Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings

Presents first-hand accounts, memoirs, letters, and recent DNA evidence that points to Thomas Jefferson's thirty-eight-year affair with his slave Sally Hemings, and refutes claims to the contrary.

Auteur

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.

Texte du rabat

In light of DNA evidence supporting a Jefferson-Hemings relationship, Gordon-Reed has added to her acclaimed study a new Preface in which she finds fresh reasons for seeing Thomas Jefferson as a complicated metaphor for the American character.

Résumé
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.