All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. — Paul Simon
The most salient and pertinent observation to be made concerning the Jefferson-Hemings controversy is the results of the DNA study (published in Nature in 1998) did NOT prove Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings’ offspring. Instead, the results indicated a Jefferson sired Eston Hemings, Sally’s last child (born in 1808). Why this distinction is important is covered thoroughly in M. Andrew Holowchak’s recently published Framing A Legend: Exposing the Distorted History of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.
Holowchak, an assistant professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, while acknowledging there is a slight possibility Thomas Jefferson did, indeed, sire one or all of Hemings’ children, directs most of his attention at the weakness of the arguments proffered by proponents of the “Jefferson did it” theory:
“Beginning with Jefferson and Hemings had a thirty-eight-year-liaison, one merely looks for confirmatory evidence — Madison’s [Hemings] ‘testimony,’ DNA evidence, and so forth — to settle skeptical readers, before moving on to the particulars of that liaison. Since there is no conclusive evidence for a liaison, the aim is to pile up circumstantial evidence. The hope is to swamp undiscerning readers with bad arguments and, eventually, force capitulation. When circumstantial evidence is wanting, it is allowable to take evidence that is not inconsistent with one’s hypothesis and use it as confirmatory evidence of it.” (pp. 198–199)
Not unlike William G Hyland’s approach in In Defense of Thomas Jefferson: The Sally Hemings Sex Scandal (2009), Holowchak contrasts the paucity of evidence supporting a Jefferson-Hemings liaison with the overwhelming evidence indicating such a liaison was extremely improbable.
Unfortunately, Holowchak’s text, arriving this late in the game so to speak, is not likely to disabuse many of what has become, de facto, an accepted historical truth. The allegation Jefferson fathered children with his slave, Sally Hemings, has become ingrained in the national consciousness and is widely repeated not only throughout popular media channels (e.g., Thomas Jefferson Was A Control Freak), but has become a consensus opinion among many historians as well. That this “truth” has been constructed on a very thin veneer of evidence is distressing indeed.
For background on the DNA tests and the machinations thereof, Jefferson Family historian, Herbert Barger, offers his analysis here.