Thomas Jefferson & Sally Hemings Quotes

“accepted without question the account promoted by the two white men while expressing skepticism about the black man’s narrative.”
― Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy

“Can we fairly say that the strength of convictions that existed during this time would have been weaker than the zeal and fervor of abolitionists who had won their struggle by the time Madison Hemings was interviewed in 1873?”
― Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy

“Until Harriet Hemings left in 1822, Jefferson had never freed a female slave. There may have been several reasons for this, but we know at least one that was probably the most important to him. Two years before Harriet Hemings left Monticello, Jefferson wrote a letter to his former son-in-law John Eppes in which he said that he considered female slaves to be far more valuable than male slaves. Why? Because female slaves had children and, thus, added to capital.43 At the time of Harriet’s departure, Jefferson was in dire financial circumstances. Bad economic times in Virginia, along with Jefferson’s expensive way of life, had set him on”
― Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy

“An almost four decade relationship would have put these two people in something that resembled a form of marriage. It would mean that a slave woman whom historians have spent generations either ignoring or explaining away would have lived in this state with Thomas Jefferson four times as long as he had lived with Martha Wayles Jefferson. If she was his mistress for that many years, Sally Hemmings most likely would have known the real Thomas Jefferson better than anyone, and the one whom she knew would be unrecognizable to the historians who had devoted their lives to knowing him. That just could never be.”
― Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson & Sally Hemings: An American Controversy