![]() Well into the 20th century, most Jefferson biographers agreed, arguing that such an affair was incompatible with Jefferson's character. Jefferson ignored the charges and, after his death in 1826, his white descendants denied that there had been a Jefferson-Hemings childbearing relationship. As Annette Gordon-Reed tells us in "The Hemingses of Monticello," until Jefferson retired from office in 1809, "he and Sally Hemings had been the subject of newspaper articles, cartoons, and ballads from one end of the country to the next, even reaching across the Atlantic." A Jefferson-hating newspaperman in Richmond, Va., published the accusation based on unnamed sources, and other Jefferson detractors ran with it. "A slut as common as the pavement" is how Sally Hemings was introduced into the public record in 1802, when she was identified as President Thomas Jefferson's black slave mistress with whom he had children. ![]() ![]() An American Family By Annette Gordon-Reed Norton 798 pages $35 ![]()
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