Jefferson's Rationalizations

T SHE manner in which Thomas Jefferson assessed his moral choices has eluded both his traditional defenders and his recent critics. DNA results have convincingly linked him to Sally Hemings sexually, and yet the cultural context for explaining their liaison remains obscure. Little historical documentation exists to supply answers to the questions that we want answered: Did Jefferson love Hemings? Did Hemings love Jefferson? Was the relationship defined by coercion, affection, or a combination of the two? Was Jefferson a hypocrite or a tormented self-deceiver? Or, did he see his relationship with Hemings from a self-satisfied position as an Enlightenment thinker for whom sex had both a scientific and a sentimental place in the world at Monticello? Scholars who have paid close attention to Jefferson's language and letters over the course of his long career have discovered little to explain an intimate relationship with Hemings. Although Jefferson bequeathed to historians a richly revealing literary persona, the effusive Virginian (who copied and saved many thousands of his letters) did not reveal himself as a demonstratively sexual being. Nothing he wrote even remotely supports the existence of a physical connection with Sally Hemings. Each of his letters was carefully crafted and self-consciously framed for his intended recipient(s)-for the larger circle of his acquaintances (in cases when his letters were meant to be shared), for a larger public (when circulated in the press), and for posterity. Jefferson allowed conventional sentiment to carry his prose; and, like every skilled letter writer of his age, he hinted, gestured, and even flirtatiously taunted so as to exhibit an emotional component to his self-fashioning and to present a properly balanced man of morals and disciplined feelings.1

Political science · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · History

• Queer Hoover

  Claire Bond Potter•Journal of the History of Sexuality•2006

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