Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings: An American Controversy - Softcover

Annette Gordon-Reed

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813918332 ISBN 13: 9780813918334

Publisher: University of Virginia Press, 1998

Synopsis

Rumours of Jefferson's sexual involvement with his slave Sally Hemings have circulated for two centuries. In this text, the author sets out to intensify the debate, arguing not that the events necessarily took place, but that the evidence for their taking place has been denied a fair hearing.

About this title

Review:

This is the definitive work on the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings issue. Gordon-Reed has produced an extraordinarily fine piece of historical research on a subject loaded with minefields for even the most cautious of historians.

--Charles B. Dew, author of Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge

Short of digging up Jefferson and doing DNA testing on him and Hemings' descendants, Gordon-Reed's account gets us as close to the truth as the available evidence allows.

--Joseph J. Ellis, author of American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

In this lucid and compelling book, Annette Gordon-Reed confronts the tale of a Jefferson- Hemings liaison neither to prove nor disprove it. Instead her goal is to weigh the evidence, to evaluate its possibility. In doing so, she provides a meticulous review of primary documents and looks at the way in which the best historians can fall prey to unreasoned predispositions.

--Patricia J. Williams, author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights

About the Author:

Annette Gordon-Reed is the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School, Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She is the author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, which won both the Pulitzer Prize in History and the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0813918332
• ISBN 13: 9780813918334
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 308