A L S O_ T O D A Y

What do Jefferson and Clinton have in common (besides randiness)?
By Christopher Hitchens
Answer: They're both protected by a group of credulous historians
(11/18/98)

Ask Camille
By Camille Paglia
Allan and Harold Bloom dared to buck the conformity and cowardice of the academy
(11/18/98)

Comics
Keith Knight: My first midlife crisis

T A B L E_ T A L K

Humanities and social sciences graduate school survivors tell their tales of triumph and woe in the Education area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y

Jane Eyre, to go
By Victoria Olsen
Internet plagiarism: Where the term papers are free and the words are misspelled
(11/13/98)

Seven Deadly Sins
By Bebe Maddux
The university's hypocritical stance against marijuana can prevent even the best of students from getting an education
(11/11/98)

Seven Deadly Sins
By Sarah Rose
The Binge Myth: What recent studies of university alcoholism won't tell you
(11/11/98)

Is the emperor of queer theory naked?
By Etelka Lehoczky
An e-mail prankster fans the flames of controversy in the inner circles of queer studies, but the anticipated war never erupts
(11/09/98)

Out of academia
By Annalee Newitz
The shame of academe: one degree, nary a profession
(11/06/98)

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H I S T O R I O G R A P H I C
____________revisionism

DNA evidence shows that Jefferson fathered at least one of Sally Hemings' children, and his academic defenders are scurrying to cover their tracks.
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BY CHRISTOPHER SHEA
Seldom are historical controversies resolved so abruptly and decisively as when DNA testing proved that Thomas Jefferson had lustful assignations with his slave Sally Hemings, the "Dusky Sally" of historical debate and popular rumor-mongering. At first, the news coverage focused on the genetic whiz-bangery that produced the insight. Next came the airy, thumb-sucking pieces on how the revelation might affect the Jeffersonian legacy. Was the Mount Rushmore icon an unregenerate hypocrite, tarnished beyond rehabilitation? Would he be reborn as an unlikely multi-culti icon?

So far, however, the press has largely let Jefferson historians off the hook -- virtually all of whom, until this month, vigorously dismissed the possibility of a liaison between the pair. Often, they did so using intemperate language that evoked the furious defense of a best friend unfairly maligned, rather than the careful weighing and sifting of evidence. Now, without fully acknowledging their mistakes, some -- in particular, Joseph Ellis, the Mount Holyoke professor and author of "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson," which won a National Book Award last year -- are stepping forth to interpret the episode for us afresh, as if they had never been wrong in the first place.

Time out. It seems that a period of self-analysis for the historical profession is in order -- at least under the portico that shelters Jeffersonian scholars. As much as this has been a story about DNA's ability to solve time-shrouded mysteries, it should be an occasion for reflections on the all-too-human failings of historians.

Ellis, the Jeffersonian expert du jour, is Exhibit A in how scholars have mishandled the Hemings question. His role is especially important and revealing because he was asked to provide historical context for the article in Nature, the scientific journal that broke the Y-chromosome story. The same week, he received a platform in U.S. News & World Report to pontificate further on the subject -- a subject, one hastens to add, on which he has been spectacularly wrong in the past. Since then, he has been quoted in every conceivable news outlet.

The word "character" is central in the title of Ellis' book. One might think that in the course of an examination of the character of our third president, arbiter of universal human rights, the question whether he had a 38-year liaison with a chattel slave might be salient. The issue, after all, has been around since 1802, when muckraking journalist James Callender first aired it. In 1873, Madison Hemings, one of Sally's sons, told white journalists that his mother had told him that he and his siblings were Jefferson's children. A black Monticello caretaker "confirmed" his tale. A year later, when a white biographer came knocking, Jefferson's white grandchildren argued that Jefferson's randy nephews Peter and Samuel Carr were the true miscegenators. No one ever doubted there were some light-colored slaves wandering around Monticello who looked an awful lot like our founding father.

In "American Sphinx," however, Ellis relegated the Hemings question, for the most part, to an appendix. In his prologue, he says that no jury could decide the case on the basis of the circumstantial evidence. In the body of the book he doesn't say much more than that after James Callender leveled the accusation, "this piece of scandal ... affixed itself to [Jefferson's] reputation like a tin can that rattled through the ages and pages of history."

In the appendix, however, he took a harder line. He treated the possible liaison less as a topic interesting in its own right than as a contemporary cultural conundrum. Why, he seemed to be asking, do people continue to believe this? "Within the scholarly world," he wrote, "there seems to be a clear consensus that the story is almost certainly not true." He went on to observe -- rather condescendingly, to my ears -- that "within the much murkier world of popular opinion, especially within the black community, the story appears to have achieved the status of a self-evident truth." The message was clear. Who would you believe? The "scholarly world"? Or black urban legend?

He explained how he came to this conclusion. "After five years mulling over the huge cache of evidence that does exist on the thought and history of the historical Jefferson," he wrote, "I have concluded that the likelihood of a liaison with Sally Hemings is remote." Why? "For most of his adult life he lacked the capacity for direct and physical expression of his sexual energies."

As evidence Ellis noted that Henry Adams had called Jefferson "almost feminine." And Jefferson's "most sensual statements," Ellis continued, "were aimed at beautiful buildings rather than beautiful women."

N E X T_ P A G E .|. A historical about-face