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Jewish World Review Jan. 19, 1999 /2 Shevat 5759

Mona Charen

Mona Charen

Was Jefferson libeled by DNA?

(JWR) --- (http://www.jewishworldreview.com) HEADLINES THE WORLD over proclaimed the news: Thomas Jefferson had illicit sexual relations with his slave Sally Hemings and was certainly the father of her youngest son. Science, in this situation DNA analysis of the principals' descendants, sealed the case. Gray beards wagged their heads on television and speculated about what this does to our understanding of Jefferson and of America. Those who had always believed the Fawn Brodie version of events were triumphant.

The media buzz was intensified by the timing of the Nature magazine article that purported to solve this historical mystery. It was published just before the election, offering a ripe opportunity for President Clinton's flacks to launch the ultimate "everybody does it" defense. Nature magazine editorialized that "our heroes -- and especially presidents -- are not gods or saints, but flesh-and-blood humans, with all the frailties and imperfections that this entails."

The only trouble is, the data did not support the conclusion.

"Jefferson Fathered Slave's Last Child" read the title of the article in Nature, a headline the authors have since acknowledged was misleading.

A quick review. Sally Hemings was a mulatto slave widely believed to be the illegitimate half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha. Martha's father had sired several children with his black slave. After Martha's early death, it is said, Jefferson followed the lead of his father-in-law and began a sexual relationship with the then 14-year-old Sally that would continue for 38 years.

The Sally controversy has been swirling for almost two centuries, making it, in the phrase of historian Joseph J. Ellis, "the longest running soap opera" in American history.

Before the DNA tests had been conducted, the debate had taken many turns. Black descendants of Sally Hemings trusted oral history. According to this tradition, Sally's fourth child, Madison Hemings, said his mother told him before she died that Thomas Jefferson was the father of all of her children.

Further implicating Jefferson was the scuttlebutt around Virginia at the time suggesting that Sally's children bore a physical resemblance to the tall redhead. Further, Dumas Malone, one of the definitive Jefferson biographers, was able to determine from the historical record that Jefferson was present at Monticello nine months before the births of each of Sally's children.

Enter science. Because it is now possible to trace markers on the Y chromosome from generation to generation, a team of geneticists decided to try to solve the Sally question by testing her male descendants and comparing the DNA to male descendants of the Jefferson line.

The DNA analysis suggested that Jeffersoncould have been the father only of the youngest of Sally's children, Eston. But since the test was comparing only a marker found on the Y chromosome from the Jefferson line (and not from any direct descendant of Jefferson himself since he left no male children), other possibilities cannot be ruled out.

As a follow-up letter to Nature points out, any male ancestor in the Jefferson line could have fathered Eston, as could Jefferson's brother, Randolph, or any of his five sons, who were frequent visitors to Monticello. Further, any entanglement of the Hemings and Jefferson lines in the past 200 years would have left the telltale Y chromosome in the mix.

Perhaps DNA analysis will one day provide the definitive answer. But it has not yet done so. The authors of the study write, "We know from the historical and the DNA data that Thomas Jefferson can neither be definitely excluded nor solely implicated in the paternity of illegitimate children with his slave Sally Hemings."

Not exactly. The DNA data did rule Jefferson out as the father of Thomas Woodson, the eldest of Sally's sons, and shed no light on the rest. That leaves a scenario in which Jefferson's sexual liaison with his slave is estimated to have begun when he was 65 years old. Possible certainly, but likely?

While the DNA data add to our knowledge -- it is clear that there was mixing of Hemings and Jefferson genes sometime in the past 200 years -- they do not provide names or dates. They most definitely do not "prove" anything about Thomas Jefferson himself.

But don't hold your breath for the corrections. They will be found on Page 47, if they appear at all.

Up

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