Even after his measure was defeated, even after his relations with Hemings began, and even after the relations matured and he had time to reflect on his own hypocrisy, Jefferson did not stop proclaiming his public position. “Amalgamation with the other color, produces degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character, can innocently consent,” he wrote in 1814, after he had fathered several biracial children.
