"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend."
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| Jefferson (writer's relief.com) |
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America has changed. History was made last week as we held an election in which a woman represented a major political party in the run for the presidency for the first time. History was made in other ways as well, but I don't want to spend time here debating all of the important issues facing our country. I will say though, that I agree with the sentiment behind what Jefferson is saying - we can disagree with each other and still be friends. I would say that most Americans have an opinion about the election and the results, but we can still get along. In the end, we all want what is best for our country. I hope you haven't lost any friends over this election.
This week I'd like to discuss a new historical novel that I read recently. The book is called Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings: A Novel by Stephen O'Connor. The book was published just this year, so you probably have not read it, but it's a good book and I think it will hold your attention. The book's retail price is $28, so be thrifty as I am and just get it at the library. I enjoyed the book very much, even though it is over 600 pages in length. Many of the pages are not full, so you aren't actually going to be reading 600 full pages. The book focuses on the relationship between Jefferson and his servant, Sally Hemings.
According to the novel, Hemings was a mulatto slave girl who was born to Elizabeth Hemings, one of Jefferson's slaves. (Sally's biological father was white). Although only a small percentage of Sally's bloodline was actually African, she was treated as a slave as were all mulatto people of that era. The first time that Jefferson had sex with Hemings when she was only 16 years old. They were both in Paris as well as two of Jefferson's daughters. After Jefferson took advantage of Hemings, she remembered the warning that her mother had given her about white men and she knew she did not have a say in what was happening to her. Through the years she gave birth to several of Jefferson's children, although only four of them survived to adulthood. In this book you find some of the thoughts that Hemings must have had each time he approached Sally for "favors," and you may even wonder if she enjoyed her relationship with Jefferson. Did he actually ask her opinion about various topics when they were together? Did she actually open up to him at times and speak about her feelings? We will never know for sure, but the book gives us some suggestions as to what might have been going on in the minds of these two people.
In the book, Jefferson and Hemings often meet in the old hunting lodge on the grounds of Monticello. They tried to keep their affair a secret, but apparently they didn't do a very good job because people seemed to be aware of what was happening. We don't have any written evidence that they knew, but this novel hints at the fact that they did know. The story obviously was passed down through the years because most of us are aware of it. This brings me to a story that my great uncle used to tell us. He said that some of Jefferson's descendants are buried on his land in Western Kentucky near the Tennessee line because he had to get them out of Virginia as his fame spread and he became the third president of the U.S. I will find out the last name of the descendants that are buried there and insert them here for those of you who might belong to ancestry.com or something else like that. We may never know how many children Thomas Jefferson actually fathered.
The other book that I'm reading is Lilac Girls: A Novel by Martha Hall Kelly. I'm reading this one for my reading group and I'm enjoying it. I'm listening to it in the car because all of the library copies were checked out. It's a historical novel about three women during World War II and how their lives were changed during this turbulent time in history. I'm looking forward to the conclusion of this book and I'm hoping that it ends on a high note for all of the characters.
I hope you're enjoying this Fall season and all of the colors along with the cooler temperatures.Have a great week, and...
Read on,
Melissa Hill
Book Blogger
www.onegoodbookblog.blogspot.com
| Sally Hemings (alchetron.com) |
Jon Meacham's biography, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
ReplyDeletealso spends a bit of time on that relationship. Evidently, Sally was the child of Jefferson's wife's brother. Slavery was not legal in France: "In France, enslaved persons could apply for their liberty and be granted it— and there was nothing their masters could do about it."
Here's an extended section from the book that I thought was interesting:
"According to their son Madison Hemings’s later account, Sally, who had become 'Mr. Jefferson’s concubine,' was pregnant when Jefferson was preparing to return to the United States. 'He desired to bring my mother back to Virginia with him but she demurred,' Madison Hemings said. To demur was to refuse, and Jefferson was unaccustomed to encountering resistance to his absolute will at all, much less from a slave. His whole life was about controlling as many of the world’s variables as he could. Yet here was a girl basically the same age as his own eldest daughter refusing to take her docile part in the long-running drama of the sexual domination of enslaved women by their white masters. 'She was just beginning to understand the French language well, and in France she was free, while if she returned to Virginia she would be re-enslaved,' said Madison Hemings. 'So she refused to return with him.'"
"It was an extraordinary moment. Fresh from arranging terms with the bankers of Europe over a debt that was threatening the foundation of the French nation, Thomas Jefferson found himself in negotiations with a pregnant enslaved teenager who, in a reversal of fortune hardly likely to be repeated, had the means at hand to free herself. She, not he, was in control. It must have seemed surreal, unthinkable, even absurd. For the first time in his life, perhaps, Jefferson was truly in a position of weakness at a moment that mattered to him. So he began making concessions to convince Sally Hemings to come home to Virginia. 'To induce her to do so he promised her extraordinary privileges, and made a solemn pledge that her children should be freed at the age of twenty-one years,' Madison Hemings said. Sally Hemings agreed. 'In consequence of his promise, on which she implicitly relied, she returned with him to Virginia,' said Madison Hemings."