" With Randolph, I don't see how he could have mistakenly thought that when he was age 4 to 12 he was in charge of giving out clothes to slaves. I also don't think he could have mistakenly believed that Peter Carr was notorious for having fathered all of SH's children. He knew everything about that place. He was his grandfather's rock. I can easily see how MH could have mixed up Dolley Madison's saying something to his mother while his mother was pregnant with her saying something to her just after he was born. It would be of greater concern, though still not fatal, if Dolley had not been at Monticello at all when SH was pregnant in 1804-- but she was. I guess I'm just suspicious of requirements of absolute precision, about dates and times, precise words-- seizing on small things as destroying the essence of a story. There's a danger of missing the forest for the trees. Doing that is not always the same as trying to get at the truth. In fact I think it's almost always not an effective way of getting at the truth. You know how this works in our day to day life, someone who has something against you grasps any slip of the tongue, any small memory lapse to discredit you overall. AHA! [we've both been doing a little bit of that ourselves here] Well, very often it isn't fair, and it's not really the best way to find out what is going on in a given situation. That's why I pulled back from the nasty tone of my prior message. I don't always know what is in someone's heart about a thing. I can only try to figure out whether what they are saying makes sense in the context of other things I know about the circumstances surrounding it. That's why TJ Randolph's statements are fatally problematic, but MH's statement about Dolley Madison is not. But for the issue of SH and TJ, the idea that a white slave owner like Dolly Madison would have suggested a name for an enslaved person's child would be seen as a completely inocuous thing. That happened in the South. MH does not specifically tie this to TJ in any way. He seems to have told it criticize Dolley Madison for not keeping a promise to his mother. But in the context of this story, it becomes a big deal because some people go to MH's recollections just looking for ways to say he was lying rather than trying to look objectively at what he was saying. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vertvox (talk • contribs) 02:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I am not looking for ways to discredit Madison Hemings. I have linked back to the interview somewhere on this page before. After looking at it several times it is clear that the inconsistencies in his statement could not have come from him anyway. He was repeating what someone told him. So it is not so much his reliability that comes into question. How would he know what happens before he was born or at the the time of his birth. The same can go for Thomas Jefferson Randolph. He really would not know who the father is even if he saw something suspicious or overheard something. So they both said things that were not correct yet presented them as fact. Leading people to believe things about others that may not be true.


 * Concerning Dolley Madison, can I prove it didn't happen? No. Can you prove it did happen? No. So why say bad things about her. It could be that around the same time Dolley Madison asked Martha Randolph to name her child James Madison. She ended up having a daughter but later she had a son whom she named James Madison. I am not saying 100% that they are connected because I know they may not be but it is just a thought. Welsh4ever76 17:47, 9 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think what MH said about Dolley Madison was really "bad". I see these people as fallible humans; and promising a present and then forgetting (or deciding not) to give it, is within the acceptable range of ways human beings sometimes fall short. With history, we really can't follow our mothers' prescription, "If you can't say something good..."  As to what "we" can "prove", well, we wouldn't have much history if we didn't look at and analyze what individuals in the past said about their lives. That would take care of family letters, even the ones written contemporaneously to the event described. As this story shows, people can put patently false things in family letters.   As a matter of fact, all the stories about TJ and his wife were things told to his grandchildren, too. So, we don't know if any of that is true either; like the story of the suitors coming to court Martha and upon hearing her singing with TJ in the parlor, turning around and leaving. We can't prove that ever happened. Yet that appears in all TJ biographies as a statement about their courtship, and I think it should. We’re doing the best we can with what we have. The list could go on and on about family memories (the Jefferson’s and everyone else’s) that would have to be ditched under a standard that says that unless we can "prove" what has been said--in the way I think you mean prove—the statements can't be used. Of course that would be death to doing history. We accept TJ's statements about his relations with his father although we can't "prove" they were true. We can't even "prove" that Peter Jefferson was TJ's biological father. We know he was his legal father, but that's a different thing altogether. There are plenty of married men who raise children whom they mistakenly think are their own. The presumptions of law are not biological facts. If we entertain MJR's memories of her father, his legal grandchildren’s memories of him--do we really know what MJR’s forays in the woods with him were like after his wife's death?--we must entertain the family memories of others as well. I think there is a moral imperative to listen to the words of the people whom the Jeffersons were enslaving. Southern slaveowners deliberately set up a system that prevented black participation in civil life. They bear the  burdens of their choices. The enslaved people who made it out of slavery to tell the stories of what life was like under civil death should be listened to. It is an important tenet of western civilization that we are to respect and care about those who were victims of unprovoked aggression in history. And we certainly don’t treat the people who were the aggressors as “innocents” more worthy of belief about how they treated their victims than the victims themselves. Liaisons between masters and enslaved women (from brutal rapes to common law-like marriages) were far too common to treat this as some presumptively wild and crazy notion, and become overly defensive because we admire TJ for his unmatched contributions to American history. Barring building a time machine, and going back and seeing for ourselves, we are to a great degree hostage to the people who lived in the time that we are studying. All we can do is look for things outside what these historical witnesses are saying to see how credible those statements are.  Of course, we all tend to pause over assertions that bother us for some reason when we’re looking at history-- or even in our daily lives. That’s why we don’t even notice ourselves accepting vast quantities of material that is not “proven”, when those particular “facts” don’t bother us, but balk at things that get under our skin. Different things will get under people’s skins.  The idea of TJ and SH doesn’t bother me at all.  The revelation that a southern planter, widowed for almost 45 years, actually had a mistress among his slaves is a completely banal one to me. So, I don’t go into it with any reason to doubt MH, and don’t approach the matter with heightened sensitivity.  user Vertvox —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.201.190.202 (talk • contribs) 23:43, 10 December 2006  (UTC)