Her misgivings notwithstanding, the syllogism is sound, if relativized to Jefferson's person, station, time, and place—namely, if the first premise is understood as No decent white person of Jefferson's day and given the mores of the South at that time could be involved in an affair with a black slave. Gordon-Reed's failure to relativize (i.e., her judging Jefferson from present standards instead of those standards of his time and place) is once again another instance of the fallacy of historical anachronism.
