Want to know a good way to shut down Thomas Jefferson apologists?
Point out the fact that under Virginian standards in Jefferson’s time, the children he fathered on Sally Hemings were white.
Sally Hemings was one quarter black and three quarters white.* She had three white grandparents and one black grandparent in the maternal line.
Jefferson was white. So the children that Jefferson impregnated Sally with were one-eighth black and seven-eighths white. Virginian law during Jefferson’s time stated that a person who had one black great-grandparent was a white person. They were, in the racial parlance of the time, ‘octoroons’ and octoroons were considered white people (NB: THIS IS A VERY LOADED RACIST TERM, AND I’M USING IT HERE FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES, DO NOT USE THIS TERM TO DESCRIBE PEOPLE.) The children were slaves because they were born to an enslaved mother**, but they were legally white children, and Jefferson deliberately decided to keep them in slavery, which was allowed at the time.*** This is where the apologists get uncomfortable. They’re like “Don’t make this weird.” And you’re like WEIRDER THAN IT IS ALREADY?
Now, not only were they the half-siblings of Jefferson’s own children, and were raised in slavery, but Sally Hemings was the half-sibling of Jefferson’s wife. Sally Hemings and Martha shared a father. Sally was 25 years younger than Martha, and Martha and her husband inherited baby Sally as property after her father’s death. At the age of 14, Sally - used as a servant for the Jefferson’s teenage daughters - became Thomas’s concubine and got pregnant. SO THAT’S REALLY NICE. TOTALLY NOT CREEPY OR WEIRD.
Jefferson didn’t see a problem with enslaving and impregnating his wife’s sister IN HIS WIFE’S HOUSE - his wife’s teen sister that he had OWNED SINCE SHE WAS A TINY BABY - and keeping the resulting children as property. There’s no need to make it weird, guys! This is totally normal behavior.
The only reason that Sally, as a pregnant teen in France, did not run away from Jefferson in a country where she was legally free was because he apparently promised to free her children at the age of 21.
In their 20s, two of the children (Beverly, a boy, and Harriet, a girl) ran away to the North, where they were legally free. They self-identified as white, entered white society, and married middle-class white people. They disappeared into history.
Jefferson did not pursue them or make any attempt to recover his property, which is seen to demonstrate his Compassion, and the fact that he totally Freed His Children. But not legally. And in such a way that they ran about in the North for a bit, sparking interested gossip and speculation, because they looked a hell of a lot like Jefferson. People try to handwave it - “Oh, he freed them by letting them escape… we don’t mean that he FREED them, like gave them official papers to keep them safe from slavecatchers or allow them to vote or anything… he just didn’t…. run them down with dogs.”
When Beverly ran away, he was 24. Remember how Jefferson promised to free the kids at the age of 21? That must have been an awkward few years. “So can I have some voting rights and the ability to get married, like you promised my mother, please? Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness? Can I get a little of that?” “Oh no, don’t worry about it. Tell you what, if you ever decide to run away and are forced to establish yourself in an alien society from scratch without ever seeing your family again, I won’t run you down with dogs.” NOW THAT’S GOOD PARENTING
Jefferson legally freed the two surviving sons in his will - it was a dicey moment, because he died in Lots of Fucking Debt and huge chunks of Wayles-Jefferson-Hemings family got auctioned off randomly and weren’t seen again. But the other two boys were freed and just about managed to dodge the debt collectors. After his death, they remained in the South and married, only moving away when they feared slavecatchers would kidnap them. Imagine leaving your own children (who were also your wife’s nephews) in that situation. BUT THAT’S NOT WEIRD.
Jefferson didn’t want to deal with any political awkwardness that would happen if he officially freed any of the children when he was alive.
That would have made it weird.
* This is known and recorded; her family tree is clear. It was valuable information that contributed to her ‘market value.’ Disgusting! But clearly recorded!
**This changed later, and varied by state; you can read plenty of accounts of “white slaves” with predominantly Caucasian features being bought and sold in the South. The ‘just one drop’ rule was widely adopted to make this easier for slavers - if one black ancestor could be proved or suggested, the person could be bought and sold as property. A young vulnerable white person with no family could be conveniently be ‘accused’ of having black ancestry, so that blue-eyed-blondes could be purchased and sold as sexual slaves - and used to produce more slaves! This was absolutely shocking for European visitors at the time, who wrote it all down and went “LOOK AT THE FUCKERY THE AMERICANS ARE DOING?! DO YOU BELIEVE THIS? THEY INVENTED A SPECIFIC KIND OF RACISM TO JUSTIFY SLAVERY AND NOW THEY’RE NOT EVEN STICKING TO THEIR OWN RULES??” So you know, this was just incredibly terrible and unethical the whole way down. Hopefully everyone gets that? Does using white people as an example clarify matters for everyone? It’s problematic, but it’s a technique that abolitionists used for hundreds of years, because it’s effective and usually REALLY freaks out apologists. Thus there was the now-forgotten plot device of the “tragic octoroon” used in abolitionist plays and literature - usually a pretty blonde girl with secret African ancestry, forced into sexual slavery until rescued by an abolitionist in an extremely heavy-handed plot twist - but it was extremely effective at freaking out the middle-class white people in the North. “That could be my daughter! We have to stop slavery!” And Europeans were just like “Jesus CHRIST what are Americans even DOING?!” as they frantically wrote letters back home.
*** The Virginian law stated partus sequitur ventrem - the child of an enslaved mother is an enslaved child. Even if they aren’t technically ‘black.’ Because it made Jefferson’s life less awkward.
NB: SLAVERY IS WRONG and it was ALWAYS wrong to enslave people. The fact that the Hemings children were “legally white” - basically a meaningless term anyway - doesn’t mean they “deserved” to be elevated above other enslaved people and freed. It’s just a really good way to shut down the apologists, because they like to set up a fake fantasy system where slavery is totally justified and fair. This is not compatible with reality, particularly in the case of Presidential children.
