Vulgar History - American Revolution, part 4： Sally Hemings (pt 2⧸2)

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00:00:13.500 your next move tomorrow. Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history 1.00

00:00:28.440 comedy podcast. My name is Anne Foster and today's episode is Sally Hemings part two. 1.00

00:00:34.740 And so this is a story that is so important to American history and just kind of Sally

00:00:40.500 Hemings herself and her, her situation, but also just kind of what she and her family

00:00:45.940 represent. They're some of the best known black people who were enslaved in American

00:00:52.920 history. And a lot of people who are, like these days, who are trying to do genealogical research

00:00:58.700 because they themselves want to learn more about their own enslaved ancestors, it's really

00:01:02.800 challenging. Sometimes it's literally impossible because the records are hard to find. But there

00:01:09.000 is some exciting news to help people who are interested in that sort of research. So I wanted

00:01:13.460 to let you know this before we get into the episode, because it's all related. So recently,

00:01:17.080 the genealogy site Ancestry.com released a free collection of nearly 38,000 articles involving

00:01:23.480 enslaved people in America from 1788 to 1867, providing information about more than 183,000

00:01:31.140 people who were enslaved. This collection is called Articles of Enslavement. And so if you

00:01:36.180 go to Ancestry.com, I think you need to sign up for a membership or an account, but it's like this

00:01:41.480 collection is free. You don't need to pay anything to be able to access all this information.

00:01:44.860 So this is a free and first of its kind collection created using cutting edge technology to basically they just had like an AI sort of thing.

00:01:56.240 Just crawling through newspaper articles and advertisements to resurface the names, ages, physical descriptions and crucial details of long sought after enslaved ancestors.

00:02:05.980 This is honestly one of the first uses of AI where I'm like, yes, this is a great.

00:02:11.120 Good job, AI.

00:02:11.920 This is a good thing to be using the technology to do.

00:02:14.860 So because a human being, it would take, it would be so long for anyone to try and do this themselves.

00:02:21.180 Anyway, the details in these records can lead to key breakthroughs in helping descendants of previously enslaved people in the U.S. make discoveries about their families prior to 1870, even bridging gaps in documentation where records were destroyed or the local courthouse may have burned occurrences that would previously have to stop people in their tracks or trying to find their ancestors.

00:02:40.440 So the records in this collection include newspaper articles and advertisements related to enslavement, published in American newspapers before 1900.

00:02:50.000 Just as they do now, newspapers served a critical purpose in the lives of our ancestors, which often extended beyond detailing their daily lives.

00:02:57.460 They also served as documentation of a community's legal proceedings and decisions across the United States.

00:03:03.000 During the period of slavery before and after the American Civil War, these legal matters often involved enslaved people.

00:03:08.780 so this is a you can search for for names of people and maybe it's like you know that this

00:03:14.400 person was in this state but maybe then they escaped and they went to this state and this

00:03:17.740 these records will help you track those down because there's advertisements about like

00:03:21.240 enslaved people who escaped you know advertisements being like we're trying to

00:03:25.060 try down this person or advertisements about like sales and of humans and anyway so um records may

00:03:33.400 include the name of the enslaved person as well as the slaver's name, locations, dates, occupation,

00:03:39.440 age, physical characteristics, relationships, and more. Nika Sewell-Smith. And this is how I learned

00:03:45.040 about all of this because I follow her on Blue Sky. And she was just like, hey, big news. I've

00:03:49.500 been involved in this and here's what I did. And I was like, oh my gosh. So Nika Sewell-Smith is a

00:03:55.620 genealogist and senior story producer at Ancestry. And she said the collection's value lies in the

00:04:00.540 formerly enslaved people it aims to center this is a quote from her she says quote what's super

00:04:05.820 important is that they're not a footnote in this collection with these articles we have the

00:04:09.800 opportunity to lean into the lives of our ancestors and learn all we can end quote so i've put a link

00:04:15.360 in the show notes that leads to this collection on ancestry.com but this like this news just

00:04:21.540 dropped in like late may 2024 just as i was recording all this stuff and i thought oh i need

00:04:26.240 to let people know because this is major for people doing genealogical research on enslaved

00:04:33.080 ancestors. Anyway, so last time in Sally Hemings part one, we learned all about her, her mom,

00:04:41.160 the whole Hemings extended family and sort of the series of coincidences that got her

00:04:45.720 to Paris where she spent some time. Her brother James Hemings was also there and also there,

00:04:52.520 Thomas Jefferson. So, you know, content warning, American founding fathers and me talking shit 0.99

00:05:00.020 about them. So Sally Hemings part two, let's see what happens to her next and what she does about 1.00

00:05:06.480 it. So Sally Hemings part two, and actually I'm glad I took a break between part one and part two,

00:05:18.860 because I was reading up a little bit more about the modern day Hemmings descendants.

00:05:24.880 So the descendants of Sally Hemmings and also of her other various siblings.

00:05:29.540 And I came across something interesting.

00:05:31.420 So in family oral history and family lore, Sally was sometimes known as Black Mariah,

00:05:39.400 which I was like, interesting.

00:05:42.180 People have various different names in this story. 0.99

00:05:44.600 Why is she known as Black Mariah?

00:05:46.280 So the thing is, this convoluted family tree. So Sally Hemings, half sister of Martha Wales Skelton, aka on this podcast, we called her Martha Too. Martha Too was the wife of Thomas Jefferson, aka Thomas J.

00:06:07.480 So Martha Wales Skelton had dark brown hair. Sally Hemings is her much younger biracial half sister, but Thomas J and Martha too had two surviving daughters. So we have Martha three, sometimes known as Patsy, just because the white people in the story keep changing their names.

00:06:30.200 Thomas Jefferson and Martha Too's younger, surviving daughter. Her name is, her name was

00:06:37.480 Mary Jefferson. She was known in childhood as Polly. As an adult, she was known as Maria or

00:06:44.900 Mariah. And this is why on this podcast in part one, we call her MMP for Mary, Mariah, Polly,

00:06:51.100 a person with three various names. Anyway, so she was known as Mariah. Apparently Thomas J would

00:06:57.740 call her Mariah. That was his pet name for her. And the reason why Sally Hemings, AKA Black Mariah

00:07:05.080 is because so MMP looked a lot like her mother, Martha too, dark hair. And I guess they were both 1.00

00:07:12.440 maybe shorter people. Um, Martha three, the other, her sister, MMP sister was taller. She looked more

00:07:20.680 like her father, more like Thomas J, but MMP resembled her mother, Martha too. And then the

00:07:27.680 fact that Sally Hemings was called Black Mariah is because she was only a few years older than 0.60

00:07:33.340 MMP and looked like her, but Black. So this is just another reminder as the events of this

00:07:41.320 progress. The fact that Sally Hemings looked enough like Thomas Jefferson's first wife and

00:07:49.280 enough like this young girl MMP that people call her Black Mariah. I was trying to think of an

00:07:55.060 example. So it's like on the office, or, you know, like when you're in school and there's two people

00:08:01.560 and they both have the same name. I'm an elder millennial. When I was going to school, there was

00:08:06.480 multiple girls called Sarah and Megan and Jennifer. So it's just like Jennifer J, Jennifer P, the same 0.82

00:08:14.080 as on the bachelor, you know, there's different names. And then sometimes there's different names

00:08:17.960 for people. So on the office, the TV show, there was the one episode where there was a prank that

00:08:24.260 Jim was doing and so the actor Randall Park came on and he was being Jim and pretending like Jim

00:08:30.080 Harry's been Asian and his character is often referred to as Asian Jim um there's like the

00:08:35.980 actress Michelle Williams is a white woman who was on Dawson's Creek she's actually one of my faves

00:08:45.040 in a when I was a much younger person I was working a barista job and white Michelle Williams

00:08:51.140 came in and bought a latte from me and left a really big tip so i've always been fond of her

00:08:55.060 she's teeny tiny in person for the record anyway um beyonce's band that she used to be in young

00:09:03.860 people might not know beyonce used to be in a girl group called destiny's child one of the members

00:09:07.880 of that also called michelle williams and so that's black michelle williams so the two michelle

00:09:13.340 williams are both on the scene in like the y2k era so sometimes they're referred to as black

00:09:18.500 michelle williams and white michelle williams not that they look the same but they have the same

00:09:22.460 name so it just the commonality of just like two people and you just kind of use a descriptor to

00:09:28.600 separate them so the fact that sally hammings was known as a black mariah because she looked so much

00:09:34.540 like mmp but was a late-skinned black woman is just notable to me i think because in the cliffhanger

00:09:43.160 we left off with last time, Thomas Jefferson had impregnated her. Sally Hemings, the 30 years

00:09:51.040 younger half-sister of his dead wife that Thomas Jay had been so upset when she died that he went

00:09:56.320 into like multi-week extreme depression. So just remember that Sally Hemings looked

00:10:02.180 visually. Like, I think, again, there's so many questions. The questions that come up about Sally

00:10:08.460 Hemings are often about her relationship with Thomas Jefferson, but also what did she look

00:10:12.660 like and people are dying to know but there's no existing portraits of her there's no portraits of

00:10:18.020 MMP there's no portraits of Martha too to kind of understand what they maybe all look like but

00:10:25.360 just the way that Sally was spoken about and treated by people who met her and knew her

00:10:30.780 it seems like she was a light-skinned black woman with kind of straight hair hanging down her back

00:10:38.060 and with very, very, very beautiful, very pretty, and also with facial features, like a light-skinned

00:10:45.340 Black woman, where it's like apparent when you look at her like, oh, that's a Black person, 0.91

00:10:48.920 Black Mariah. Anyway, so just bringing that all into it. And that's actually just brings me 0.99

00:10:56.100 to also remind you that so much of what we know about everything that happens in the story,

00:11:00.880 one part of it is from Thomas Jay and his real compulsion to record so many details about so

00:11:07.020 many things so we really know stuff like he bought her clothes and these were the fabrics that they

00:11:10.640 were made of and this is the day that he bought the ticket for her to go to the city to get her

00:11:15.680 inoculation like so many of these records exist from him and then so much of the sort of things

00:11:21.160 he didn't write down are filled in by the oral history and the family tradition of the Hemmings

00:11:26.780 family and actually something else when I was reading about their descendants is the the way

00:11:31.460 that the family really continued to keep re honoring one another and really cementing their

00:11:38.400 family ties by continuing to reuse the same names generation after generation and one of the i think

00:11:44.680 this was in the annette gordon reed book but it was saying that in a place where enslaved people

00:11:49.620 weren't able to get married but as a way to sort of cement their family bonds knowing that their

00:11:54.280 children could be separated from them at any time if because they're all enslaved they could be sold

00:11:59.180 or just transferred somewhere else, having these names, the similar names pop up generation after

00:12:05.900 generation, especially we have multiple generations living in the same place at the same time,

00:12:10.980 like they were in Monticello in this era, it's just a way to cement those family connections.

00:12:16.460 And so I think it's notable and interesting that people, Hemmings' descendants, continue to honor

00:12:21.200 each other with these names, including the name Sarah, aka Sally, which continues on. And as well,

00:12:26.320 There's so many people in the family tree, I think, who are named Elizabeth or Betsy, which was the name of Sally Hummings' mom.

00:12:33.520 Yeah. So last time we were talking about Sally Hummings in Paris, this really cold winter.

00:12:39.200 She'd been there for two years, just having this really new experience for herself.

00:12:44.820 And then she became pregnant by 47-year-old Thomas Jefferson.

00:12:50.200 And again, she was 16 and apparently looked quite a bit like her dead, much older half-sister, his dead wife.

00:12:59.820 So I'm going to read, this is a quote from Madison Hemmings, who is Sally's son, who a lot of what we know about her and this whole situation came from his, he wrote down recollections of what his mother was like and what it was like growing up with Monticello and things like that.

00:13:15.680 I'm just going to quote from him directly. Quote Madison Hemmings. He desired to bring my mother

00:13:21.600 back to Virginia with him, but she demurred. She was just beginning to understand the French

00:13:26.300 language well, and in France, she was free. Well, if she returned to Virginia, she would be

00:13:30.320 re-enslaved. So she refused to return with him. To induce her to do so, he promised her

00:13:37.400 extraordinary privileges and made a solemn pledge that her children should be freed at the age of

00:13:42.160 21 years. In consequence of his promises on which she implicitly relied, she returned with him

00:13:48.800 to Virginia. So again, a lot of things that people wonder about this whole situation is what

00:13:58.380 was the dynamic between 47-year-old slave owner Thomas Jefferson and 16-year-old enslaved Sally

00:14:06.840 Hemings. And Annette Gordon-Reed spends two chapters just kind of thinking this through

00:14:12.580 and wondering what are the implications of all of it. I am not going to step into that discussion

00:14:17.320 for this podcast because I am focusing on the events and what happened. But what I will say

00:14:23.740 is that this was a real choice from his point of view. So I want to, yeah, so because, okay,

00:14:33.320 So let's say that in an imaginary hypothetical situation, Thomas Jefferson was in Paris and he spent two years living in very close quarters with a not enslaved teenage girl who was white.

00:14:48.740 And then at the end of those, that period of time, she became pregnant. 0.62

00:14:52.380 He could then marry her because she would be in a situation like a white, free person.

00:15:00.000 And that's the sort of person that Thomas Jefferson could marry if he wanted to. 0.99

00:15:03.320 enslaved people couldn't marry full stop. So that was not an option here. But so let's say

00:15:10.060 hypothetically, that same situation where it's, I really want to emphasize the age is 47 year old

00:15:15.820 Thomas Jefferson spent two years with a girl who was 14 to 16. And at the end of this, he got her

00:15:22.400 pregnant. And let's say she was a free white person. But what if she was also the half sister

00:15:27.940 of Martha too. Then he couldn't marry her, even though she would be a free white person. People 0.78

00:15:35.560 might raise their eyebrows about the age difference and people did. I mean, it was not

00:15:40.820 every day that a 47 year old man married a 16 year old woman in Paris or in Virginia,

00:15:45.960 but that did happen. But the two major things that could be scandalous about this to the people in

00:15:52.260 time were firstly that she was enslaved and that he was fathering a child by her because there was

00:15:59.480 lots of rules about white people and black people couldn't get married let alone an enslaved person

00:16:06.800 but then also the the half sibling thing that's the real stumbling block um legally if there was

00:16:12.880 no slavery involved in the situation at all thomas jefferson could not marry the half sister of his

00:16:18.520 dead wife because of incest laws like that's truly not allowed so on multiple ways like this

00:16:27.600 relationship and i'm gonna say relationship and i don't i'm just gonna say the way that you know

00:16:32.160 i have a relationship with the person who drives my bus every day like people have relationships

00:16:35.480 with each other it doesn't mean it's a romantic relationship or a loving relationship it just

00:16:39.600 means the relationship between two people this could never turn into literal marriage because 0.93

00:16:46.380 of incest reasons and because of enslavement reasons and because of black people and white

00:16:52.920 people not allowed to get married to each other reasons but also i guess and also on top of all

00:17:02.460 of this so they couldn't he couldn't marry her whether she would have wanted to do that or not

00:17:08.820 and that's a whole other discussion and that gordon reed does get into in her book people

00:17:12.940 like Martha too, like once Thomas J decided he wanted to marry her, like how much wiggle room

00:17:18.180 did she have to do that or not? Like in a really heavily patriarchal culture, like 1700s, Virginia. 0.98

00:17:23.760 The other factor here that is important to consider is Thomas Jefferson was a public figure.

00:17:32.760 So him doing this was outside of the bounds of society in various ways. And if he was just some

00:17:42.180 guy, then it wouldn't have been seen as quite as scandalous because he wasn't just a public figure.

00:17:49.380 He was also somebody who was known at this point in America as being this man of really lofty

00:17:57.080 morals, this really good guy. He wanted like one of the reasons he wrote down everything he ever

00:18:03.600 did was he was thinking a lot about posterity and how would he be remembered. He was seen as

00:18:08.500 someone who was very disciplined and very controlled, who lived life on this kind of

00:18:14.040 straight and narrow. And he had spoken up in the past saying that he was, I don't know if he

00:18:19.520 specifically said like, I'm against slavery, but he had represented black people in court and things

00:18:25.580 like that. So it was something that he had spoken about. So he, this needs to be kept secret on top

00:18:33.840 of everything else. So this relationship between the two of them, Sally, so just kind of putting

00:18:40.000 in her, ourselves and her headspace. So she was raised in the various plantations, various Jefferson

00:18:48.420 plantations alongside her very big extended family. She had lots of siblings. Some of the

00:18:53.520 siblings started having children. She's also raised alongside her white half siblings or white 0.67

00:18:59.280 half nieces, I guess. So she had been surrounded by people who she knew by family members who

00:19:05.540 loved her. And then she was taken to Paris where there was, her brother was there. Her older

00:19:10.340 brother, James was there with her, but she didn't have female relatives around her. Like her mother

00:19:15.660 and her grandmother had been in a very similar situation, both of them becoming pregnant by

00:19:22.520 white powerful men. So she could turn to them for advice or guidance about what she could do,

00:19:28.300 but they weren't there with her. And also just in terms of like systems of support among,

00:19:33.440 among enslaved people, like they really, in this situation, like women really supported

00:19:39.360 women in this sort of way. And part of that, and that Gordon Reed talks about in her book

00:19:43.400 is likely, um, almost definitely because of the, the first generation of enslaved people came

00:19:53.300 directly from African countries. And in a lot of African countries, there's a real 0.54

00:19:58.320 community element where women really supported each other. And so that even though subsequent

00:20:05.640 generations were more separated from their roots, um, in African countries, that sense of women

00:20:13.380 supporting women and being there for each other kind of continued on like mothers learn that,

00:20:18.500 taught that to their daughters and that continued on like that as well so she was 16 and pregnant

00:20:24.580 by this very powerful much older patriarchal almost father figure type person and just trying

00:20:33.100 to figure and she was in France which was a place where she was legally free so everything was kind

00:20:40.680 of blurry between the two of them just in terms of because this happened she became pregnant at

00:20:49.880 a time where she was the only virginian female person on the premises like in france there was

00:20:57.760 a lot of paid servants there as well who were french people she and her brother were there

00:21:01.660 but everybody else is french and it lent itself to probably a more informal vibe than there was

00:21:08.260 back in Monticello, where there was so many people around all the time, there's much less

00:21:11.840 privacy there. So things might've gotten kind of blurry just in terms, because also she was a

00:21:17.440 Hemmings and they were treated in this different way from other enslaved people. So just in terms

00:21:22.820 of like how the relationship started was very specific to this time and place. The story would

00:21:30.080 be similar, but different if this had all started at Monticello. And one of the ways that would be

00:21:35.820 different is that she would have had people to turn to for advice and to ask what to do.

00:21:42.180 So I'm going to paraphrase part of Annette Gordon-Reed's book about this part of the story.

00:21:49.520 16-year-old Sally, in her particular circumstances in Paris, was perfectly positioned to be swept up

00:21:54.940 in a Jeffersonian charm offensive to the detriment of what made any sense. Throughout his life,

00:22:01.060 people far more worldly than her were similarly swayed, even when Thomas Jefferson did not seem

00:22:06.360 to be trying very hard. And so this is a thing about Thomas Jefferson that I really gleaned

00:22:12.280 from reading this book, is that he was a very charming guy. He was, if we're thinking in terms

00:22:21.420 of people who are sexual predators, on the one hand, you have stories that I've read in the news,

00:22:30.840 you might have too about the way that harvey weinstein for instance which is sort of like

00:22:35.740 violently like in a real power move sort of grab people and force them to come to his hotel room

00:22:43.360 and stuff versus somebody it's more of like a it's literal grooming like she was 14 like he

00:22:48.220 knew her since she was a baby um but just thomas jefferson's vibe is much more in line with what

00:22:56.240 we know about the rest of his personality, which is that he preferred everyone to like him. He had

00:23:03.000 a real, one might say pathological need to be loved and or liked. He was a people pleaser to

00:23:11.360 this extreme extent. And he had the charisma and the personal skills to kind of make that happen,

00:23:18.860 to make people like him, to make people trust him. He told people what they wanted to hear,

00:23:23.460 even if it wasn't what he meant or it wasn't what he believed, like he's able to mold himself

00:23:28.540 to be really liked. And this is where we're going to get into more of his political

00:23:32.860 aspirations in a bit, but he's really similar to some of the very successful politicians one sees

00:23:41.480 today in America and elsewhere. But he also, it wasn't just that he was saying what people

00:23:48.460 wanted to hear. He was also helpful and nice to people. Anyone who asked him for help,

00:23:52.780 he would do it to the detriment of his own finances or to what made sense like he was

00:23:58.440 what's that thing you know people there's always these sort of inspirational things

00:24:02.480 where like stop saying yes to everything like stop being a people pleaser like he

00:24:05.720 was that because he wanted everyone to like him and then he could and he figured out that he could

00:24:13.300 he had the skills and the kind of personability that if he could figure out what made somebody

00:24:17.380 tick. Like what are they interested in? What's their vibe? Like he could flatter them and love

00:24:22.900 bomb them and just make them like him. And he did that to almost everybody, including the enslaved

00:24:33.340 people who worked for him. And this is because he wanted to live in this kind of like Disneyland 0.65

00:24:39.740 of imagining that all the enslaved people liked what they were doing because he was nice to them.

00:24:47.380 So then he wouldn't have to think that they would ever want to leave or to run away because he's so nice.

00:24:53.300 And aren't they so lucky to be working for him?

00:24:56.500 But then also, as we saw in the previous episode, like when his wife died, like when things didn't go his way, even after he tried all the things that usually work, like he would have migraines.

00:25:08.300 He would have emotional breakdowns because he needed everything to be nice all the time.

00:25:13.980 The thing who I keep thinking about in terms of Thomas Jefferson is in Moulin Rouge, if you know the movie and or stage musical, Harold Ziegler, who's the guy who's in charge of the Moulin Rouge show, who's always just like happy, happy, happy, like everything's going so well, like just sort of let's pretend everything's fine, even when it's not.

00:25:35.200 But so the way that he would have dealt with this situation coming out of that pathology is what I'm kind of trying to imagine here.

00:25:44.720 And then you've got Sally Hemings, who is 16 years old.

00:25:49.820 And however this came about, she became pregnant with his child in France.

00:25:56.600 And so Annette Gordon-Reed says, basically, I'm going to paraphrase. 0.55

00:25:59.880 by any system of logic, Sally Hemings should have seen Thomas Jefferson as an enemy. He was her

00:26:07.100 literal enslaver. He was the owner of her entire extended family, but he believed that he was

00:26:16.480 the opposite of the enemy. And he presented himself to her and to her family as this really

00:26:22.420 nice guy. And so that's part of what's going on. But then also, in terms of what she's going to do,

00:26:30.760 as long as she was in France, she could be free. So in the first part, I talked about how Thomas

00:26:36.680 Jefferson had been kind of hoping that Sally and James Hemmings, maybe wouldn't find out that that

00:26:44.040 was the law in France, but they, you know, interacted with other people. And so they had

00:26:50.360 found that out. They both knew this. They both knew that if they could go to the court in France

00:26:54.800 and petition for their freedom and they would probably get it. So when her mother Elizabeth

00:26:58.720 had been in a similar situation, like pregnant by her white enslaver, the difference was that 0.87

00:27:06.060 she didn't have the option of potential freedom. So this is where it's just like, it sucks that 0.98

00:27:10.640 Sally couldn't talk to her mother about this, but she couldn't talk to her mother about this

00:27:16.600 unless she returned to Virginia. And as soon as she returned to Virginia, that would mean giving

00:27:20.120 up the potential freedom of a life in France. But as her son said, and I'm going to just say this.

00:27:29.760 So Sally refused to return to Virginia with him because she knew that she would be enslaved 0.93

00:27:34.980 again. To induce her to do so, Thomas Jefferson promised her extraordinary privileges. So they

00:27:40.780 had a negotiation. So this is a real defining moment for the Sally Hemings saga. Like we know

00:27:49.500 so, we know so many of the things she did, but we don't know what was in her heart. We don't know

00:27:54.860 what her personality really was, but this jumps out to be like, she was a person who felt confident.

00:28:02.460 She had the will to challenge this guy, um, the patriarch of this plantation, the owner of herself

00:28:09.800 and her whole family. She had the will to challenge him while they were in France and she's 16 years

00:28:14.540 old. So maybe part of it too, is the sort of the bravery, um, and the optimism of a very young

00:28:21.360 person. And this might not have worked on a man with a different personality, but part of Thomas

00:28:27.260 Jefferson's whole thing too, is he, I'm going to say, perhaps pathologically avoided conflict.

00:28:33.300 He could not handle conflict at all. This is why he wanted everyone to always be happy, happy,

00:28:38.140 happy. And he would manipulate things so that everyone seemed happy. Everyone knew they had

00:28:42.480 to act happy around him. Um, so he hated conflict. So the, especially face-to-face conflict. So the

00:28:49.680 fact that she challenged him in this way is massive. It's huge. If she said like, I'm staying

00:28:56.740 in France, like I'm praying with your child. I am also a child and I'm going to stay here in France.

00:29:04.220 And that's what's happening. And the fact that it turned into a negotiation, like that she had

00:29:08.580 the power that she felt she had the power to challenge him in this way. Like he could have

00:29:14.660 taken her, he could have grabbed her and brought her back to Virginia and Forrester, but instead,

00:29:20.720 and this is maybe, I mean, part of it is his whole conflict avoidance thing. Part of it is

00:29:25.680 maybe the manipulation of it all, but also he agreed to certain terms. And I don't know if

00:29:31.340 she started with a bigger ask or if he suggested this at all, but what the terms included were that

00:29:38.260 any future children that they had together, actually it is any of her children. So implicit

00:29:44.380 in that is the assumption that any children she had, he would continue to father, um, would be

00:29:50.220 freed when they turned 21. And then she would also get quote, extraordinary privileges. So she was

00:29:56.640 like, I will come back to Virginia, but the children I have are going to be freed from

00:30:03.380 enslavement when they turned 21. And she would have, she would live life on her terms to some 0.86

00:30:09.040 extent. So part of this negotiation also, if you'll recall back in part one, when Martha too,

00:30:17.420 Sally Hemings, half sister, Thomas Jefferson's first wife, when she was dying on her deathbed,

00:30:23.500 there were multiple Hemings around her, like the women and girls have been helping to nurse her

00:30:27.580 through the illness that eventually she died from. Everyone heard her say to Thomas Jefferson,

00:30:32.160 promise me you will never take another wife because she had had these two stepmothers and 0.57

00:30:36.740 she didn't want her daughters to go through that. So Sally Hemings would know that Thomas Jefferson

00:30:40.620 had made that vow. He had been a widow for quite a while at this point, not quite 10 years. And he

00:30:47.360 could have remarried by now. The fact he didn't seem to indicate that he was honoring this promise.

00:30:53.880 So Sally Hemings would also know, like if Thomas Jefferson was to take another wife,

00:30:57.800 that person could maybe get in the way, could break this negotiated promise, maybe take some

00:31:03.940 of the powers away from Sally Hemings. But she trusted that as part of this deal, the no woman 0.54

00:31:10.640 not already known to her, like there wouldn't be a strange new woman coming in to be his new wife,

00:31:14.620 to be the new mistress of the house. She would have that control over her own life. So part of 0.89

00:31:20.280 this also, even without being able to talk to her mother, she saw what had happened between her

00:31:26.240 mother and John Wales. When he had died, her mother, she and her siblings were all left to

00:31:31.480 the legal mercy of his heirs, of his legal white daughter and her husband. So she wanted a different

00:31:39.580 outcome for her own children. I'm going to quote Annette Gordon-Reed again. Like other enslaved

00:31:45.300 people, when the all too rare chance presented itself, Sally seized her moment and used the

00:31:50.020 knowledge of her rights to make a decision based upon what she thought was best for her as a woman,

00:31:54.600 family member, and a potential mother in her specific circumstances. Now, part of the power,

00:32:02.980 and I will say maybe influence that she had in this negotiation and this discussion,

00:32:08.740 is that if she did stay in France, she would have to petition French court for freedom.

00:32:16.160 And this would be a public thing. This would probably show up in the newspapers because

00:32:20.400 Thomas Jefferson was a public figure. And this would wreck his reputation of being like, I'm not

00:32:27.100 a regular enslaver. I'm a cool enslaver. I'm cool with black people. Like he hung out with Marquita

00:32:32.360 Lafayette and Lafayette, a white person. I just want to mention because he played so memorably

00:32:37.700 by Davy Diggs, who also plays Thomas Jefferson and Hamilton. My God. Marquita Lafayette was a

00:32:43.420 big abolitionist and Thomas Jefferson hang out with him. And we hang out with him. He would say

00:32:47.300 what Lafayette wanted to hear, which was just like, yeah, let's go to slavery. Sure. Okay.

00:32:52.720 To show Thomas Jefferson to have impregnated a 16 year old enslaved girl that he had been

00:32:58.760 illegally keeping in France for two years would kind of wreck his reputation. And so as evidence

00:33:04.200 perhaps of how much this negotiation affected him and how much Sally must have really stood up for

00:33:10.780 herself and had this conversation with him. Um, he had a migraine attack. Um, he was bettered in

00:33:16.940 for six days at around the same time. He was pathologically averse to conflict and having

00:33:23.140 to have this conversation and to maybe having to make some concessions to what she was demanding,

00:33:28.120 uh, just really kind of broke him a little bit. Stress often made him physically ill. So

00:33:35.640 yeah his whole thing was he tried to disarm people with niceness so that he wouldn't have

00:33:42.700 to think about or deal with actual life problems and it's kind of like he thought maybe that

00:33:46.180 solved the problems but it didn't it just made everybody act like there wasn't any problems

00:33:50.160 but he also knew he could often solve most of the challenges he faced because he had a really

00:33:55.940 strong work ethic he was efficient he was perseverant he was intelligent and when those

00:34:02.100 things didn't fix his problems that's where he just kind of broke down as he did here so again

00:34:08.640 his reputation super important to him which is very interesting and again very uh contemporary

00:34:16.000 of him because in i think it was in the 1970s i think 1974 the first sort of major article or

00:34:23.700 book came out saying straight out like he was the father of um he impregnated sally hummings

00:34:30.800 and people were big mad about it like people in the 20th century were just like no like not my

00:34:37.480 Thomas Jefferson not this cool guy who hung out with Marquis de Lafayette like because they knew

00:34:43.700 that this really complicated the legacy that he wanted people to think of him as which people

00:34:48.880 did think of him like for a long time which was as this just cool guy there was again in just sort

00:34:55.700 the more modern reading about people these days, Hemmings descendants and other people. So there

00:35:03.260 are, it's generally accepted like Monticello itself, the historic museum you can visit has

00:35:10.300 lots of stuff on the website, but Sally Hemmings and the Hemmings, they for sure say like, yes,

00:35:16.180 this happened. He fathered her children, but there are still some people who are real Thomas

00:35:21.680 Jefferson fans who, it just sticks with me. If there's this one woman who I read who had always

00:35:29.220 idolized Thomas Jefferson. And I get why people would have, because for a long time, all the

00:35:36.060 writings about him were just like, look at this great man, like the, the legacy that he wanted

00:35:40.160 people to have, which just kind of like, didn't include a lot of details. And so this woman said

00:35:44.620 she, she would read his letters. Like she just found those comforting. She liked to see what

00:35:48.640 who's like, she imagined he's this heroic person. And she's like, I just don't see that he's the

00:35:53.960 sort of man who would do something like this, who would age 47 impregnate his 16 year old

00:35:59.620 enslaved worker slash doppelganger of his dead wife. Just the fact that this woman said,

00:36:06.040 and I think that's what she said exactly. He just doesn't seem like the sort of man who would do

00:36:10.000 this. And that just keeps running around in my head where I'm like, what part of him seems like

00:36:13.780 he wouldn't do this. Like the man who enslaved hundreds of black people, like, why do you think

00:36:20.940 he wouldn't impregnate Sally Hemings when they were left alone in this house for two years? And

00:36:29.080 he also really liked beautiful women. He also really liked beautiful houses, beautiful paintings.

00:36:34.520 He was somebody who really liked beautiful things. She looked just like his wife. It's like,

00:36:38.100 what part of him, his wife who like devastated him when she died, like what part of him sounds

00:36:42.860 like he wouldn't do this. Like to me, every part of him sounds like, of course he did this.

00:36:47.340 Anyway. Yeah. So this, just to clarify this yet more, Annette Gordon-Reed wrote, quote,

00:36:53.540 any out of marriage liaison that produced illegitimate children would be a threat to the

00:36:57.920 way posterity viewed Thomas Jefferson. Like this is what he was thinking. Living with and having

00:37:02.740 children with an African-American enslaved woman posed an exceptionally greater risk. So even just 0.95

00:37:08.060 having illegitimate children would maybe be kind of taint his reputation but like living with and

00:37:15.820 this seems to be the arrangement they're making she said like any children i have would be will

00:37:21.000 be freed when they turn 21 there's the expectation she's going to have more children with him like

00:37:24.560 she's going to get extraordinary privileges it seems like this document um her son madison

00:37:29.900 hemings would say would describe her as being his concubine which is also the word that was used to

00:37:35.620 describe her mother, Elizabeth Hemmings, with John Wales. And in this context, we've come into

00:37:41.400 the word concubine a few times in this podcast. In this specific context, when they were writing

00:37:46.880 that in like the 1800s, what they meant was, that was kind of the word that meant two people who are

00:37:52.160 in a sexual relationship, but they're not married, but it's like a long-term relationship. Like,

00:37:59.220 I don't know, mistress could be another word you could use, lover, I don't know. So concubine is

00:38:05.220 the word that was often used. So he could never be open about the fact that he just agreed to get

00:38:11.920 into this situation with Sally Hemings, like society would be okay with this, but he could

00:38:21.540 never talk about it or acknowledge it. I know it just said like, there'd be too much of a scandal,

00:38:26.360 but it's like Virginia society, the other plantations around there, there were a lot of 1.00

00:38:32.260 mixed race children running around. A lot of white men were having children with black women.

00:38:41.120 You just kind of didn't talk about it. And then you could pretend like it wasn't happening,

00:38:46.540 which again, like the Thomas Jefferson dream world. So he's like, okay, I'm going to do this,

00:38:50.120 but this has to be a secret. And part of what he did to make this a secret is that he just

00:38:55.760 didn't write about her. Like he, this is where people who were like, oh, how do we know that

00:39:01.860 he actually got her pregnant like he didn't write that down and he wrote down everything it's like

00:39:04.960 no that's why you can't trust his written records or literally anyone's written records because

00:39:10.560 people just or what people post on Instagram or whatever it's like people are choosing what they

00:39:14.820 want you to see and you see this over and over again in modern times with like I'm just thinking

00:39:21.680 of politicians because that's those are people who often portray themselves as being like so

00:39:28.020 moral and ethical and then it's like oh but did you know that this guy cheated on his wife or

00:39:32.160 like this guy had a secret second family or like this guy's been on Grindr and like he has these

00:39:36.680 live-in boyfriends like so it seems really baked into American political life which is influential

00:39:44.460 and other politicians in other countries act similarly but it seems like very American to

00:39:48.940 have this expectation that political figures are so morally perfect and then they hide something

00:39:56.780 that would ruin that reputation. And then that stuff comes out and then it does ruin the reputation.

00:40:01.000 So anyway, what happened next? 1789, 16 and pregnant, Sally Hemings and her brother,

00:40:07.380 James Hemings got onto a ship to head back to return to America and to slavery. So it's

00:40:12.320 interesting. James also chose not to stay in France where he could have maybe stayed

00:40:15.920 with his chef skills. They'd been in France for two years. They both had disposable income.

00:40:21.560 So they'd amassed numerous possessions, you know, clothes and souvenirs and gifts for their

00:40:26.680 family and stuff. So they took the ship over to America. And so first they disembarked in New

00:40:32.840 York City, but the ship docked and everyone got off. But then before the luggage was taken off

00:40:40.540 the ship, the ship caught fire. I don't know if this is the thing to track this season, but I

00:40:44.620 think it should be just kind of like unpleasant ship voyage crisis. So the Heming siblings lost

00:40:50.440 almost all of their possessions that they were bringing back from France. And then when they

00:40:55.840 returned there's no record of this child so she gave birth a few months after arriving back in

00:41:02.480 america but clearly this baby only lived for a short period of time and also just what they left

00:41:09.180 in their wake in paris and they wouldn't have known this but maybe they kind of had some

00:41:14.680 inklings like they left paris just about right before the french revolution really

00:41:19.840 um got into gear so the sorts of wealthy people who maybe could have hired if they stayed there

00:41:26.720 if sally and james stayed there and were freed james would have been looking for a job as like

00:41:31.320 a cook sally could have been looking for a job as maybe a domestic worker but the sorts of 0.97

00:41:36.080 aristocrats who would be looking for those workers were soon going to be guillotined anyway so

00:41:40.880 that's that they're back in virginia so they got back finally she gets to see her mother

00:41:48.120 um elizabeth hemmings who at this point is 55 years old and i'm just glad that she can finally

00:41:53.100 talk to her mom just be like here's what's happening um history repeating she like in a

00:41:58.840 kind of sweet valley saga sort of way she'd been in france for two years but before that she was

00:42:04.480 i think it was about two years she was away at the epps house living with mmp um and sally and

00:42:10.380 that whole her other half-sister elizabeth elizabeth too so she hadn't been back in monticelle

00:42:16.340 for a long time. So she just gets to see all the Hemings again. Like all the new Hemings babies

00:42:20.340 have been born. Like four of her sisters had given birth while she was in Paris. And one of

00:42:25.260 her sister, Mary's daughters, as I mentioned, the Hemings family would often name new babies after

00:42:30.880 existing people. One of her sister, Mary's daughters was named Sarah, nicknamed Sally.

00:42:36.300 So other news. And on the same time, Martha, Martha three, the daughter of Martha two,

00:42:44.460 Sally Hemings similarly aged niece Thomas Jefferson's older daughter aka sometimes Patsy 0.61

00:42:52.640 so she's 17 and she met and got married to this really shitty guy very quickly he was also her

00:43:00.660 cousin his name was Thomas Mann Randolph he was 21 and awful and it was a really quick it was I

00:43:06.860 feel like they met and then got married a month later something like that one wonders perhaps

00:43:11.380 if she was motivated, um, somehow by, I think Martha three had enjoyed being in Paris. She

00:43:18.980 kind of thought maybe I could stay here. Thomas Jefferson was like, Oh no, she's having too much

00:43:22.560 fun being like a French debutante. Like we need to bring her back. Anyway, she's going through 0.97

00:43:27.040 some stuff. Martha decides to marry her cousin who is a horrible person. And maybe part of this 0.97

00:43:31.720 is like, she also would have, how did she feel about finding out that Sally, this girl who is

00:43:37.840 basically her same age who is also her aunt is now her father's concubine and so potentially

00:43:46.600 Martha 3 was just like I'm gonna extricate myself from this narrative by leaving Monticello and the

00:43:54.180 only way to do that was to get married so she's happened to choose the worst person possible

00:43:57.940 so it is notable this is where I don't need to prove to you because I

00:44:03.060 everyone can think what they think but like there's some people who doubt that Sally Hemings

00:44:09.960 became the mother of Thomas Jefferson's children but I think we all know it's true but as further 0.80

00:44:14.960 evidence so usually when the oldest daughter of a slave-owning family got married and left home

00:44:19.120 she would bring with her a lady's maid who was usually someone similar age to her who she had

00:44:23.500 a good relationship with a good rapport as sort of a way to bring her along some comfort and some

00:44:29.280 help to her new household she was being set up sally hummings had been her lady's maid for two

00:44:33.500 years just now in paris but she had to stay in monticello so it's notable like otherwise in

00:44:41.400 another hypothetical situation sally hummings probably would have been bestowed upon martha

00:44:47.320 three to go and be her lady's maid but instead she had to stay at monticello because she's now 0.96

00:44:52.460 Thomas Jefferson's um teenage live-in mistress and he wanted her at Monticello he loved this

00:45:01.060 house in progress which is like a constant it talks like it's such a lovely building when I

00:45:06.120 see pictures of it now and it's such a architectural treasure and everything but in the time that they

00:45:11.180 were living there it was constantly falling apart under renovation um not like it was it was a

00:45:17.900 construction zone for like decades actually at this point when they returned from paris it was

00:45:22.500 kind of falling into disrepair a little bit because thomas jefferson hadn't been there and

00:45:26.980 so just he was also crazily in debt anyway he loved monticello he wanted to just be there just

00:45:33.160 like like flipping this house constantly and he wanted sally to be there his companion all the

00:45:38.740 time so there are other things come up where it's like it would maybe make sense for sally to be

00:45:42.520 transferred elsewhere, but she never was. She was always there at Monticello. Also, he returned and

00:45:49.600 Thomas Jay was offered a new job, which was to be the first ever Secretary of State of the still

00:45:55.900 quite newly formed United States of America. And now for a quick advertising break.

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00:48:02.320 And I'm Melissa, and this is Moms and Mysteries. 0.53

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00:48:19.220 Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. There's a whole thing where like,

00:48:24.040 first the capital of the United States of America was going to be New York City,

00:48:28.560 but then the capital was moved to Philadelphia. So anyway, that's where he was going to go.

00:48:34.740 Philadelphia. Shout out to any listeners in Philadelphia. Your city comes up a lot this

00:48:41.900 season. So he went to Philadelphia. Sally remained in Virginia because the whole thing was he wanted

00:48:48.080 her in Monticello. And also he didn't want anyone to know that he had entered into this relationship

00:48:53.540 with her. And he was out of town a lot. Like he went to Philadelphia. He stayed there. He brought

00:49:00.300 some staff with him but not her and he was also ill a lot because um at this time alexander

00:49:07.500 hamilton played by lin-manuel miranda in the musical uh was arguing with him all the time

00:49:12.800 thomas jefferson we know doesn't do well with arguments so he was sick a lot which meant sally

00:49:18.120 teenager did not fall into the same like once a year baby schedule that her mother had been on

00:49:24.680 because thomas jefferson was away all the time like she conceived her first child in paris when

00:49:29.500 she was 16 years old. And her next own pregnancy was not for five more years, at which point she

00:49:35.880 had a daughter named Harriet. Also note, so I've talked about the Hemings family and kind of the

00:49:44.040 names repeating across generations, across family members. Her children, Sally Hemings children had

00:49:50.280 different names. They didn't have the Hemings family regular names. And that's because they

00:49:54.720 were pretty much almost definitely all named by Thomas Jefferson. If you want more evidence that

00:49:59.420 he was their father um they all got names named after people who were important to thomas jefferson

00:50:04.980 so her mother elizabeth was around to help out with baby harriet so she'd had five years

00:50:14.580 hemmings of having extraordinary privileges quote unquote so we'll talk about what that means in a

00:50:19.500 bit like in terms of what her duties might have been so by the time she had her child her mother

00:50:24.560 was around, able to help. At some point in 1796, an eight-year-old enslaved girl named Edie Hearn

00:50:30.400 was moved into Sally's household to help with the baby. And if it's like, well, why, why would she

00:50:36.720 need to help with the baby? Her mother's there and whatever. But this is basically, it's a thing 0.99

00:50:40.340 about like Sally herself had done. Enslaved girls under the age of 10 were often set up to be kind 1.00

00:50:45.940 of helpers to, to people with babies. But also this is for when Sally went to be with Thomas 0.99

00:50:52.460 Jefferson, Edie would watch baby Harriet. So Sally's duties at this time were things like

00:51:00.940 she was Thomas Jefferson's chambermaid. She did work as a seamstress. In terms of where was she 0.94

00:51:07.660 located, it's not entirely clear because again, Thomas Jefferson left very detailed records about

00:51:13.260 lots of his enslaved people. Not about her, but we do know that she probably, it's called Mulberry

00:51:18.940 row if you go to visit monticello it's kind of where all these sort of shacks i guess you would

00:51:25.260 say just tiny homes where the enslaved people would live and it's like it's like a street and

00:51:30.840 people you'd be neighbors with different people and so we're pretty sure she had a home there

00:51:35.600 comma and or um she might have had rooms and there was uh slave quarters in the south wing

00:51:42.620 of Monticello, comma, and the book I read by Annette Gordon-Reed was written in 2008.

00:51:48.840 In 2017, a room was discovered that was just off of Thomas Jefferson's room. And it's pretty

00:51:55.860 much clear that that was Sally Hemings' room. So maybe while he was in town, she would sleep

00:52:03.060 there, but otherwise she would have her own place to be. But basically when she was off

00:52:08.920 being with him, Edie was there to watch her baby. 1797, baby Harriet died of old-timey disease type 0.90

00:52:18.520 things, I presume. And that same year, Thomas Jefferson became vice president because of this

00:52:24.340 very brief rule, which imagine this is still the rule. It used to be the people running for

00:52:30.780 president and whoever won more votes in the electoral college would become president. And

00:52:35.680 whoever got the second most votes would be the vice president. Imagine if that was still the

00:52:40.680 thing. Anyway, so he became vice president because he didn't get as many votes as John Adams, who we

00:52:47.620 mentioned very briefly before. He's the husband of Abigail Adams, who is a person who met Sally

00:52:53.100 when she was in London. Anyway, so he was like, again, this means he had to live in Philadelphia,

00:53:00.440 which was the capital of America at that time. But he did go back to visit Monticello,

00:53:05.700 at least long enough to knock up Sally again, as she had a son in 1798 named William Beverly,

00:53:11.780 known as Beverly. Most of the sons that she would have would go by their middle names.

00:53:17.740 So she had one surviving child and had been in this situation with Thomas Jefferson for nearly

00:53:23.740 10 years. And for basically all of that time, like although Thomas Jefferson was like,

00:53:28.560 no one can ever know about this except for brackets people are going to find out so the

00:53:32.880 people in surrounding plantations um have been gossiping about this for basically 10 years

00:53:38.480 so the thing they were especially gossiping about it because Thomas Jefferson had entered

00:53:43.040 public life at almost the same time he'd started fathering children with Sally um he was also an

00:53:50.160 early adopter to using the press pamphlets and newspapers to his advantage to get his points

00:53:54.940 across and to make himself seem smart and cool so he was he was a celebrity um and he also at this

00:54:01.740 point just note he was a seemingly wealthy like asterisk actually bankrupt but he was a rich

00:54:09.160 dude who'd been raised rich he um or maybe he wasn't raised rich but he had married rich like

00:54:15.240 he was a wealthy slave-winning plantation fancy guy who liked beautiful luxurious things but when

00:54:22.280 he entered public office to become a politician. He was like, I'm just like Joe Plummer guy.

00:54:27.340 Like he started dressing more plain. Um, he started presenting himself as this kind of like

00:54:32.220 working guy, like every man, which people who knew him were like, well, that is all a lie, but

00:54:38.700 people took to it. People believed it. Um, and so again, like news of him fathering children

00:54:47.000 within enslaved women would kind of wreck this image he was building for himself is just kind

00:54:51.400 of like, I'm just like you, Northerners. 1799, Sally had another daughter who died in infancy

00:54:59.360 and she was not, you know, Thomas Jefferson was not writing down all his dealings with Sally,

00:55:04.620 but the same year he did refer to her in a letter as quote, Mariah's maid. 1800,

00:55:12.380 another presidential election. This time, so the presidential like campaign was happening.

00:55:19.080 And so Thomas Jefferson had enemies, and the enemies started spilling tea in the newspapers and pamphlets of the era. This one guy said, his record isn't as spotless as you think, which is a real blind item sort of thing to say.

00:55:36.700 the election ended in a tie imagine that happened um then there was a revote and ultimately

00:55:42.620 thomas jefferson was elected and they weren't doing that same thing where the

00:55:46.320 winner is president and second place is vice president because they realized it's best to

00:55:50.900 not have a president vice president who hate each other and want to actively murder each other

00:55:54.940 so he was a president and his vice president was aaron burr from the musical hamilton and so by now

00:56:03.000 the capital of the United States had moved from Philadelphia to Washington DC and here's a fun

00:56:07.820 fact I learned from friend of the podcast Lana Wood Johnson which is Washington DC was a swamp

00:56:16.380 it was literally built on a swamp the thing that people say now about politics like drain the

00:56:22.920 swamp etc I thought that was metaphorical in fact literal Washington DC was built on a swamp

00:56:30.900 So anyway, so they moved to this new swamp city. 0.81

00:56:34.520 He did, not they. 0.98

00:56:36.180 These Sally, of course, stayed at Monticello,

00:56:37.760 which honestly around her family

00:56:39.420 in the place that she knew and was comfortable

00:56:42.020 in this like community of enslaved people, 0.95

00:56:44.140 which is like, they are enslaved, which is awful.

00:56:47.780 And also she was with her family.

00:56:49.740 So better than being enslaved in a swamp with strangers.

00:56:56.000 In 1801, she gave birth to another daughter who survived,

00:56:58.640 whose name was also Harriet which is a thing that has happened again to other people in this story

00:57:05.640 where you have a child and the child dies and then you give that child the same name as a previous

00:57:10.700 child I think that happened in this it happens in this whole season it's a thing that happens a lot

00:57:16.260 so um one year later September 1802 a newspaper called the Richmond Recorder

00:57:24.620 published some writing by a guy named James Callender. James Callender, a pamphleteer

00:57:31.980 by trade. He had been working with Thomas Jefferson, and then they had an unamicable

00:57:38.340 split on professional basis. And he was James Callender, like messy bitch living for drama 1.00

00:57:47.520 to the extreme. He was mad at Thomas Jefferson. And so he just started spilling all the tea 0.99

00:57:54.060 in the newspapers he wrote that thomas jefferson for many years has kept as his concubine one of

00:58:00.440 his slaves her name is sally and sally is in all caps so at this point so it wasn't just like the

00:58:10.440 previous newspaper article that was like maybe his reputation is not as spotless as you think

00:58:14.940 he was just like this is what's happening literally and the fact that he knew her name

00:58:19.340 with Sally like because everybody in the neighborhood knew I put Sally aka Black Mariah

00:58:23.860 like this anyway Thomas Jefferson if he didn't want his secrets to be spilled then he needed to 0.64

00:58:31.060 I don't know because he was doing his like pathological trying to make everyone like him

00:58:36.900 thing but that just not doesn't work on everybody by now Sally Hemings 29 years old mother of two

00:58:44.040 she was basically put on blast. Callender had informants from the neighbors of Monticello

00:58:49.700 and he had like, he had the facts. He was like, this affair started in France.

00:58:55.160 She'd had her first child by Thomas Jefferson around 13 years ago, which was when they came

00:58:59.720 back from France. And what really got this scandal going and moving is the fact, all the things I

00:59:07.040 said before that Thomas Jefferson like knew would be scandalous. And this is why he didn't want

00:59:10.620 people to find out about it was like he had fathered children with Sally but what people

00:59:16.160 found more shocking was the long-standing nature of this arrangement like the fact that she was at

00:59:21.420 Monticello all the time the fact that they had been having several children over several years

00:59:25.540 which made her seem almost like a wife to him and people found that shocking um because

00:59:33.700 she was a black woman because she was enslaved because black and white people couldn't get 0.99

00:59:40.220 married because um enslaved people couldn't get married because there was real vicious racism

00:59:46.700 about black people and white people having relationships there's um like political 0.95

00:59:51.180 cartoons and stuff came out and this guy calendar this messy bitch calendar also like he sort of 0.98

00:59:57.340 exaggerated things as well as he had some facts but he's like this isn't enough to make people 0.61

01:00:02.020 the scandals scandalizes i want them to be this isn't going to destroy thomas jefferson 0.95

01:00:06.280 so he said untrue things like sally had up to 30 lovers of all colors he called her a slut as 0.74

01:00:12.740 common as the pavement he suggested she lived in the pigsty at monticello his hatred for her was 0.95

01:00:20.580 massive unreasonable unbounded like malicious and this it was really coming out like it was 0.92

01:00:28.100 apparent that this guy calendar he hated black people um he was horrified by thomas jefferson 0.98

01:00:35.160 he saw him as like a traitor to the white race. And so instead of saying, Thomas Jefferson is 0.96

01:00:40.960 shitty, he would say, Sally is horrible. So he was trying to humiliate Thomas Jefferson by just 0.99

01:00:47.600 being cruel about Sally, which is something we see still today about the way that Black women are

01:00:54.920 often villainized in the press. There's no record of Thomas Jefferson ever publicly responding to

01:01:01.600 any of this and this is probably partially because if you know the musical Hamilton there's a part

01:01:08.760 where Hamilton has the affair with another woman I want to say her name is Peggy and then people

01:01:14.180 found out about it and he was like yeah no I did that and then um that kind of wrecked his

01:01:19.020 his political career Thomas Jefferson was like that like it wrecked his career because he

01:01:23.900 said something about it if I just never say anything then I'll be fine so he didn't he

01:01:28.680 never responded to this 1804 his daughter mmp white mariah um she like her mother she had a

01:01:37.200 really rough pregnancy she fell ill after giving birth she had gotten married a few years before

01:01:42.060 and she died age 25 thomas jefferson went home from the swamp to go be with her like just on

01:01:51.520 her deathbed at which time he conceived another child sally who would become his son james madison

01:01:58.240 Hemmings, aka Madison Hemmings, aka the one who wrote the memoirs, from which we know a lot about

01:02:03.360 Sally. And this is another thing where people are like, well, how do we know Thomas Jefferson was

01:02:07.040 the father of these children? It's like, every time he came back to Monticello, nine months later,

01:02:12.940 Sally had a baby. Like, who do you think else is the father of these children? Despite this smear

01:02:18.580 campaign by Callender, who I think also died of old-timey things, I presume, Thomas Jefferson

01:02:25.520 was re-elected president again in 1804. Sally was never part of his household for obvious reasons,

01:02:32.500 like the obvious reasons being he didn't want anyone to know that he had a long-term enslaved

01:02:39.060 concubine relationship with this woman. He was also doing that whole thing where he's like,

01:02:51.500 i'm just this cool every man like working class guy and just any reminder that he like owned

01:02:58.140 hundreds of slaves was not what he wanted people to be thinking about um and at gordon reed also

01:03:04.120 mentions there'd be the complication of if sally and the children went to live with him there'd be

01:03:08.760 cute mixed-raised babies running around who looked just like him and apparently his sons

01:03:14.220 really look like him and in terms of skin tone i guess like if you think like starting with

01:03:21.720 parthenia who has a black woman from africa she had a child with a white man who was elizabeth

01:03:27.300 hemings elizabeth hemings had children with a white man who became sally hemings and then

01:03:32.280 her siblings sally hemings has children with thomas jefferson so at this point they're what

01:03:38.060 like one eighth black, like the children we're going to see later, like could pass for white

01:03:44.020 just visually. So Thomas Jefferson, people are like, Hey, why don't you make more of your like 0.96

01:03:49.180 enslaved black workers here to the, to the swamp white house? And he's like, Oh, I prefer white 0.98

01:03:55.160 servants when I'm in the swamp. But this is also, again, like a thing to sort of evade the whole 0.91

01:04:01.480 like perception of him being who he was, which is a enslaver from Virginia, who's also wealthy.

01:04:07.480 he's just like no i'm just like joe every guy the common man or whatever during the eight years he

01:04:14.000 was president the press continued to refer to sally um well just because this is like the one

01:04:21.080 thing that they had that they could smear him about because the rest of his reputation was

01:04:26.320 apparently so squeaky clean so they referred to her they called her things like dusky sally

01:04:32.140 and black sal in the press she like the concept of her was so famous like no other enslaved person

01:04:40.120 in america was so famous but she herself was not known it's just the concept of her like there were

01:04:48.920 pictures of her in cartoons and stuff and they always illustrated her looking like a stereotypical 1.00

01:04:53.820 like dark-skinned black woman which is like what we know like no she had like long straight hair 1.00

01:04:59.720 She had like light skin, but no one actually saw her. 1.00

01:05:04.040 No one actually knew what she looked like.

01:05:05.940 The stories, and it wasn't just stories.

01:05:07.720 There's also like verse, you know, like comedy poems, many of which were written by a man

01:05:13.400 called John Quincy Adams, the son of former president John, not Quincy Adams.

01:05:20.560 He really, for a while, had a real hyper fixation on writing verse poems, mocking Thomas Jefferson's

01:05:27.840 relationship with Sally.

01:05:29.720 1807, Sally's mother, Elizabeth Betsy Hemmings, died, aged 72.

01:05:35.680 So she had lived a long enough life to see over 30 grandchildren be born,

01:05:42.420 at least four great-grandchildren.

01:05:45.380 Like her legacy was like right there around her all the time.

01:05:50.280 And then Thomas Jefferson announced he was not going to seek a third term as president.

01:05:54.840 I don't think you're allowed to do that anymore.

01:05:56.180 You can only do two now, right?

01:05:57.960 So he retired from being president and went to his favorite work in progress, Monticello. Nine months later, 1808, Sally had another son named Thomas Eston Hemmings. And just note of all of Sally's children, he was the one who was the most, like looked the most copy paste, like Thomas Jefferson.

01:06:18.540 Thomas Jefferson was like six foot two and Thomas Esten known as Esten was like when he became an

01:06:24.720 adult was around the same height I think there's one time he and his friends were around the statue

01:06:29.360 of Thomas Jefferson and his friends were like this statue looks exactly like you so he if I don't know

01:06:36.240 I I get it I'm like so many other people I'm just like what do these people look like so I was

01:06:41.180 looking at pictures of Thomas Jefferson and trying to picture him being younger um but Esten

01:06:46.120 apparently looked just like him. So later when her son Madison was thinking back to his childhood,

01:06:53.880 he described them as growing up measurably happy because they were free from the dread of being

01:06:58.800 enslaved all their lives because of this, the negotiation that they were going to be freed

01:07:03.140 when they turn 21. And Thomas Jefferson prepared them for their eventual freedom. The Hemmings

01:07:11.720 already had like we talked in part one um different sorts of work from other enslaved people at

01:07:17.420 Monticello but these children Thomas Jefferson's children with Sally um they specifically were

01:07:23.220 taught work in the trades like woodworking and joining and things like that Harriet was taught

01:07:28.640 how to spin and weave like the sorts of skills that would be looked for in a wife and a mother

01:07:32.420 um Thomas Jefferson loved music and the violin the boys all learned how to play the violin

01:07:37.860 And eventually Esten would make his living as a musician.

01:07:42.160 Beverly, the oldest son, also is apparently a very gifted musician.

01:07:44.900 And he was also really into woodworking and joining.

01:07:47.980 Thomas Jefferson, he loved watching workmen doing skilled work.

01:07:51.400 Like he liked watching people do woodworking and stuff like that.

01:07:54.100 So he spent a lot of time in the woodshop where his sons were apprentices.

01:08:00.920 And one of the just sort of, I don't know if it's an irony necessarily,

01:08:05.160 but it's just like a thing that is sort of sad that these sons who were going to be freed when

01:08:12.580 they were 21 but they were raised enslaved and a lot of them had similar interests to him similar

01:08:18.800 skills to Thomas Jefferson being sort of like intellectual type people who like working with

01:08:23.760 their hands who like playing violin versus Thomas Jefferson's white eldest grandson the son of

01:08:32.360 martha three thomas jefferson randolph um did not share any of his father's interests in

01:08:36.720 architecture woodworking or music what he did have thomas jefferson randolph was business sense

01:08:42.780 which thomas jefferson did not have but we're going to get to what happened to all of his debts

01:08:47.920 in a little bit but just the fact that these these sons who were like copy paste look like him

01:08:52.340 who were so similar to him were his illegitimate sons that he never publicly claimed as his own

01:08:58.620 who grew up enslaved and but were not actually his heirs even though they were so similar to him

01:09:06.620 anyway so eventually speaking of martha three sally's similarly aged half niece she has a

01:09:15.480 terrible husband um she had a lot of children with her terrible husband who's like literally

01:09:20.580 like extremely physically abusive awful terrible person bad with money and she

01:09:26.440 just returned to Monticello. She like left her husband and she couldn't bear to be with him 0.95

01:09:32.260 anymore. So her children were there. So this guy, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, her children,

01:09:36.740 including him, were there kind of growing up alongside Sally's children. So these children

01:09:43.460 who are relatives, but some are privileged white people and some are enslaved black people 1.00

01:09:49.700 all growing up together in this just like fucked up situation. So Sally Hemings, what did she do, 0.99

01:09:58.420 you know, all day? Like she was helping raise her children. She's clearly the one who probably 1.00

01:10:03.160 taught Harriet how to sew and how to mend clothes, like teaching her those skills. She also, so her

01:10:08.940 tasks are in the house. We're all behind the scenes. Like Thomas Jefferson loved having people

01:10:12.440 over when people would just randomly show up because he was like a famous person. And he's

01:10:16.840 like, sure, come in. And the staff was like, are you kidding me? And they had to keep entertaining

01:10:21.300 people. Sally had to always be in the background because the whole concept of Black Sal being so 0.70

01:10:26.980 famous. So she did these like behind the scenes things. She worked as seamstress in the family,

01:10:31.800 staying away from the house guests. She did things like when there's tasks, helping to bottle beer 1.00

01:10:37.000 and things like that. But remember when she had gotten extraordinary privileges?

01:10:41.080 So maybe part of that was she might've also gotten some free time to herself. I don't know.

01:10:44.600 Her older brother, I think older, brother John, did not have children of his own. He was married

01:10:50.440 to a woman named Priscilla. They didn't have children. Priscilla, another, sorry, not married

01:10:54.960 because they were enslaved. He was effectively married. He was partnered with a woman named

01:10:59.720 Priscilla. And he became sort of a mentor to Sally's sons in terms, because he was a skilled

01:11:05.020 woodworker were some of the tasks that he did around Monticello. So he helped train them and

01:11:09.000 he became sort of a surrogate father figure. Part of what Madison Hemmings recalls is

01:11:14.540 seeing Thomas Jefferson being so hands-on and loving to his white grandchildren and not like

01:11:20.120 that to his black children. But John kind of stepped in to have that sort of male presence

01:11:25.900 in their lives. And a visitor who came to Monticello two years into Thomas Jefferson's

01:11:32.600 retirement wrote, quote, the story of black Sal is no farce, but he cohabits with her and has a

01:11:38.740 number of children by her is a sacred truth. And the worst of it is he keeps the same children 0.96

01:11:43.020 slaves, an unnatural crime, which is common in these parts. So again, to that contemporary woman 1.00

01:11:48.760 who's like, oh, it just doesn't, I just don't think Thomas Jefferson would do things like that.

01:11:52.100 Then like, why were contemporary people who visited his house saying like, oh, he's doing 0.61

01:11:56.920 the shitty thing. Anyway, so he was true to his word, to the negotiation, the Paris negotiation

01:12:03.920 with Sally. When Sally's eldest children, Beverly and Harriet turned 21, Thomas Jefferson aided their

01:12:10.580 escape. So he didn't write paperwork being like, I legally free these people, but he just sort of

01:12:16.500 facilitated them leaving. And then when he wrote in his records, what happened, he used the language

01:12:22.020 of slavery to be like, oh, these two just escaped. But really what happened was like,

01:12:27.380 they got a carriage for them. He gave them, I think it's like $50 or something to start their

01:12:31.720 life. Both of them went to Washington, Swamp City, where they just kind of disappeared into

01:12:38.320 the white community. They passed as white people. They married white people. And what they did 0.75

01:12:42.740 vanished from the historical record. Although we do know from the Hemmings descendants that they

01:12:47.640 stayed in touch with their other siblings and with Sally. In 1824, our friend the Marquis de Lafayette

01:12:54.360 visited Monticello. So this is just wrapping things back around the Paris era. Like he and

01:13:02.140 Thomas Jefferson spent so much time together in that pre-revolutionary era. Sally was around. It

01:13:06.980 was a small household he would have known her so i don't know if he would remember her but i'm sure

01:13:11.680 she would remember him and and he could not have not seen sally's sons who were there because they'd

01:13:19.220 very they sally was maybe behind the scenes a bit but um the sons were had forward-facing jobs and

01:13:26.180 so if he just saw like oh who's that enslaved person who looks exactly like thomas jefferson

01:13:30.640 like copy paste face and height like he would have figured out what had been going on over

01:13:37.140 these past several decades Thomas Jefferson's health began to deteriorate in July 1825 he had

01:13:44.660 like rheumatism arm and wrist injuries intestinal and urinary disorders and eventually he became

01:13:51.360 confined to bed like one year later he prepared his will in which he kept his word he wrote in

01:13:59.080 the will that sally's youngest sons madison and eston would get their freedom once they reached

01:14:03.320 age 21 he kind of coached that in other information about saying that he was freeing

01:14:11.320 john sally's brother who had been their mentor in woodworking and stuff because thomas jefferson

01:14:17.800 is just covering all his angles he's like i can't just say like i'm freeing these two specific

01:14:22.620 enslaved people and not these other ones so he said like i'm giving john his freedom and then

01:14:28.580 also these two people who are his apprentices so that that'll help John. So that was kind of like

01:14:32.660 his way of doing that. And this fulfilled his promise he'd made to Sally in Paris 37 years ago.

01:14:39.880 What's notable here is that Madison was already older than 21. Esten was 17. Jefferson died,

01:14:48.060 Thomas Jefferson. He died on July 4th, age 83. This was the day of the 50th anniversary of the

01:14:53.980 Declaration of Independence, which he had written. He died deeply in debt. He had been in debt

01:15:01.200 all of his life. I think part of it is he had inherited some debt when he married

01:15:05.960 Martha too. And then he just kept, he wanted to look impressive. It's the same way that he

01:15:12.480 wanted people to remember him as a great man. He wanted them to see him as a great man while he

01:15:17.460 was alive. So he fucked everybody over. So he was unable to pass on his estate freely to his heirs 0.99

01:15:23.000 because of all the debts, his estate, his possessions, including the enslaved people,

01:15:29.560 130 of the enslaved people of Monticello were all sold at public auctions. Eventually Monticello

01:15:35.240 itself was sold by Martha III and the other heirs. Martha III, her late life, not great.

01:15:44.540 Like she had this shitty husband who also left her with no money. She inherited really nothing 0.97

01:15:49.700 from her father except for debts she ended up having to like couch surf with people for the 0.89

01:15:53.620 rest of her life thomas jefferson fucked everyone over so multiple generations because there were 0.65

01:16:00.200 so many hemmings this by now from like all of sally's siblings who were such an age spread like 0.89

01:16:05.840 some were so much older than her um had children like some of those children and children like

01:16:09.580 there's so many hemmings um and so the big family was split up sally herself was not legally free

01:16:15.340 she was not mentioned in the will because that would be too controversial for thomas jefferson's

01:16:18.600 legacy but martha three unofficially freed her by saying giving her time is what is technically

01:16:25.340 called and before all of the belongings of monticello were sent to auction sally took a

01:16:30.740 few souvenirs and what she kept kind of speaks to maybe her experience of life alongside thomas

01:16:37.780 jefferson and what the fact she wanted to remember him and what she took to remember him by which

01:16:43.400 became Hemming's family heirloom. So a pair of his glasses, an inkwell, and one of his shoe buckles.

01:16:50.980 And so Sally, Madison, and Esten, I mentioned was 17, but they didn't make him wait four years to

01:16:57.540 be freed. Like they were freed basically right away. Sally and her two youngest sons, Madison

01:17:01.760 and Esten, went to live in a rented house on Main Street in Charlottesville, not far from her older

01:17:07.280 sister, Mary. Later, her sons would buy their own houses. I think they both worked, or Esten was a

01:17:13.180 musician. Madison, I think, worked as a skilled tradesman. They would buy their own homes and

01:17:18.220 she lived with Madison. All three were listed. There was a census done in 1830 and they gave

01:17:23.660 their status as free white people. Interestingly, three years later, there was another census in

01:17:28.980 which Sally was identified as a free mixed race woman. Her two older children, Beverly and Harriet,

01:17:34.820 remain in contact with her and the others, which is how we know what they did. Sally Hemings died

01:17:40.780 1835 in Charlottesville, age 62. Her burial site is unknown, but she is remembered

01:17:48.120 all over the place at the Monticello Museum. So Monticello, which was sold to try and pay

01:17:54.800 off some debts, it's operated as a historical site run by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation

01:18:00.180 since 1923. And they've spent so much time, what they call restoring the house to what

01:18:06.200 it was like, but I feel like, I don't know if it ever was that good when Thomas Jefferson

01:18:10.180 was alive it looks beautiful now it looks like a beautiful place to visit so the thomas jefferson

01:18:15.260 foundation and honestly what they're doing at monticello is really we're going to talk in some

01:18:20.440 other episodes later this season about how history is remembered in various places and this is they've

01:18:25.600 done really great work at monticello at weaving the story of slavery with the legacy of thomas

01:18:34.820 Jefferson because they can't be separated. It's like, that's such a crucial part of this whole

01:18:41.060 situation. So they've created programs to fully interpret the lives of enslaved people at

01:18:46.460 Monticello. They have an interactive multimedia exhibit. So I believe it's in the slave quarters

01:18:52.000 in the South part of Monticello itself, where they don't know what room was Sally's. So they

01:18:57.460 just kind of chose one as emblematic. And because there's no images of Sally, we don't know what

01:19:01.900 she looked like so what they have is this multimedia show that has sort of like silhouettes of sally

01:19:07.440 and her children to sort of interpret and imagine what she would have looked like the multimedia

01:19:11.880 exhibit is called the life of sally hemmings and because of the whole thing where people are like

01:19:16.940 was she thomas jefferson's concubine like did he father her children like instead of them

01:19:23.200 interpreting that the the words of this exhibit are all entirely the reminiscences of her son

01:19:29.320 Madison explaining her life story. And you can actually, I watched it. There's a video of it

01:19:33.520 and it's a very lovely tribute. And in 2003, Monticello welcomed a reunion of descendants

01:19:40.080 of Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, from both the Hemings side and the Wales side. And this was

01:19:48.240 organized by the descendants who have created a group called the Monticello community. Additional

01:19:53.440 larger reunions have since been held, not just of descendants of the Hemmings and of Jefferson,

01:20:00.160 but of all the enslaved people who worked at Monticello. In 2012, there was an exhibit called

01:20:05.360 Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello, Paradox of Liberty at the Smithsonian's National Museum of

01:20:11.220 American History, which also examined the legacy of Thomas Jefferson, the enslaver. And this was

01:20:16.640 developed as a collaboration between the National Museum of African American History and Culture

01:20:20.900 and Monticello itself. It was the first exhibit on the National Mall to address such issues.

01:20:29.360 And then also in 2012, Monticello opened a new outdoor exhibit on its grounds

01:20:33.200 called Landscape of Slavery, Mulberry Row at Monticello to convey more about the lives of

01:20:39.460 the hundreds of enslaved people who lived and worked at the plantation. And so Sally Hemings,

01:20:47.020 what a saga honestly an american story so we're going to look at her in terms of our

01:20:56.380 scandalousness scale well first there's the we have the award for outstanding supporting

01:21:01.840 performance the jeweled tortoise award and i feel like the hemmings family the way that they

01:21:08.640 continued on the oral tradition and continued on her legacy the people of monticello like i feel

01:21:13.980 like that's also important these awards though are more for people who were there in with the

01:21:21.480 person helping them out at the time and I think the whole Hemmings family did I just don't have

01:21:25.180 enough examples to specifically give them this award but I am grateful that she was not by

01:21:31.800 herself throughout all this stuff so the first category on the Fredigan Memorial Scandaliciousness

01:21:38.280 scale is scandalousness which is complicated like the myth of black sally you know in the

01:21:45.500 pamphlets and newspapers like that wasn't about her that was about just the concept of her and

01:21:50.600 it was really about thomas jefferson and trying to slander him by just like dishing out this

01:21:57.080 misogynoir about sally hummings oh it's tricky like the whole concept about like the incest thing

01:22:05.580 And the fact that he was so much older and he was her enslaver, but that's not her being scandalicious. Like, we don't know what went on between the two of them. But I, you know, it's different from situations like we had the story two years ago when I was doing an episode about Harem Sultan, who was an enslaved woman from Ukraine, who was taken to serve in the Ottoman court.

01:22:35.200 And then the Sultan Suleyman fell in love with her and he fell in love with her partially because

01:22:41.820 of her scheming to get his attention and stuff. Like she kind of caused that. And he, to his

01:22:46.860 credit, freed her, married her. And to all the haters was like, fuck you. This is my woman. 1.00

01:22:53.520 Thomas Jefferson would never. So like Sally Hemings, I don't think she was scandalous.

01:22:58.680 I don't think she did anything intentionally scandalous. The most scandalous thing

01:23:02.100 maybe that she intentionally did, which I don't think is scandalous, but people might have thought

01:23:06.980 that was to stand up to Thomas Jefferson when she was 16 in Paris and be like, I'm going to leave

01:23:11.880 unless you give me what I want. But that's more scheminess than scandalousness. I'm going to say

01:23:16.680 two. I'm going to say two for scandalousness because it wasn't things she did, but she was 1.00

01:23:24.000 perceived as scandalous by people who heard about the situation scheminess like we don't have a lot 0.99

01:23:33.200 of examples of things she actually did especially after she's she became Thomas Jefferson's

01:23:39.180 concubine but the negotiation itself like the way that Madison shares that story and we know

01:23:45.240 we know so much about her from what Madison what his reminisces to say and then other people who

01:23:50.040 were at Monticello or like, oh, Sally would always talk about her time in Paris or like

01:23:53.400 the fact that Madison knew about this negotiation means she shared that story as well. Like she

01:23:57.660 made sure her story was known, which is scheminess. Um, but also the scheminess of just

01:24:03.040 knowing, knowing Thomas Jefferson so well, his obsession with public image, his, the way that he

01:24:09.400 hated conflict, like the way she knew that she could use these things in this moment where she

01:24:13.880 could stay in France and be free, but that would mean leaving her whole family behind.

01:24:20.040 but she could get freedom for her children. 0.98

01:24:22.780 Like, I just, I'm giving her a 10 for scheminess 0.99

01:24:24.820 because I think she was very savvy.

01:24:28.940 I think she was very clever.

01:24:31.560 And at age 16, in this situation,

01:24:37.220 away from her whole family and support system,

01:24:38.960 she stood up for herself and what she wanted happened.

01:24:43.400 Her children were all freed.

01:24:45.440 Her significance, I feel, is also a 10.

01:24:47.620 so she is one of the best known American women we're going to be talking about this whole season

01:24:53.680 her name is really well known and I think that's really because of her descendants and the

01:24:58.380 descendants of the other Hemings siblings all the descendants of Elizabeth Hemings

01:25:01.880 kept her name out there kept her story out there like made sure that people knew

01:25:07.260 who she was her importance um and to not erase this from to erase her and her experiences from

01:25:18.340 history but also her significance just as an enslaved woman um the fact that we know as much

01:25:25.980 as we do about her where we know so little or nothing about most enslaved people of this era

01:25:31.820 like so she she's significant in and of herself um and then she's also significant

01:25:35.820 on behalf of so many enslaved people whose stories we don't know the sexism bonus this is

01:25:44.000 to new listeners how much did the patriarchy get in her way and things like that how much

01:25:50.720 how different or better might her life have been if she wasn't a woman and like so many other people 0.97

01:25:56.160 we've talked about on this podcast who are people of color like you can't extricate the sexism from 1.00

01:26:03.420 the racism from for her like the enslavement but if we're just going to score just the sexism of

01:26:10.800 it all like her brother james for instance like he went to france and he was trained to be a french

01:26:15.920 chef and then he went off and his whole story is worth reading and learning about annette gordon

01:26:20.620 reed's book the hemings of monticello really talks more about him and what happened to him

01:26:25.020 but he had opportunities that sally did not because he was a man like her her other brothers

01:26:32.240 do too like some of them they learned skilled trades they became house servants like he did

01:26:38.060 free some of the older siblings that's and according to talks about that in the book

01:26:42.460 i really wanted to focus just on sally but her experience i mean it's similar to that of her

01:26:48.440 mother and her grandmother and her sisters just in the sense of being wives and mothers and that's

01:26:53.960 what they did and if she hadn't lived in this racist slave situation how much more could she

01:27:01.020 have accomplished and also pulling out one tiny part of that it's like if she hadn't been a young

01:27:06.400 girl or woman in the situation how much what other skills might she have done can you hear that my

01:27:12.040 my cat Hepburn is here she's purring real loud right next to the microphone anyway Hepburn concurs 0.74

01:27:18.480 10 10 out of 10 sexism bonus for sally hemmings which gives her total score of 32 out of 40

01:27:26.540 which in terms of people we've talked about i'm just seeing who's around there so

01:27:34.700 even just looking specifically at like black history people we've talked about like the queen

01:27:39.320 of sheba has a 31 um who is the legendary queen mentioned in the christian bible who lived in

01:27:47.420 africa african history um nefertiti has a 31.5

01:27:53.620 emanarinis who was of cush who is also very notable figure from black african history has

01:28:02.480 a 32 and that's just right where sally hemings is going to go as well 32 out of 40 love to see

01:28:11.340 hear they're around these literal queens and then we're also doing this season um the marie

01:28:18.100 antoinette season we have a segment called nothing but net where we're looking to see what connections

01:28:22.900 what's the closest connection between this person and queen marie antoinette and actually sally

01:28:28.500 hemings is one of the closest ones she was living in france breathing the same oxygen basically as

01:28:33.020 marie antoinette she was in france just immediately right before the french revolution like marie

01:28:37.460 Antoinette lived through that really cold winter as well but it's the Marquis de Lafayette who is

01:28:41.960 the connection here the Marquis de Lafayette visited that house in Paris all the time and

01:28:47.240 then also came to visit Monticello he was Marquis de Lafayette who maybe I feel like we should

01:28:53.120 almost do a special episode about him because he's interesting kind of messy but he for sure would

01:29:00.060 have met Sally Hummings he's in that house in Paris all the time it was a small house she was

01:29:05.940 a noticeable person. And Marquis de Lafayette knew Marie Antoinette. So that makes Sally

01:29:11.560 Hemings two degrees of separation from Queen Marie Antoinette. So just as I wanted to follow 0.99

01:29:23.720 up on a couple of things from the story, because I recorded this a bit ago and now I'm recording

01:29:27.980 this little extra. And since I recorded this story, there's so many other details. I can't

01:29:34.180 recommend enough, Annette Gordon-Reed's book, The Hemmings of Monticello. But there's a couple

01:29:37.840 of things I just really wanted to say in this podcast as well about her brother, James. So

01:29:42.720 James Hemmings is the one who was with Sally when she was in France. And he was there because Thomas

01:29:48.000 Jefferson liked French cooking and he wanted James, who was working in the kitchen, enslaved,

01:29:54.080 he wanted James to learn some good recipes. And James was really gifted at cooking. So

01:30:00.520 So he received training to be a French chef while he was in France and actually on his own dime, like in his own. Thomas Jefferson didn't pay for him to do this, but James Hemmings also got tutoring in the French language. So he spoke French, he was learning about French cookery, and he is credited with bringing many French cooking styles to colonial America and developing new recipes inspired by French cuisine, such as the French dish of pasta and cheese.

01:30:26.740 And so Thomas Jefferson really liked pasta. He called it all macaroni. I don't know if everybody did, but he did. So James, while he was in France, he learned about French, like pasta, which I guess is Italian. Like we know that later on, Thomas Jefferson ordered a pasta maker from Naples because he was so into the pasta that James had introduced him to.

01:30:49.860 So James prepared this dish called macaroni pie, which was, it evolved to what Americans

01:30:55.540 now call macaroni and cheese.

01:30:57.160 His recipe, you can look it up.

01:30:58.580 It's pretty, it's a bit different from what people do now where you like make a roux with

01:31:02.940 flour and stuff.

01:31:03.640 His recipe is like layers of macaroni, butter, cheese, bake it.

01:31:08.400 It sounds delicious.

01:31:09.300 I think I might make it like his actual recipe you can find.

01:31:12.920 So he is James Hemmings is believed to be one of the first American chefs to prepare

01:31:17.040 the original french dish in this way credit is often incorrectly attributed like for the invention

01:31:22.980 of macaroni and cheese to thomas jefferson's cousin slash sister-in-law i think or his daughter

01:31:29.440 married mr randolph or randolph or their cousin anyway got this family tree anyway a woman named

01:31:34.920 mary randolph wrote a cookbook called the virginia housewife which contained a whole bunch of

01:31:39.580 recipes that she said like these are the recipes me and my family love like mary randolph was not

01:31:43.380 doing cooking herself. Like the enslaved people in her household are doing the cooking. But she 0.96

01:31:48.440 was the one who wrote the recipe book. So people thought maybe she invented the recipes, but like

01:31:51.920 she had never been to France. She didn't know about macaroni pie. Anyway, so the recipes in

01:31:59.620 her book, the Virginia housewife are all saying like credit Mary Randolph or other people who

01:32:04.800 are not James Hemmings. Anyway, I read a thing that said Thomas Jefferson only went in the kitchen

01:32:09.900 to make sure the clock was telling the right time.

01:32:11.700 Like he also was not cooking.

01:32:12.780 Some people, very erroneously think Thomas Jefferson

01:32:15.020 invented macaroni and pie.

01:32:16.840 James Hemings invented macaroni and cheese

01:32:19.880 and everybody should know.

01:32:21.440 You can learn more about James Hemings.

01:32:22.960 There's a 2022, like very recent Amazon Prime documentary

01:32:26.240 called James Hemings Ghost in the Kitchen.

01:32:29.260 And I just thought that in terms of the Hemings

01:32:31.280 and their importance to American history,

01:32:32.780 I should let you know that about macaroni and cheese.

01:32:35.340 And I also briefly said in the episode

01:32:36.700 about the room that archeologists found in 2017.

01:32:39.900 so a bit more about this so there's this there was this little room that was discovered that

01:32:45.840 was adjacent to thomas jefferson's bedchamber at monticello so this room had been hidden from view

01:32:50.540 since 1941 because monticello had been a museum for a long time and so many people are coming

01:32:55.460 they're like we need more public bathrooms and so this had been turned into a men's bathroom

01:32:59.340 so this room is 13 feet long and nearly 15 feet wide and could only be accessed through

01:33:04.460 thomas jefferson's personal room it didn't have its own other door so this room contained a

01:33:09.060 fireplace, a brick hearth, and a brick base for a stove. And I mean, who else's room would this be

01:33:15.560 except for Sally Hemming's room? So it's still currently, I think, being restored for eventual

01:33:20.420 public viewing, as Monticello's curators continue to work diligently to incorporate Hemming's life

01:33:25.980 as part of the story of Thomas Jefferson. So this room was built around 1809, we know from

01:33:31.820 the architectural plans. This is when Sally would have been around 36 years old. And so the quarters

01:33:37.740 where she likely lived before that, up to age 35 or 36, is in the South Pavilion at Monticello.

01:33:45.680 And this is where the Life of Sally Hemings exhibit is currently on display. And the image

01:33:50.420 that I'm using for this podcast, if you look at your phone screen right now, I put an image up

01:33:55.740 there. And what that is, is a still image from a multimedia exhibition that's part of the Life of

01:34:01.060 Sally Hemings, where they use the words of her son, Madison Hemings, to explain her story.

01:34:05.060 because there's no portraits of Sally Hummings rather than guessing what she looked like.

01:34:09.900 What they have is sort of a mannequin showing the sort of clothes that she would have worn.

01:34:16.480 And then it's projected upon with different imagery, like birds flying and stuff.

01:34:21.120 And in the background, the multimedia thing has silhouettes of people being Sally and her children.

01:34:27.620 And you can watch that.

01:34:28.360 It's on, I put the link to that as well in the show notes.

01:34:31.720 Anyway, so that's the image that I'm using.

01:34:32.920 that is from this Life of Sally Hummings exhibit. And another room in the South Wing contains the

01:34:37.760 recently excavated and restored first kitchen of Monticello, which reveals more about the life of

01:34:43.240 macaroni and cheese inventor James Hummings, as well as the other enslaved cooks and chefs who

01:34:48.160 helped create early American cuisine. And so if you want to keep up with this podcast slash with

01:34:57.140 me. First of all, I have a sub stack weekly newsletter where every week I send out to all

01:35:03.460 the subscribers a free newsletter where I'm telling the story of someone scandalous from

01:35:08.520 history. It's not the same people as on the podcast. It's different people. Currently,

01:35:13.020 I'm talking about the murder of Amy Dudley, who is a woman from Tudor era who may or may not have

01:35:18.860 been killed by Queen Elizabeth I's boyfriend, Bobby Dutz. You can also keep up with me on

01:35:25.060 patreon at patreon.com slash ann foster writer so you can join there for free as well i've been

01:35:31.280 posting some like that stuff about the uh ancestry.com and the the records that you're able

01:35:37.840 to access when i heard that news i shared that on patreon for all the free members so i'm just

01:35:42.320 trying to sort of like add some more content there as well for all the free members too

01:35:45.800 and then also if you become a paid supporter on patreon for uh one dollar or more a month you get

01:35:51.660 early ad free access to all the episodes of this podcast as well as the past episodes you also get

01:35:57.400 those ad free and if you subscribe for five dollars or more a month you get all that all

01:36:02.900 the above as well as also bonus episodes of our bonus series vulgar peace theater where i talk

01:36:08.660 about costume dramas with alison epstein and lana wood johnson there's a really good back catalog of

01:36:14.520 those now so if you really want to if you're going on some long road trips or something you really

01:36:18.420 need some three-hour podcasts where we're just like yelling about costumes being historically

01:36:24.460 inaccurate um there you go i also have some patreon only episodes there of a series called 0.83

01:36:31.060 so this asshole where i talk about gross men from history and actually i did an episode there about 0.76

01:36:35.740 thomas jefferson and that's where i first uh started getting interested or being aware of the 0.98

01:36:41.540 how interesting sally hemmings and the hemmings family story really was so you can hear that

01:36:46.280 or the origin story of these episodes there as well. And I do also want to mention,

01:36:51.060 we have a brand partner, Common Era Jewelry, which is a small business based out of New York

01:36:56.280 City, where they are, they, by they, I mean the like two people who run this company, Tori

01:37:02.740 and her colleague. And so this is a woman-owned business who makes beautiful jewelry inspired by

01:37:09.680 women from history, as well as from women from classical mythology. So this includes people

01:37:15.180 we've talked on the podcast like agrippina cleopatra bodica and boleyn is there as well

01:37:20.880 um if you're looking at some of the people from further back there's people like sappho

01:37:25.880 is there um livia also who featured prominently in the series i claudius um also people from

01:37:33.200 mythology like medusa and aphrodite and hatch episode is there we've done an episode about

01:37:38.520 her as well their pieces are available in solid gold as well as a more affordable gold vermeil

01:37:43.160 and Vulgar History listeners can always get 15% off anything you buy from them by going to

01:37:48.160 commonera.com slash vulgar or use code vulgar at checkout for Common Era jewelry. If you want to

01:37:54.520 get Vulgar History merchandise, actually, you know, big news, the first merch drop of season

01:38:00.900 seven has come out. I didn't plan, I didn't pre-plan what merch I was going to do based

01:38:06.360 around season seven because I wanted to see like what, what was going to take off because I can

01:38:10.400 never predict which way the Tits Out Brigade is going to go with things. But the phrase from

01:38:16.540 two weeks ago episode about the public universal friend, where the public universal

01:38:20.740 friend would say to people, the friend hath need of these things and just like take their shed

01:38:26.500 because of the cult adjacent vibes of the whole situation. And just the phrase, the friend hath

01:38:32.620 need of these things. You know, when you're a genderless spirit, people, you just feel free

01:38:39.580 to demand things from people. So anyway, that phrase took off that took off a little bit amongst 0.75

01:38:44.660 the tits of brigade. And so slash myself. And so I just kind of made a design myself just using

01:38:51.700 some cute fonts that says the friend has need of these things. And you can get that on, I think

01:38:55.940 it's clever to get that on a tote bag, because then it's not so much like the friend is, you 1.00

01:39:01.380 know, taking your shit. It's more just like the friend has need of these things. The things are 0.99

01:39:04.700 in this bag but there's also stickers and t-shirts um dad hats various things so anyway you can

01:39:12.460 check out all that that merch and also the long-standing other merch we have

01:39:16.380 at vulgarhistory.com store for americans or if you're outside the u.s you can shop

01:39:22.460 at vulgarhistory.redbubble.com where the shipping is a bit better for non-americans and if you want

01:39:28.420 to get in touch with me especially i know there's a lot of listeners in the u.s so like i'm curious

01:39:33.980 to know, you know, what did you learn about Sally Hemings growing up in the US? Like how was she

01:39:39.340 handled when you were going to school? I'm interested to know. And have you ever been to

01:39:43.860 Monticello? If so, send me pictures. And you can get in touch with me. There's a form if you go to

01:39:49.480 vulgarhistory.com. You can just message me or you can also send me messages. My DMs are open

01:39:53.500 on Instagram at vulgarhistorypod. Next week. So we're going to, we're sticking obviously with

01:40:00.800 the same 18th century revolutionary era thing, you know, this season seven part one is really

01:40:07.040 focused on the American revolution and sort of the ripple effects of all of that. And

01:40:12.060 next week, we have a I have a real treat in store for you. So we've done episodes in the past about

01:40:20.780 people like Lola Montez, about Rochelle, these sort of sexually liberated, chaotic people

01:40:29.140 are very much similar to next week's heroine, who is, I'm going to say sexually liberated chaos

01:40:37.380 person. But really what I mean to say is she's just like a horny chaos slut. And I'm here for 1.00

01:40:42.440 it. And I'm so excited to share this story with you. And I'm maybe even more excited to let you

01:40:47.600 know that this story is going to take place in Ireland. I know that Irish listeners have been

01:40:52.600 waiting for a minute for a full Ireland-based episode. Although Lola Montez was from there,

01:40:58.960 and I think you can claim her. In fact, I asked the guest. We have an amazing guest. I think this

01:41:05.100 is what I'm most excited about next week. It's a guest. I won't say their identity,

01:41:09.340 but if you know, you know, and when you hear them and who it is, you might say,

01:41:14.240 Herman, my pills. So stay tuned next week for more of these adventures of the revolutionary

01:41:21.280 18th century, and how they all connect back to Ms. Marie Antoinette. Until next time, keep your

01:41:27.660 pants on and your tits out. Vulgar History is researched, written, and hosted by Anne Foster. 1.00

01:41:34.340 That's me. The editor is Christina Lumagi. Theme music is by The Severn Duo. The Vulgar History

01:41:41.000 show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of

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Vulgar History - June 26, 2024

American Revolution, part 4： Sally Hemings (pt 2⧸2)

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