Callender published those “things,” which were the rumors—confirmed by DNA tests centuries later—that Jefferson kept an enslaved woman, Sally Hemings, as his mistress, and had fathered children with her. Callender wrote that Hemings’ oldest son bore “a striking though sable resemblance to those of the President himself.”18 Two years later, in July 1803, Callender’s corpse would be found floating in shallow water in the James River.
