facts vs. possibilites

[thebin]

The British papers have pounced on this Kerry thing- probably as much to say "look how puritanical the Americans are" as to report the scandal itself. I love this "fact" from the Sun in a sort of 5 cent history of presidential affairs; "The third president Thomas Jefferson had a 40-year affair with slave Sally Hemings." Not "alleged." No "is thought to have." Not even "probably." Now I realize that the Sun makes the NY Post look like the Wall Street Journal. But as an amatuer historian, I am sick of this historical rumour being treated as fact. We don't know, and never will, whether Thomas Jefferson had an affair with Hemmings. With all the evidence in, both genetic and historical, the most likely scenario is that Hemmings had an affair with Thomas Jefferson's brother- who lived at Monticello- hence the DNA link. Is it possible that that it was TJ himself? Yes. Probable? No, not on the evidence we have. I am so tired of this thing being taken as a fact by so many because we love to smear the great white males in our history. TJ like all men had faults- ones that were reflective of the faults of his age more than his character. We don't need to make new ones by ascribing possibilites as established facts. That does not reflect poorly on Jefferson; it reflects poorly on us.

[Z]

why do you say that it is the "most likely scenario" that the affair was with TJ's brother?

also, is anyone else having trouble "losing" the cursor on this website and being unable to type into data fields? it's really annoying me.

[thebin]

Because that was the conclusion of a panel of historians who did a sort of investigation about a year or two ago with all the DNA and historical record. It passed with very little fanfare- because their conclusion was not as sexy as the rumour- so the rumour eventually became fact. You would have to find the report to know what their conculsions were based on. I have no idea where to find it. I think it had to do with the time Hemmings became pregnant and when TJ v. his brother were at Monticello. But one thing was clear- historians of all stripes refused to even call the thing probable. Now even if they said TJ was probably complicit, that still would excuse how this thing is passed off as fact left and right now.

And yes, I too am having the problem with the cursor- and it is annoying. I don't think it was like this in the begining, was it?

[thebin]

www.people.virginia.edu/~rjh9u/tomsally.html

I think the jefferson-hemmings scholars commission referenced at the bottom of that link is what I was talking about.

something else...
research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr2002/traut3.html

[thebin]

www.objectivistcenter.org/articles/dmayer_postmodernism-jefferson-hemings-myth.asp

This one is the most compelling to me as it touches on why people were in such a rush to pronounce a plausible rumor as historical fact:


"I concur in the conclusion of the Scholars Commission: the allegation that Thomas Jefferson fathered one or more children by his slave Sally Hemings is "by no means proven." In fact, my own view is that the allegation is not at all plausible. But I am writing my own separate report principally to put the Jefferson-Hemings controversy in a broader context. As I see it, belief in the paternity allegation—which is, to me, quite literally a myth—is a symptom of a recent, disturbing trend in the history profession.

I freely admit that I am an admirer of Thomas Jefferson, but my admiration is focused on his ideas, principally his ideas about government, not on Jefferson the man. For more than twenty-five years—since I first began my formal studies of Jefferson's political and constitutional thought—I have been fascinated with Jefferson's philosophy, and especially his ideas about limits on governmental power. Although I necessarily learned a great deal about the life and times of Thomas Jefferson while doing research on his thought, I have always found the substance of Jefferson's ideas far more interesting than the circumstances of his life. Most important, I believe that Jefferson's place in American history properly derives from these ideas. Genealogy is irrelevant: the true "children" of Jefferson today are those who understand his ideas and work to keep them alive. His true legacy is the body of ideas he has given us, ideas still quite relevant to the perennial problems of protecting individual rights and limiting the powers of government. The attributes of Jefferson the man—his character and the circumstances of his life—are essentially irrelevant to that legacy.

In this sense, I regard Jefferson's personal life as neither interesting nor important. And thus what troubles me most about the controversy over Jefferson's alleged relationship with Sally Hemings is that it has overshadowed Jefferson's true significance. I do not join with those who regard the Hemings paternity allegation as a per se libel of Jefferson's character; but I regret that the allegation has been picked up by a number of partisans—some of them detractors of Jefferson, others genuine admirers—who use the story of a relationship with Sally Hemings to transform Jefferson into either a villain or a hero, in ways that advance their own agendas.

I agreed to serve on the Scholars Commission, therefore, because I had become increasingly concerned about the way both the admirers and the detractors of Jefferson were willing to use the Hemings story for their own purposes without regard to historical truth or to objective, well-recognized standards of good historical scholarship. I was particularly troubled when many eminent scholars readily abandoned professional standards and seized upon the 1998 DNA study published in Nature as "proof" of the paternity allegation, blithely ignoring or deliberately misrepresenting the findings of that study, again to advance their own partisan agendas.

The Corruption of Historiography
I believe that the rise in higher education of three related phenomena are chiefly responsible for such unscholarly behavior. These phenomena are: the "political correctness" movement, multiculturalism, and post-modernism.

[thebin]

www.nationalreview.com/daily/nr041201.shtml

Last one! although it is from a partisan journal, that NR piece is the best summary of how politics and junk history lead to the widespread notion that the hemmings affair is a historical fact.

[Z]

interesting. i had honestly never even heard of this study, or the possibility that TJ's brother was the philanderer.