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The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (Hardcover)

by Annette Gordon-Reed (Author)

Textbook Details
* Paperback: 800 pages
* Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.; 1 edition (September 17, 2008)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0393064778
* ISBN-13: 978-0393064773
* Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.8 inches
* Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
* Rating:

Textbook Description
This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently.

Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family’s dispersal after Jefferson’s death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings’s siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson’s wife, Martha. The Hemingses of Monticello sets the family’s compelling saga against the backdrop of Revolutionary America, Paris on the eve of its own revolution, 1790s Philadelphia, and plantation life at Monticello. Much anticipated, this book promises to be the most important history of an American slave family ever written.

Historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed presents this epic work that tells the story of the Hemingses, an American slave family, and their close blood ties to Thomas Jefferson.

The Hemingses of Monticello Review
Thoughtful best describes Gordon-Reed’s treatment of the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings relationship. The most important aspect of this work is her research of the attitudes and behaviors prevalent after the Revolutionary War. It is very easy for one not familiar with that timeframe (and how could we be, as it was two hundred years ago) to assign “Victorian” bias to an inter-racial relationship. The author’s thoroughness in explaining and identifying morals and ideas of the post-revolutionary era, as well as European/French laws and philosophies, allows the reader to understand the basis of how this relationship was created and endured for 38 years. She is not critical of either party, even Jefferson, who ensured his career was not jeopardized by never formally acknowledging his mistress or his children. All of this takes place during “heavy” political times for Jefferson. The Hemings family history is exciting and very unusual for it’s day. This is a great book.

Annette Gordon-Reed has written a captivating piece of history about the Hemings family, about the way they were inexorably intertwined with the Jeffersons well before the Sally story, about the feel of what it meant for slaves like the Hemingses to live in Virginia and in other places like Paris and Philadelphia. For me, the most interesting aspect of the book is the story of Sally’s brother, James. What abilities he had, what a rich life he led by the standards of his time, what a right arm he was for Jefferson, what a conflict of identity he shouldered, and what tragedy and mystery defined the end of his life! The author has shed light on so much about the story of the two families, but another interesting aspect made crystal clear by her book as well, is to have to learn and accept what we do not know, what we will never know, such as James’s death, in other words, what is lost to history about that and so much else concerning slavery and the Founding Fathers.

This is a fascinating but too long and over detailed discussion of the Hemings family, owned by Thomas Jefferson, the man who told us “all men are created equal.” It is probably not fair to judge the lives of slaves from the Hemings family because they were, in the context of that society, always over privileged, having been the children of a black mother, Elizabeth Hemings and a white father, John Wayles. They were always house servants, some of them men were free to work for wages with Jefferson’s permission, one of them, James, became an accomplished French chef while Jefferson was our envoy to France, but they clearly remained slaves until late in Jefferson’s life, when he freed some of them. Sally Hemings was able to negotiate freedom for the children she had with Jefferson. And, of course, this tale cuts Thomas Jefferson down to size, a brilliant man who was nevertheless not true to his own rhetoric and who truly believed in white and male supremacy.

I bought “The Hemmings of Monticello” because of my interest in including both slaves and women in the history of the south. Revisionist history is necessary because of the current bias toward white patriarchy and the master class. While I do not accept that DNA proved a connection between Thomas Jefferson and the children of Sally Hemmings, I felt the book was worth a read. In the early chapters I found Annette Gordon-Reed to be a prosecuting attorney making a case using circumstantial evidence. Her insistence on presenting characters as family relatives filtered by modern day conceptions of family bothered and confused me. But her research was amazing. Toward the last third of the book I was comfortable with the author and her presentation of Thomas Jefferson. She allowed him to be the eccentric many-faceted father living on his mountain and trying to care for his extended family under difficult circumstances. My suggestion is to take this book at face value and not try to push it into areas where it does not belong. Trying to understand living as a piece of personal property is not an easy transition for the modern person. Understanding better the laws of colonial times for slaves, men and women was a gift Annette Gordon-Reed could provide especially well due to her background as an attorney. She deserves a prize for her incredible dedication to the subject and for breaking new ground.

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