She was three months pregnant.  She was traveling with her son’s father, the man who owned him, the man who had been her half-sister’s husband.  She returned to a life of slavery because it was the only option she had, or at least the only option she could see.  Sally Hemings arrived back in Montichelo in November 1789.

She was 5 months pregnant.  Nobody asked any questions.  The slaves knew it was better not to ask.  Jefferson’s white family didn’t ask either.  Or if they suspected something, they kept quiet. Sally was assigned back to the main house, not to the fields, not to the slave kitchens, to the house near Jefferson.

close to her daughters, as if nothing had changed.  But everything had changed.  In 1790, Sally gave birth to her first child.  There is no record of the name, no record of the exact date, only a brief note in Jefferson’s papers indicating that a baby had been born.  And then another note.  The baby died a few weeks after birth.

It is not known what of .  Childhood illnesses were common, and mortality was high, especially among slaves.  Sali was 17 years old.  She had lost her first child.  Jefferson wrote nothing about that in his private letters.  He didn’t mention the birth, he didn’t mention the death as if it hadn’t happened.  Jefferson was appointed Secretary of State under President George Washington.

That meant he would spend a lot of time in Philadelphia, where the capital was at the time, but he returned to Montichelo frequently, every few months, staying for weeks, sometimes months, and every time he returned, Sally was there waiting, working, living in a small room in the south building of the plantation, a room next to Jefferson’s.  That wasn’t normal.

Slaves did not live in rooms with their masters, but Sali was not a normal slave and everyone in Montichelo knew it. In 1795, Sali gave birth to a girl.  They named her Harriet.  She had fair skin, very fair, so much so that she could pass for white.  He had Jefferson’s features, the eyes, the shape of his face.

Anyone who saw them together could notice, but nobody said anything.  Harriet lived for 2 years, then she died.  Again, there is no record of the cause.  Again, Jefferson did not write about it.  Two dead children. Sally was 22 years old, had lost two babies, and was still a slave.  In 1798, Sally gave birth to a boy.

They called him Beverly.  This time the baby survived. She grew up strong, healthy, fair-skinned like her sister, with Jefferson’s features .  Beverly did not work in the fields.  He worked as a carpenter, as a musician.  He lived in the big house, not in the slave huts.  It was treated differently.

Better, because everyone knew who his father was.  Even though nobody said it out loud.  In 1799, Sali gave birth to a girl.  There is no record of the name.  The baby died in infancy.  Three children are now dead, one child is alive.  Sally was 26 years old. Jefferson was 56. He was now the Vice President of the United States, the second most powerful man in the nation.

And he kept returning to Monticielo, he kept returning to Sali.  In 180, Sali gave birth to another girl.  They also called her Harriet, like the first one who had died.  This Harriet survived. She was beautiful, with fair skin, straight hair, and blue eyes.  She didn’t look like a slave, she looked like a white girl from a good family.

And that was exactly what it was, at least half of it.  That same year, Thomas Jefferson was elected president of the United States.  He moved to Washington DC.  He lived in the White House, but kept returning to Montichelo every few months.  I would spend weeks there, sometimes months, during the summer when the heat in Washington was unbearable.

And every time he returned, Sally was there waiting for him.  During these years Jefferson was the most powerful man in America.  But in Monticelo, in that small room next to his, lived his secret.  The slaves of Montichelo knew, the neighbors suspected, the visitors noticed the light-skinned children who resembled the president, but no one spoke.

not publicly until someone did. In September 1802, a journalist named James Callender published an article in the Recorder newspaper.  Cender, an ally of Jefferson, had supported him politically, but the two had had a falling out.  Cender wanted revenge and had the perfect story to destroy Jefferson.  The article said that President Jefferson kept one of his slaves as a concubine, that her name was Sally, that he had had several children with her, that these children lived in Montichelo, that they resembled Jefferson,

that everyone in Virginia knew it, but no one dared to say it.  Calender wrote with specific details, names, ages, descriptions.   I was making it up, I was reporting what I had heard, what many knew, what no one had dared to publish.  The scandal exploded. Newspapers across the country picked up the story.

Jefferson’s political enemies , the Federalists, used the article to attack him.  They published obscene cartoons.  They wrote satirical poems, they called him a hypocrite.  They said that the man who had written that all men are created equal had slave children, that the president of the nation kept a slave mistress, that he was a liar, a fraud, a man without morals.

Jefferson did not respond, never denied the article, never confirmed anything, he simply remained silent.  His daughters defended their father, saying it was impossible, that he would never do such a thing, that the light-skinned children in Montichelo were the children of Jefferson’s nephews, not his, and that Calender was lying out of revenge.

But Jefferson himself never said anything, not a single public word about Sally Hemings, not a single denial, not a single confirmation. The scandal eventually died down. Jefferson was re-elected in 1804, served his second full term, and kept returning to Montelo, kept seeing Sali, kept having children with her because power protects.

And Jefferson had all the power.  I didn’t have any.  In 1805, Sally gave birth to a boy.  They called him Madison.  He was her fifth living child. Beverly was 7 years old.  Harriet had four.  Madison grew up knowing who her father was.  Years later, when he was an adult and free, he gave an interview to a newspaper.  He told the whole story.

He said that his father was Thomas Jefferson, that his mother was Sally Hemings, that he had grown up in Montichelo knowing this, that everyone knew it, that nobody talked about it, but that it was true.  In 1808, Sally gave birth to her last child. They called him Eston.  She had the fairest skin of them all.

He could easily pass for white.  Years later, when he was free, he changed his last name.  He called himself Eston Hemings Jefferson.  He took his father’s surname, the surname he was never legally entitled to use, but which was his by blood.  Sally Hemings, you had children with Thomas Jefferson.  Four survived to adulthood.

 

 

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